From Rural to Metro: Rick Ray's Experience in the Field
There’s no substitute for real-world experience when it comes to understanding healthcare IT—not just the technology, but the culture, the workflows, and the urgency.
Rick Ray, CEO and founding partner at Ferrous Equine Technologies, brings exactly that kind of experience. Over the past 20 years, Rick has served as a virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO) and Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO) for a variety of healthcare organizations—ranging from small rural hospitals to complex, multi-site health systems. He’s also served on the boards of several healthcare organizations, giving him both a technical and executive-level understanding of how decisions are made and how technology impacts patient care.
Leading Through Complexity
Rick has overseen the full spectrum of IT initiatives—from designing highly available infrastructure in bandwidth-constrained rural regions to managing compliance programs in urban hospital systems with thousands of users.
One standout example: at a critical access hospital facing failing storage infrastructure and no internal IT staff, Rick designed a roadmap for full infrastructure replacement—including EMR server migration, network segmentation, and redundant firewall deployment. All of it was done in phases, carefully planned around patient volume and budget cycles.
In a very different setting—a large metro hospital system—Rick served as vCISO during a security overhaul, guiding the team through a HIPAA and NIST 800-53 remediation strategy, rolling out MFA across thousands of endpoints, and introducing role-based access and vendor segmentation.
Bridging Technology and Governance
Rick’s work on healthcare boards adds another dimension to his leadership. He understands how to communicate risk to non-technical stakeholders, how to frame investments in terms of clinical outcomes, and how to guide decision-makers through digital transformation without overwhelming them with jargon.
This insight helps our team at Ferrous tailor not just the technology—but the messaging and change management that support adoption.
Lessons From the Field
Over the years, Rick has developed a few core principles that guide how we approach every healthcare client:
Don’t lead with tools—lead with understanding. What are the clinical, financial, and operational goals?
Build resilience, not just performance. Systems must work on a good day and a bad day.
Speak in outcomes. “30% faster login time” means more time for patients—not just faster PCs.
Every security decision is a patient safety decision. If it slows clinicians, it will be bypassed.
Why It Matters
Rick’s leadership has helped shape Ferrous Equine Technologies into a partner that understands healthcare not just from the outside—but from within. Our strategies are grounded in field experience, not theory.
Whether we’re advising a hospital board, supporting a rural clinic with no full-time IT, or guiding an urban system through digital transformation, we bring that same field-tested mindset to every engagement.