Ramona (Criado) Hernandez, CRCR
Ramona Hernandez, CRCR, is a serial entrepreneur and Chief Revenue Officer with over 25 years of experience in healthcare revenue cycle management, healthcare operations, and technology-driven transformation. She currently serves as Chief Revenue Officer and Co-Founder of Boolient, a healthcare technology and services company leveraging AI and large language modeling to help hospitals and healthcare providers improve revenue cycle efficiency, reduce denials, and strengthen financial performance. Her career reflects a consistent focus on solving complex revenue challenges through innovation, collaboration, and scalable, data-informed solutions.
Throughout her entrepreneurial journey, Ramona has co-founded and helped scale multiple successful healthcare organizations alongside long-time business partner Manoj. These include California Service Bureau and 2 North AR, which grew over seven years before being sold, as well as Rubixis, which was later acquired by TransUnion Healthcare (now part of FinThrive). She has also been involved in ventures such as Cube, JetX—where she supported six acquisitions in two years—Amplus, and Notion Health following its merger during the COVID-19 period. Across these organizations, her work has centered on revenue cycle optimization, denial management, workforce enablement, and the application of emerging technologies to improve healthcare system performance.
In addition to her executive and entrepreneurial leadership, Ramona has maintained a long-standing commitment to professional service through the Healthcare Financial Management Association, where she has held leadership roles at the local, regional, and national levels. She is especially passionate about mentorship and advancing women in healthcare leadership, having founded HFMA’s Women in Leadership conference initiative, which has since expanded across chapters nationwide. A nursing-trained professional and dedicated leader, she is also a mother of four adopted children and a grandparent, and she is widely recognized for her ability to balance executive leadership, entrepreneurship, and family life while continuing to mentor and uplift others in the healthcare industry.
• Health/Health Care Administration/Management
• Nationally Certified Medical Assistant (NCMA)
• License Vocational Nurse (LVN)
• Evergreen Valley College - AAB
• 2023 Woman of the Year Legacy Award
• Medal of Honor
• Helen Yerger Award
• Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA)
• American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) - California Region
• AHAM
• KHAM
• Women in Leadership
• Women in Business Leadership
• National Executives Healthcare Leaders
• HIMSS Northern California
• California Association Healthcare Leaders
• Founder of HFMA Women in Leadership Conference
• Mentoring women entrepreneurs in healthcare
• Placer Jr Hillman Football & Cheer
• National Association of Latino Healthcare Executives
• California Association of Healthcare Leaders
What do you attribute your success to?
I would attribute my success to the people who gave me opportunity and saw something in me, even though I didn't have the Ivy League education that many of my peers and investors had. I had humble beginnings, but they believed in me and gave me a shot - they saw that I had the know-how and didn't let my lack of formal business credentials hold me back. My business partner and mentors told me things like 'You can do this on your own. You don't need to go make somebody else a ton of money, you can do it on your own.' It just took some courage to actually do it. So really, it's been the encouragement and belief from others - my mentors - that made all the difference. They took a chance on me and said 'she has something, she has a knack for this,' and that gave me the confidence to step into entrepreneurship and leadership roles I might not have pursued otherwise.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I ever received was when someone told me: when someone tells you no, you need to question the why. You need to know why to the no, until they give you an answer that you're satisfied with. But don't just take the no. This advice really stuck with me, especially when I was facing opposition about starting the Women in Leadership conference at HFMA. People told us no, but we questioned why and stuck to it, and eventually we were able to make it happen. Now that conference has grown and every chapter throughout the country does it today. That advice taught me not to accept rejection at face value, but to dig deeper and advocate for what I believe in until I get a satisfactory explanation or until I can change minds.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I've always said that when there's chaos, there's opportunity, and right now there's a lot of chaos and uncertainty in healthcare. We're dealing with accessibility to healthcare, insurance premiums going up, and a lot of uncompensated care - not just for patients and communities, but hospitals are struggling to keep their doors open, whether they're rural hospitals or big hospitals. There's a misconception that hospitals can charge a lot of money and get big profits, but that's not the case at all. The funding is getting less and less. We also have major workforce challenges - there's a huge shortage of skilled workers because people don't go to school to become billers or collectors or revenue cycle analysts anymore. They can go work at Burger King and make $21 or $22 an hour without the responsibility of a 9-to-5 job and learning policies, rules, and compliance. As a leader, you have to be creative in finding ways to make productivity easier, which is what I'm doing today with our technology, AI, and large language models - we're trying to solve that problem for hospitals and healthcare providers to help with efficiencies and fill that gap in skill and labor. The shortages aren't just in revenue cycle either - we have nursing shortages, physician shortages, and physicians are retiring more than in the past. The cost of living in places like San Francisco Bay is so expensive that you can't get physicians or nurses to move here. You have to have solutions and lean into technology to solve those problems and gaps.
Locations
Boolient
Auburn, CA 95602