Hummingbird Advisory Partners is a healthcare technology advisory firm working with health systems, MSOs and specialty practices on the technology and operations decisions that shape how the business runs.
Hummingbird is built for the decisions that don't fit neatly into a vendor pitch. The moments where the right call isn't obvious, the diagnosis matters as much as the solution, and the wrong choice costs more than the right one saves.
We work with healthcare executives and boards when a vendor recommendation conflicts with what the operations team actually needs. When an acquisition closes faster than the integration plan accounts for. When the AI conversation is happening on top of a data foundation no one fully trusts.
Three categories of healthcare organization, each facing a different version of the same challenge: making modern technology decisions without the executive bandwidth or budget of a Fortune 10 IT department.
Regional and community health systems balancing legacy EHRs, security investment decisions, and value-based care readiness while keeping clinical operations running.
Multi-practice management organizations dealing with platform sprawl from acquisitions, inconsistent data across locations, and the operating-model challenges of scaling without growing chaos.
Growth-stage practices, group practices, and specialty networks navigating technology decisions that used to belong only to larger organizations, without the executive teams those organizations have.
Curt Schatz didn't learn healthcare technology from a consulting playbook. He spent more than two decades running it from inside some of the largest healthcare organizations in the country.
His career spans roles as a regional vice president of IT, a chief information officer, and a senior technology executive across both payer and provider organizations. The work has included leading a multi-state EHR consolidation that retired more than a dozen legacy systems, building post-acquisition IT integration models used across a seven-state region, and serving as CIO for a state-level community health plan during a period of major operational change.
That's the experience Hummingbird brings to its advisory work. Healthcare leaders facing modernization, AI readiness, M&A integration, and risk decisions don't need another generalist consultant translating their industry from the outside. They need someone who has already operated inside organizations like theirs and made similar calls under similar pressure.
Deep, hands-on experience across four core service areas. The detailed scope of each lives on the Services page.
We help practices modernize the systems running underneath the business, including infrastructure, platforms, and integrations, so they hold up as the organization grows instead of becoming the next thing to replace.
HIPAA-aligned risk management and governance done in plain English. We help leaders understand what they're actually exposed to, who owns what, and what to fix first.
Most healthcare leaders have plenty of dashboards and not enough answers. We help connect the data that's already there into views people will actually use to make decisions.
Assessments, roadmaps, and execution support, including the part most consultants and advisors skip: staying in the room while the work actually gets done.
Most engagements start with a free assessment. We spend a couple of weeks looking at your technology, operations, and governance, and we leave you with a written read of what's working, what isn't, and what we'd fix first. No obligation to keep going.
If you do want to keep going, we scope the work to fit the problem. Some clients need an advisor on call for a board meeting next month. Others need someone running point on a year-long platform consolidation. We do both. We're also honest when a project isn't a fit for us, and we'll tell you who to call instead.
We're vendor-agnostic and we don't take referral fees from software companies. The recommendations you get are the ones we'd make if we were running the practice.
And we stay close to execution. Most of our work happens after the strategy deck is written, sitting with your team while the changes actually land.
After more than two decades inside the largest healthcare organizations in the country, Curt kept noticing the same pattern.
A decade ago, a 40-provider MSO wasn't fielding AI strategy questions from its board. A growing specialty group didn't need a HIPAA-aligned governance framework to satisfy its payers. A community health system could run on the EHR it bought ten years earlier without anyone asking whether that was still the right choice.
That changed faster than the industry that serves these organizations did. Technology decisions that used to live only at the largest health systems now sit on the desks of leaders running organizations a fraction of that size. The advisory firms built to serve those large systems weren't restructured to meet the moment. The alternatives are mostly consultants with generic playbooks or vendors selling their own products. Neither is built for the operating-reality side of the decisions these leaders are now being asked to make.
Hummingbird was started in 2025 to be the firm those organizations could call.
Technology decisions in healthcare are also operating decisions, cultural decisions, and financial decisions. The firms making the recommendations should have made those decisions themselves at some point.
The advice is shaped by careers spent inside healthcare IT, not by careers spent watching it from across the table.
We don't take referral fees from software companies. The recommendations you get are the ones we'd make if we were running the practice.
Most modernization opportunities live in what to retire, not what to add. Smaller, cleaner environments support new investment better than crowded ones do.
Most of our work happens after the strategy deck is written, sitting with your team while the changes actually land. That's the part that determines whether the project succeeds.
When a project isn't a fit for us, we'll tell you that up front, and point you toward someone better suited.
Most engagements begin with a free assessment. Two or three weeks looking at what's actually going on, and a written read on what's working, what isn't, and what we'd fix first. No obligation to keep going.