Lessons I Am Bringing Into 2026
As many of you know, I’ve worked in healthcare for over 25 years — nearly my entire adult life — building systems, training teams, and supporting and educating people across the industry.
A few years ago, I found myself on the other side of it more than I expected. Sitting in doctor appointments, sometimes 3 or 4 a week. Tests. Scans. Bills. Portals. Waiting rooms. Conversations that moved quickly, even when my brain couldn’t.
I was already exhausted. And it was overwhelming.
I knew healthcare was complicated. I have helped design and try to fix part of it. I have watched brilliant engineers, analysts, and operators struggle to understand concepts that are treated as ‘basic’. Even when you know the system, it is hard to keep up when you are tired, worried, or just trying to get through the day.
I have been the person in the family, and friends have come to me with questions about the medical system. Why did this happen? What does this mean? What should I do next?
Healthcare can feel overwhelming, not because people aren’t communicating, but because translation often gets lost along the way.
Patients speak in symptoms, questions, and “Is this normal?”
Clinicians speak medicine and care plans.
Payers speak rules and codes.
Teams speak systems, workflows, and metrics.
Hearing all of these languages at once, often in the same week, made me think a lot about how I could get some of my knowledge out of my head and into the world in a way that actually helped people.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a writer. I never expected that healthcare — of all things — would be what brought me back to it. But writing became a way to download my experience to others. To slow things down. To connect the dots in plain language, without stripping away the nuance.
Over time, it became clear that education isn’t extra in healthcare. It’s an intervention, sometimes even a form of prevention. And translation is how that intervention works.
This post isn’t a retrospective of everything I worked on in 2025. It’s a reflection on what this year, as a consultant, a patient, and a translator between worlds, taught me.
These are the lessons I’m carrying into 2026. Lessons about communication, education, cost, and care. Lessons shaped by real and honest conversations, real confusion, and real people trying to navigate a system that rarely pauses to explain itself.
Communication Only Works When It Includes Translation
Healthcare is full of communication.
There are appointment summaries, portal messages, an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) document, policy updates, care plans, and follow-up instructions. Many of them technically answer a question. Just not the one you were asking.
Information is passed between the patient, provider, payer, and many other people or systems that interact along the way.
Translation is what turns information into understanding. It’s the difference between being told something and knowing what it means for you, what matters most, and what you’re supposed to do when you get home and sit on the couch, wondering if you missed something important.
I felt this personally while sitting in appointments where information came fast, politely, and confidently, and still left me thinking, Wait… should I be worried? Did I ask the right questions? What happens next?
I remember one appointment where a doctor said, “Wow — you’re a mystery.” There are plenty of places in life where I want to feel unique. I mean, I’m one of eight children. This wasn’t one of those moments.
I saw the same thing on the industry side. Teams would align on a solution, ship it, and still get questions like:
“Why is this happening?”
“What am I supposed to do now?”
“Who do I call?”
Same problem. Different audience.
Translation asks a different set of questions:
Who is this for?
What context are they missing?
What decision are they trying to make?
What would actually help them at this moment — not just what’s technically correct?
When translation is missing, confusion fills the gap. People disengage, delay care, or assume the worst. When translation is present, something shifts, trust builds, decisions feel manageable, and the system feels less intimidating.
How the System Actually Works
It isn’t judging you. It is processing you.
One of the hardest parts of healthcare is that it is deeply personal, and those moments are often handled by systems that are anything but.
Most of what we experience after our visit to the doctor isn’t the result of someone sitting down and carefully weighing our individual situation. It is the result of a claim going through the system, processing rules, codes, timelines, and logic, all happening automatically, in the background, at a pace no person could keep up with.
Insurance systems process millions of claims, some per day. Computers make yes-or-no decisions based on the information that is on the claim and what they are given. The system is not practicing medicine. They are not judging worthiness. They are answering questions like:
Does this match the benefit?
Is the documentation sufficient?
Does this meet the policy criteria?
Does it meet the rules as written in the system?
This is important context, especially because the output often lands at a very human and personal moment.
Take the Explanation of Benefits (EOB). Despite how it looks, it is not a bill (I know, it really wants to be). It is information. It is the system saying, ‘Here is how the claim was processed and details’. Sometimes it says, ‘Hey, I need more information before I can finish’. That is also what being “denied” looks like.
