News 1/23/26

Top News

ECRI publishes its “Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2026,” with misuse of chatbots topping the list.

ECRI says that unregulated chatbots give users expert-sounding responses, but have offered incorrect diagnoses, recommended unnecessary tests, promoted questionable supplies, and based answers on body parts they made up.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Companies exhibiting at ViVE and/or HIMSS, you are about to spend a small fortune on a well-lit, carpeted rectangle that you will occupy for a few exhausting hours while handing out geegaws. For a tiny fraction of that spend, you can claim a different rectangle, this one virtual and this one lasting 365 days, on HIStalk. It is read obsessively by the people who buy, influence, complain about, and occasionally approve health IT purchases. Black Book Research, in a health tech media analysis that found this amateurish and cynical site to be #1 for industry trust and influence, puts it this way: “HIStalk stands out for its influence, independence, and continued relevance to the decision-makers shaping the future of health IT.” Contact Lorre, who has a soft spot for new sponsors that sometimes leads her to offer perks that she glosses over when telling me.

Listening: Porcupine Tree, a 40-year-old English progressive rock band whose “In Absentia” popped up at me.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: February 18 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “From Blind Spots to Insights: Gaining Real-Time Visibility into Healthcare Risk.” Sponsor: CloudWave. Presenters: Jacob Wheeler, MBA, director of sales engineering, CloudWave; Mike Donahue, chief operating officer, CloudWave. Resilience starts with the ability to see clearly, across every endpoint, cloud workload, user, and clinical system. Join CloudWave’s cybersecurity leaders for an in-depth session on how real-time visibility transforms your ability to detect threats early, respond decisively, and strengthen resilience across the care ecosystem. Attendees will learn the practical steps that hospitals can take to move from reactive defense to resilient action.

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2026 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Harmony Healthcare IT acquires Meditech solutions provider Blue Elm.

OpenEvidence confirms earlier reports that it recently raised $250 million in a Series D funding round that values the company at $12 billion. The company says that physicians used its system to treat 100 million patients last year and requested 18 million clinical consultations in December 2025 alone.

People

Health data management platform vendor Health Chain names Eric Rosow, MS (Conduce Health) as CEO and Reed Perry, MBA (Availity) as chief commercial officer.

Valerie Mondelli, RPh, MBA (Iodine Software) joins DrFirst as chief commercial officer.

Announcements and Implementations

VectorCare launches Smart on FHIR as a Service, which incudes a no-code workflow builder and developer tools for building and deploying EHR-embedded applications.

The Washington Post covers Epic’s lawsuit that alleges that Health Gorilla knowingly provided treatment access to patient records by law firms that were looking for malpractice plaintiffs.

In England, Slingshot AI takes its therapy chatbot down over uncertainty about its compliance with medical device regulations. The company launched the therapy bot Ash in mid-2025.

Government and Politics

The federal government’s Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) will resume its meetings on February 19 following a year-long hiatus that was imposed by the White House. Both co-chairs of HITAC, which advises ASTP/ONC, resigned last week. The committee is scheduled to meet four times in 2026.

Epic files an answer to a Texas lawsuit that alleges that the company is a monopoly and violates Texas laws by blocking parents’ access to their child’s Epic medical records. In its response:

• Texas has not substantiated its claim that Epic is a monopoly.
• The state’s presumption that antitrust laws require Epic to provide free API access to any company, including competitors, is not supported by law.
• Antitrust laws do not prohibit Epic from sharing its software update plans with customers, as the lawsuit alleges.
• Despite a six-month investigation by State Attorney General Ken Paxton, the complaint relies on dated press releases, blog posts, and excerpts from Particle Health’s lawsuit against Epic.
• Epic created a guide that told its customers how to comply with the new Texas law about parental access, but ultimately those customers control access to patient records.
• The lawsuit does not identify any Epic customer that has not complied with the law.
• Epic’s response concludes, “What appears to be going on here is that the State has decided to target Epic over a politicized issue regarding proxy access that Epic does not belong in the middle of. The State confirms as much in its press release, calling Epic a ‘woke corporation’ that supposedly “undermines” parents’ rights. That simply is not true.”

