The Real Cost of Legacy Systems

Written By Leila Rao

For many healthcare CIOs, the decision to modernize legacy systems isn’t about resistance - it’s about risk. 

Budgets are tight. Timelines are long. And stories of failed or painfully slow modernization efforts are hard to ignore. 

At the IRS and CMS, we were actively pursuing modernization but the traditional approaches were often slow, expensive, and burdened by uncertainty. And while projects moved forward, technical debt and knowledge loss kept compounding. 

Every month of delay adds more: 

  • Fragile code and undocumented workarounds 

  • Integration layers that no one fully understands 

  • Loss of institutional knowledge as experts retire 

  • Barriers to recruiting new technical talent 

In a new white paper, I share how AI is changing the equation—making it possible to extract the embedded logic in legacy systems at scale, reducing both the risk and the time required to modernize. 

Modernization is hard, but the longer we wait, the harder it gets.

Download Rajiv's Strategic Guide to AI Modernization: 

Leila Rao
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