Denials can feel final. They arrive without warmth, a cup of coffee, or an explanation, and the language looks like something you would use with a decoder ring from a cereal box. But often, denials are a signal that more information is needed, such as missing documentation. A change is required in the coding on the claim. A timing issue. A rule needing more context.
Note, nothing about the care itself may be in question. The system just didn’t have enough information to process and pay (even partially).
Cost sharing also lives in this world of confusion: Copays, deductibles, coinsurance. These are not random costs or penalties. They are built into the plan design and applied automatically. When you may not understand how they work, they feel like a trap! When you know what you’re paying for and why, well, you may not like it still, but for me, it felt less willy-nilly. Sometimes I imagined the decision to pay or not pay a claim was made by someone sitting with a blindfold and a dart… anyone else?
This is where education, determination, and translation can start changing everything.
When patients understand how the system works, they are more likely to:
Ask the right follow-up questions
Recognize when something might be incomplete
Know when an appeal is possible
Feel less blindsided by cost
And when teams design systems with that understanding in mind, the benefits ripple outward — fewer repeat questions, fewer avoidable issues, better trust, and better outcomes on both the patient and business side.
The system may be impersonal, but the experience never is.
Education and understanding don’t simplify healthcare, but they make it easier to navigate. That can be the difference between feeling stuck and feeling capable of taking the next step.
Education Helps Everyone — Patients and Businesses
For patients, that confidence matters.
Many people pay bills without question. They are afraid of debt. Afraid of collections. Assuming it is correct. That the number in front of them is correct.
Fear can keep people quiet.
Patients with more understanding and tools to advocate for themselves, ask more, identify errors, and pause before paying. Maybe they feel less alone in the process, even if the answer isn’t always what they hoped for.
Education isn’t just for patients; it helps teams too.
I’ve spent years watching organizations chase the next regulation, the next feature, the next lever that might move the bottom line. Those things matter. But so does helping people understand how to use what you’ve already built.
When teams invest in education — for customers, providers, and even internal partners — the impact shows up everywhere:
Fewer repeat questions
Cleaner documentation
Fewer avoidable denials
More predictable revenue
Stronger trust
Education reduces friction. It makes systems easier to navigate, not just easier to administer.
And it creates alignment.
This isn’t about oversimplifying healthcare. It is about translating it, clearly, honestly, and with empathy and understanding how it works first. And over time, as more patients understand the systems, and more teams design with that in mind, we have an opportunity to do more than explain it.
We can reduce the complexity.
It’s a new year. Why shouldn’t we hope for meaningful change?
Carrying This Into 2026
This year reinforced that clarity changes how people show up, as patients, as caregivers, and as teams building and supporting these systems. When people understand what’s happening and why, fear softens. Confidence grows. Better questions get asked. Better decisions get made.
For me, writing became part of that work. A way to translate what I’ve learned over decades in healthcare, and what I’ve lived through more recently as a patient, into something others could use. Not to strip away complexity, but to make it navigable. Human. Honest. Hopefully relatable and sometimes funny.
As we head into 2026, I’m carrying these lessons with me and continuing to share them. Some will be new. Some will revisit familiar ground. Because understanding doesn’t always happen the first time, and because there will always be new people entering the system, asking the same questions we once did.
If there’s one thing I’m hopeful about going into the new year, it’s this: education creates momentum. And when enough people start from a place of understanding, meaningful change feels not just possible, but attainable.
Wrap Up
Over the past year, I’ve received messages and comments from people I know, people I don’t, and parents navigating similar diagnoses with their kids, thanking me for helping make something confusing feel a little more understandable.
They’re what fuel what I’ll keep sharing in 2026. Some new stuff, and some revisited. It’s how we learn from one another and influence positive change.
Thank you for reading and for being part of the conversation—it means more than you know.
💡 If this post helped clarify your coverage chaos, share it with a friend or colleague! And if you have questions or want to see a specific topic covered, drop me a line. I’d love to hear from you.
Note from the Author: This blog is for educational purposes only and reflects my experience. This is not intended as legal, financial, or medical advice, nor is it a preparation for any medical coding exam. Always confirm details with your insurance company, healthcare provider, or HR department. It’s designed to help cross-functional teams in the healthcare industry work together more effectively, and to help you feel more confident advocating for yourself and your loved ones in your personal healthcare matters.