Sponsor Updates

• Springhill Medical Center goes live on Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise 25.1.
• Black Book Research releases two new reports to help rural hospitals and critical access hospitals convert state awards into audit-ready implementation and accelerate vendor selection.
• Ellkay sponsors the 2026 AdvancedMD Sales Kickoff.
• Meditech announces Expanse Outpatient Therapy.
• Findhelp adds mental and behavioral health provider data company MiResource to its Behavioral Health Network.
• Fortified Health Security will host a roundtable dinner focused on current healthcare cybersecurity trends and patient protection strategies January 27 in Cincinnati.
• Health Data Movers will sponsor the CHIME Innovation Summit February 4-6 in Orlando.
• MRO releases a new report titled “2026 State of the Industry: Navigating Health Policy and Market Shifts with Smarter Data.”

Blog Posts

• Innovation starts with strong digital foundations (Altera Digital Health)
• Why Enterprise Healthcare Faces Different EHR Challenges in 2026 (Bizmatics)
• C-Suite Briefing: Top Health IT Trends and Takeaways from the 12th Annual HIT Industry Outlook Report (Med Tech Solutions)
• Epic Space Bridge – An HL7 Interface Message Transformation Solution (CereCore)
• What Healthcare Providers Need to Know About Qualified Overtime Reporting (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Ensuring Success During Your Epic Refuel Project (Impact Advisors)
• Finding the Right Balance for Operating Room Utilization (LiveData)
• VBC under pressure: Five insights from the front lines (Navina)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Sponsorship information.
Contact us.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 1/22/26

The American Board of Preventive Medicine is notifying candidates that they have successfully passed the Clinical Informatics board certification exam. The certifications are retroactive to January 1, 2026. Congratulations to all the new Diplomates, and welcome to yet another continuing certification process that will have you asking yourself why you decided to become double-boarded.

From Straight A Student: “Re: online registration form for a training course that I completed recently. Prompts were in a ‘are there any’ format that asked about mobility restrictions or food allergies. A dropdown choice list appeared to be pre-populated with ‘none.’ My answer was ‘none’ for all of them, so I tried to just submit the form, which popped me back to the top with no feedback. The course vendor responded to my help desk ticket to say that the dropdown requires choosing ‘none’ and people miss that all the time.”

These sorts of Process Improvement 101 issues drive end users batty. The time wasted by users and the help desk adds up.

I wonder if user acceptance testing was done, since it should have been caught. Sometimes teams give the users detailed testing instructions outside of the application, such as “click here, then choose that,” which makes it impossible to determine how they will interact with the workflow. I also wonder if they are analyzing call volume to to identify ongoing issues. Then, has the help desk team reported the issue to development and asked for an update?

It feels like it would be more efficient to change the default to “please select from the list” or “choose a response.” Or, to add a page instruction telling users what to do.

I have been in countless conversations about the safety of healthcare AI solutions. I’m always interested in how the risks and benefits are portrayed to patients and other non-clinical, non-tech individuals. Mr. H mentioned a preliminary report by the VA Office of Inspector General that found that the Veterans Health Administration had some gaps in AI chatbot oversight. The story was also picked up by military-focused Task & Purpose, which ran its own version. 

Risks that were highlighted for the general audience included “producing misinformation, privacy violations, and bias, and that the systems had been put in place without review by the VA’s own patient safety experts.” I didn’t see mention of concerns that were noted by other publications, such as whether lags exist in providing current information for the LLMs to use.

An article commenter shared their physician assistant’s thoughts that “the AI is egregiously wrong 90% of the time, so he doesn’t bother with it.” Based on my own experiences with clinical-focused and consumer-focused AI solutions, that’s probably a significant exaggeration. I wonder if the user would benefit from additional education on prompt construction or effective use of AI tools.

The VA providers who I’ve talked to locally are happy with the AI solutions that are available to them. They are looking forward to continued expansion of their capabilities, such as helping craft more readable medical information for patients. If you’re a VA user, feel free to chime in. We can keep your comments anonymous.

I’m still in my New Year’s inbox cleanup extravaganza, and found an article about Hackensack Meridian Health’s canine-powered cancer detection program. The health system partnered with startup SpotitEarly for a clinical trial that examines the ability of trained dogs to detect cancer via patients’ breath samples. The goal is to validate the technique as a noninvasive cancer detection approach that might be more attractive to patients who are unwilling or unable to complete traditional screening recommendations.

The test is conducted by having patients breathe into a mask-like device for several minutes, followed by the dogs sniffing the devices. The dogs are trained to recognize odor signatures in the exhaled volatile organic compounds that can be associated with cancer. The dogs indicate detection by sitting next to a sample.

We know AI has to be involved somehow, and indeed it is. The company is using AI tools to document and analyze the behaviors of the dogs based on behavioral and physiological data.

