Kari Koehler MSN, RN
Executive Advisor, AI & Virtual Care
AI & virtual care, led from inside the work.
Kari helps health systems adopt AI and virtual nursing the way it actually has to happen. Readiness first, vendors second, and the nursing workforce carried the whole way.
- WHY LEADERS TRUST HER
Operator level. Independent. Fluent in the whole room.
She's sat in the seat
Kari partnered with frontline nurses and leaders to build the workflows behind an Agentic Care Partner, in a real system under real financial pressure. You don't have to translate your world for her; she's already lived it.
Independent, by design
When Kari advises a health system, she holds no financial ties to the platforms she's evaluating. Her only stake is whether it works for your patients, your nurses, and your budget.
She speaks every language in the room
Board, finance, clinical, and the night shift. Kari can hold the strategy conversation and the bedside reality at one table without either getting lost.
— WHEN THE MANDATE OUTPACES THE READINESS
You’ve been asked to adopt AI. Not to guess.
Around 70% of digital health implementations fall short of their goals, almost never because the technology was wrong, but because the readiness work never happened.
The board wants a virtual nursing strategy, finance wants a business case, and clinical wants a workflow that doesn’t add work. All three are looking at you.
Your nurses have heard “this will make your job easier” before. Their trust is the one thing you can’t afford to spend twice.
You don’t need another platform overview. You need someone who has carried this in a real system to tell you the truth about where you really you actually stand.
— THE WORK, IN FOUR PARTS
From "we should do something with AI" to something that lasts.
Part 01
Are We Ready?
An honest, three domain readiness assessment across workforce, patients, and organization, scored before you ever talk to a vendor. Because implementations fail on readiness far more often than on technology.
READINESS FRAMEWORK
Part 03
Owning Your Implementation
The vendor delivers; you govern. The governance structure, the leadership stance the moment calls for, and how to keep your hand on the wheel from day one to go live.
GOVERNANCE AND LEADERSHIP
Part 02
Choosing Your Vendor
How to evaluate vendors from the buyer's side of the table: who belongs in the room, how to build a short list, and the questions vendors quietly hope you won't ask.
VENDOR EVALUATION
Part 04
From Launch to Sustainability
The vendor delivers; you govern. The governance structure, the leadership stance the moment calls for, and how to keep your hand on the wheel from day one to go live.
ADOPTION THAT STICKS
- THE PART NO ONE LIKES TO NAME
The technology isn't what people fear. Change is.
Name the fear out loud
Create the psychological safety for people to say "I'm not ready" without being judged. What gets named can be led. What stays hidden runs the implementation from underneath.
Bring AI to the bedside and the first thing that surfaces isn't a workflow gap. It's fear. Nurses quietly wonder whether the tool is here to help them or replace them. Leaders wonder whether their team can carry one more change. Left unnamed, that fear is what quietly stalls adoption long after go live.
Kari has stood in that fear on her own units, with her own staff. She treats the human side of the change as the real work, not a soft extra, and she builds the change management plan around it.
Bring the frontline in early
Staff who help shape the change stop bracing against it and start owning it. Shared design, from the very start, is the most reliable antidote to resistance.
Lead the human change, not just the technical one
The communication, sequencing, and trust building that carry people from anxious to confident, so adoption holds long after the vendor goes home.
- WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE WHEN SHE LED IT
Proof that the technology works was never going to be enough. Getting a system ready to carry it, that's the work.
6%
Length of stay
50%
RN turnover
51%
Patient falls
83%
Overtime
Results from the virtual care and workflow programs Kari led as Chief Nursing Officer. Every system starts from a different place; these are the outcomes of the work, not a promise of them.
- FOR VENDORS AND DIGITAL HEALTH COMPANIES
Is your product ready for the frontline, not just the demo?
Clinical frontline readiness review
An honest read on whether nurses will actually adopt what you've built, and what stands between your product and the bedside.
Kari also works from the other side of that table. Having been the buyer, she can tell vendors and AI companies the truth a sales cycle won't: whether the product survives real clinical workflows, what hospitals and bedside nurses actually need, and where the product genuinely fits.
Her goal is straightforward. Help vendors build the best possible products for the clinical setting, because at the heart of it, we all want to be better and do better for our patients and our staff.
Translating the hospital's reality
What CNOs, finance, and the night shift really weigh when they decide, so your team builds and sells to the room as it actually is.
Where you align
Straight guidance on your fit, your gaps, and the clinical story that will land with the people who actually sign off: nurse leaders, not just IT.
- WHAT YOU LEAVE WITH
A workbook that scores your own organization, honestly.
Every leader gets a guided workbook and facilitator guide that follows all four parts in sequence. Your team rates itself on a clear 1 to 5 scale, domain by domain, so the number that drives action is the honest one.
It's both a planning tool and a document you can take straight to the board. Every line you fill in builds toward the story you'll bring to your executive team: your baseline, your leverage, and your roadmap, in your own words.
Domains scored: workforce · patients & community · organization · vendor fit · governance · adoption
The technology was never the hard part.
Most health systems could buy an AI or virtual nursing platform tomorrow. Far fewer are ready to make it hold: through the workflows, the finance questions, the realities of the night shift, and the trust of the nurses who have to live with it.
Kari spent 22 years inside a health system, the last of them as Chief Nursing Officer, standing up the very programs she now helps other leaders evaluate and lead. She has been the one accountable when it works, and when it doesn't. She comes to your system already fluent in the room you're sitting in.