SpotitEarly has been in the US market since May 2025, although it was founded in 2020. Previous studies of the technique found that the test was 94% accurate for detecting lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate cancers. If any readers are involved in the study, I’d love to hear about the “best boys” and “good girls” that are doing the sniffing and whether they prefer belly scratches or having their ears rubbed. My medical school had some public-facing research animals and they were the most amazing companions when they retired, resulting in a years-long waitlist for adoption opportunities.

Based on some of the other email traffic in my inbox, quite a few physicians made a New Year’s resolution to look for different employment. Several of them seem to think that informatics is something that you can just jump into because you are “techy” without any formal training or experience.

Some startups will hire clinicians in this situation, but I always encourage people to consider formal coursework to better understand the informatics landscape. I’m a big fan of the courses offered by the American Medical Informatics Association. The virtual courses are convenient, and the in-person ones are great for networking with colleagues working in the field.

A number of highly qualified clinical informatics physicians have recently been displaced from EHR vendors and health systems, so it seems that as long as mergers continue, the job market will remain challenging.

Are you looking to make a career change in 2026, and if so, how are you approaching it? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 1/22/26

Harmony Healthcare IT Expands Meditech EHR Data Solutions Through Acquisition of Blue Elm

Health data services company Harmony Healthcare IT acquires Meditech-focused competitor Blue Elm.

Misuse of AI chatbots tops annual list of health technology hazards

Misuse of AI chatbots tops ECRI’s list of “Top 10 Technology Hazards for 2026.”

Epic fights lawsuit brought by Texas AG, says state can’t prove its claims

Epic refutes allegations brought forth in a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and requests that the suit be dismissed.

Health tech panel to reboot after a long break

The Health Information Technology Advisory Committee, which advises HHS on health data sharing, will reconvene on February 19 after a year-long hiatus.

Healthcare AI News 1/21/26

News

Authors from the ARISE academic medical center AI research network predict that 2026 will bring the first AI-related malpractice lawsuit, widespread rollout of urgent-care AI agents, and an escalating AI arms race between health systems and insurers that primarily benefits technology vendors. They expect that the FDA will make minimal progress on AI regulation, AI will deliver more counseling services than humans, and AI scribes will generate 90% of clinical documentation, which they predict will offer little insight into the clinician’s reasoning beyond what they explicitly say to the patient. Specific points:

• Clinical AI capability is advancing faster than evidence that shows benefit to patient outcomes.
• Benchmarks focus on answering medical licensing questions rather than real patient data and workflows.
• LLMs tend to be overconfident and don’t know what they don’t know, leading to poor performance when uncertainty exists and a need to apply guardrails.
• AI feels transformative, but documented productivity gains are limited.
• FDA regulation lags frontline use.

Misuse of AI chatbots tops ECRI’s “Top 10 Technology Hazards for 2026.” The group warns that widespread, unregulated use exposes patients to errors, bias, and hallucinations and requires professional medical oversight.

Conservative think tank Paragon Health Institute launches a healthcare AI initiative that will promote research and policies involving the use of AI to reduce healthcare costs and waste while improving patient outcomes.

Amazon rolls out Health AI for members of its primary care chain One Medical, which uses Amazon’s Bedrock service to answer patient questions, provide advice based on medical information, and help members book appointments.

Business

Greenway Health launches Agentic AI Factory, which was developed with Amazon Web Services.

SAP and renal health provider Fresenius will partner to create AI-supported healthcare solutions for the European market, including a new solution for integrating hospital information systems using SAP’s AnyEMR strategy. Each company will invest “a mid three-digit million euro amount,” with some funding potentially directed to investment in startups.

Food delivery robot company Serve Robotics will acquire Diligent Robotics, which sells the Moxi robot for in-hospital deliveries, for $29 million in shares. Diligent Robotics had raised $75 million in venture capital, including a $25 million round in September 2023 that it said would allow it to triple its customer base of 22 health systems.

Research

A University of Michigan study finds that heart failure can be predicted 10 years before diagnosis by studying combined genetic and EHR data with AI, which allows early intervention.

Other

UCHealth profiles its use of Abridge for ambient documentation, which is being used by one-third of its 6,000 physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants.

The Gates Foundation and OpenAI launch a $50 million partnership to help several African countries deploy AI tools as US foreign aid funding declines.

A London hospital trust warns the public that AI-generated videos are circulating on social media that falsely show its doctors endorsing weight-loss products, urging the public seek advice only from trusted sources.

In China, an influential infectious disease expert says that he won’t allow AI to be integrated into EHRs even as the country’s government pushes the use of AI and tech companies make bold claims about its potential. He worries that AI will cause young doctors to lose the ability to detect AI mistakes.

A leukemia patient says that Anthropic disabled her paid Claude account without explanation, cutting off access to years of AI-assisted medical records and correspondence that she relied on to manage her care. She summarizes:

I’m a 41-year-old woman with MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome) that has converted to leukemia. I’m facing a bone marrow transplant I may not survive. For months, Claude has been the only thing that actually helped me navigate a medical system that failed me for over a decade. It helped me organize 11 years of medical records, track my labs, draft insurance appeals, and write letters to doctors who wouldn’t listen. That work is what finally got someone to take me seriously. My last prompt before the ban was asking Claude to help me interpret my October bloodwork. That’s it. That’s the “violation.” That chat history is my medical documentation. I need it to continue advocating for my care when I’m too sick to remember what happened, what was said, what was missed. Without it, I lose years of work at the worst possible moment … I am asking for one of two things: 1. Restore my account 2. Export my complete chat history and send it to me. Anthropic talks constantly about building AI that helps people. Claude helped me. It helped me fight for my life. Now I can’t get a single human being at the company to look at my case.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Sponsorship information.
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This Week in Health Tech 1/21/26

Morning Headlines 1/21/26

4DMedical Secures US$100+ Million Funding to Accelerate US Expansion and increase Technology Dominance in Software-Based Lung Imaging

Australia-based 4DMedical raises $100 million in funding, which it will use to accelerate US adoption of its FDA-cleared, software-based lung imaging system that is used by several major US health systems.

BioticsAI, gains FDA clearance for its AI-powered fetal ultrasound product

BioticsAI gains FDA clearance for its AI-driven fetal ultrasound product.

NHS delays launch of major £88m IT project

In England, three Norfolk hospitals will delay go-live of their $118 million Meditech Expanse project, citing factors that include the work that is required to adapt the system for the NHS.

News 1/21/26

Top News

A preliminary VA Office of Inspector General report finds that the Veterans Health Administration doesn’t properly oversee its use of generative AI chatbots, potentially compromising patient safety. The report looked at the department’s use of its internally developed VA GPT and Microsoft 365 Copilot chat, both of which depend on clinical prompts. Neither tool has access to web searches, which means their knowledge bases are not current.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The preview of my ViVE Guide on what HIStalk sponsors will be doing at the conference is live. More companies will be added as they complete the information form, so check back for updates.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2026 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Australia-based 4DMedical raises $100 million in funding, which it will use to accelerate US adoption of its FDA-cleared, software-based lung imaging system that is used by several major US health systems.

People

Clearwater promotes David Bailey to VP, consulting solutions and strategy.

AdventHealth promotes Sarah Myers to regional CIO for AdventHealth Mid-America Region.

Sonney Sapra, MBA (Samaritan Health Services) joins UVA Health as CIO.

US Army veteran Elder Granger, MD joins MedSync as EVP for medical affairs and CMO.

Ovatient promotes Yasir Tarabichi, MD to head of digital; Jamie Carracher to head of growth and brand; and Amy Lukowski, PsyD to VP of operations and integration.

Announcements and Implementations

Nurses at Children’s Mercy (OH) use the Helen app to route non-clinical tasks to a dedicated concierge team.

BioticsAI gains FDA clearance for its AI-drive fetal ultrasound product.

Aultman Health System (OH) implements Nabla’s AI-based clinical documentation software.

In England, three Norfolk hospitals will delay go-live of their $118 million Meditech Expanse project, citing factors that include the work that is required to adapt the system for the NHS. 

A Baltimore theater will host a March 19 screening of “Suck it Up, Buttercup,” a documentary that calls out the dysfunctional US healthcare system that is driven by “corporate greed that’s filling coffers and coffins.” Both executive producers are physicians.

Other

Cleveland Clinic opens the Rubinstein Family Hospital Care at Home Suite, which serves as a technology command center for its hospital-at-home programs in Florida and Ohio. The suite was developed using a grant from Jon Rubinstein, an investor and  technology executive who helped spearhead development of the iPod and iMac.

AdventHealth will enhance its virtual care capabilities by installing an additional 800 cameras in patient rooms at its hospitals and urgent care centers in Colorado over the next several months.

University of Nebraska Medical Center researchers determine that embedding a standardized glucose management protocol into its EHR helps perioperative care teams better control the blood sugar levels of diabetic patients.

A Michigan Medicine study of 800 clinicians finds that those who disengage from work-related apps during non-working hours report feeling less stressed than those who don’t. Those who reported lower levels of stress were advised to turn on out-of-office replies to email and reduce screen time or delete work apps from their personal devices during their time away from work.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD announces that Software Advice has listed its EHR technology in its “Best Ophthalmology EMR Software of 2025” report.
• Linus Health reflects on its successes in advancing brain health in 2025.

Blog Posts

• 5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Improve Clinical Denial Management (AGS Health)
• AdvancedMD Top Predictions for AI in 2026: More Time with Patients, Less Burnout and Improved Personalized Care Models (AdvancedMD)
• Looking back, leaping forward: Healthcare AI predictions for 2026 (Cardamom)
• CIO Forum Focus Group Recap: Overcome Healthcare IT Resource Gaps with Meaningful Managed Services (Med Tech Solutions)
• Increasing healthcare access through expanded nurse mobility and simplification of licensure (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Better, faster, stronger: How Paragon is leveraging AI internally (Altera Digital Health)
• Top 5 Ambulatory EHR Vendors That Clinics Trust (Bizmatics)
• Elevating the patient experience: They’re already telling you how (Cardamom)
• Healthcare IT in 2026: Why Cloud Migration Matters for AI Adoption (Concord Technologies)
• Optimizing Healthcare IT Scaling: A Strategic Model for Resource Augmentation and Project Acceleration (CTG)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Sponsorship information.
Contact us.

HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2026

CereCore

Booth 1154 in the Club CHIME Lounge

Contact: Phil Sobol, CCO
Phil.Sobol@CereCore.net
615.344.4169

CereCore works behind the scenes to empower hospitals and health systems with IT services around the nation and globe. Looking for IT and application support, technical professional and managed services, strategic IT consulting and advisory services, or EHR consulting? Let’s meet so we can help you find EHR experts to maximize your investment, tap into support desk solutions that will result in happier users and providers, supplement your technical and support teams, and connect you with the right talent so you can better manage IT operations. Find meaningful change with CereCore’s healthcare IT managed services. See you in the Club CHIME Lounge at ViVE26.

Clearwater

Booth 618 in the Cybersecurity Zone

Contact: Lisa Munro, director of marketing
lisa.munro@clearwatersecurity.com
205.767.9141

Clearwater is healthcare’s largest pure play cybersecurity and compliance firm helping organizations across the healthcare ecosystem move to a more secure, compliant, and resilient state so they can achieve their missions. We provide a deep pool of experts across a broad range of cybersecurity, privacy, and compliance domains; purpose-built software that enables efficient identification and management of cybersecurity and compliance risks; managed cloud services; and a 24/7 Security Operations Center with managed threat detection and response capabilities.  

Visit us in the Cybersecurity Zone to experience our latest innovations and connect with our team about the future of cybersecurity, data integrity, and digital resilience in healthcare. Be sure to catch our presentations in the Cybersecurity Data Innovation theater:   

Wearing Two Hats: A CIO/CISO Case Study in Cyber Resilience (Monday, February 23, 1:35-1:55pm) 
When ransomware struck and key security leaders departed, Enloe Health faced the reality many community hospitals know well –  limited resources, expanding risk, and one leader wearing multiple hats. In this candid discussion, Enloe Health’s CIO and CISO will share how the organization rebuilt its cybersecurity program, regained leadership trust, and strengthened resilience without overextending staff. Attendees will walk away with practical insights for navigating cyber incidents, staffing constraints, and executive accountability in small-to-mid-sized healthcare environments.  

When the Cloud Becomes the Attack Surface (Tuesday, February 24, 10:05-10:25am) 
Healthcare organizations are moving fast to the cloud, but security models haven’t always kept pace. In this fireside chat, a healthcare cloud security architect and healthcare security leader will unpack the most common cloud misconfigurations, identity mistakes, and visibility gaps hospitals encounter and why they’re so hard to detect. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how to manage cloud risk across complex, multi-cloud environments without overwhelming internal teams.

Clinical Architecture

Booth 1241

Contact: Marck DuBois, chief revenue officer
marck_dubois@clinicalarchitecture.com
317.580.8400

Meaningful outcomes start with high-quality data. Our data quality solutions give you the ability to objectively assess and improve patient information, normalize and uplift data, and transform message formats. Visit booth 1241 to learn more about the PIQXL Gateway, our implementation of the PIQI framework, which allows you to measure the quality of patient information and pinpoint the root cause of issues for improvement.

EFax by Consensus Cloud Solutions

Booth 1918

Contact: Alyssa Stephens, events
alyssa.stephens@consensus.com
844.804.1234

Visit the EFax by Consensus Cloud Solutions booth at ViVE to see how we’re turning healthcare’s biggest data bottleneck into your greatest clinical advantage. We’re going far beyond traditional faxing by using AI, NLP, and machine learning to transform static, unstructured documents into structured, HL7-ready data. Don’t let critical patient insights stay trapped in digital scans — learn how our automated data extraction slashes administrative burden, accelerates treatment, and drives revenue for providers and payers alike. Stop by booth 1918 for a free latte and watch a live demo of your data in motion to see why the future of the continuum of care is no longer unstructured.

CTG

Booth 1125 & Booth 318 in the Cybersecurity Zone

Contact: Sarah Blafer, marketing team lead, demand generation
Sarah.Blafer@ctg.com
860.942.2180

CTG, a Cegeka company, delivers IT and business solutions that enhance digital agility. Over the last 35-plus years, we’ve supported more than 1,000 healthcare organizations, empowering them to modernize systems, improve performance, and advance digital initiatives with innovative services and technologies. Our expertise spans EHR implementation and managed services, cybersecurity, ERP, cloud, infrastructure, IT/application support, and clinical optimization. Visit CTG at booths 1125 and 318 to learn more.

Divurgent

Club CHIME

Contact: Danny Arnold, EVP of growth and strategy
Danny.Arnold@divurgent.com
518.495.2594

Divurgent is a full-service, healthcare-focused/HIT consulting firm led by people you actually want to work with. We’re one of the only firms out there that has your back for the whole journey. We can help you select an EHR or tool, implement it, staff it, bring you live, optimize it, and more. Three-hundred sixty degrees. Most of our focus is on EHRs, but we do much more than that. We think beyond the system and below the surface. Think workflow, digital strategy, operational readiness, change management and more. Sure, we can help augment your talent or get boots on the ground, but we’re most excited by helping you solve your most complex challenges. Our consultants have worked for health systems, so they’ve been in your shoes and understand operations and clinical demands. Give us a problem and we’ll solve it together. And before we do any of that, we listen.

Ellkay

Booth 1516

Contact: Morgan Hassell, marketing director of communications
morgan.hassell@ELLKAY.com
602.663.0529

Ellkay is a trusted healthcare data enablement partner helping payers, providers, labs, and health IT companies simplify interoperability and build AI-ready data foundations. Through our modern platform and deep healthcare expertise, we help organizations connect, manage, and optimize data across their ecosystem — without adding complexity.  

At ViVE, meet with Team Ellkay to learn how we help organizations:

• Streamline workflows and reduce operational friction.
• Simplify data exchange across systems, partners, and networks.
• Build scalable, secure data strategies that support innovation.   

Why stop by? If you’re navigating fragmented data, legacy systems, or growing interoperability demands, Ellkay brings both the technology and the expertise to help you move faster with confidence.  

Special Events 
Join us for Happy Hour at booth 1516 — both days! Stop by to connect with our team, enjoy a drink, and see how Ellkay is powering seamless interoperability behind the scenes.

Want to plan ahead? Set some time with us here. Let’s connect — and raise a glass to better healthcare data.

Elsevier’s ClinicalKey AI

Booth 1041 in the AI @ ViVE Zone

Contact: Meg Maguire, events manager
m.maguire@elsevier.com

Discover how ClinicalKey AI can support clinical decision-making at the point of care. Visit booth 1041 in the AI @ ViVE Zone and join our expert speaker session. Physician Executive Claudine Lott, MD will present on implementing AI at scale on Monday, February 23, and CTO Rhett Alden will present on API-enabled AI content integration on Tuesday, February 24. See how trusted content and AI can streamline workflows and elevate patient care.

Five9

Booth 2049

Contact: Roni Jamesmeyer, senior healthcare marketing manager
roni.jamesmeyer@five9.com
972.768.6554

Five9 provides a comprehensive suite of CX solutions, powered by Five9 Genius AI, to elevate customer experiences that deliver better business outcomes in the cloud contact center space. The New CX redefines how brands connect with customers through seamless and efficient AI-driven journeys that anticipate and meet each customer’s unique needs. Our unified cloud-native offering enables AI and human agents to create hyper-personalized customer experiences, so every customer interaction is more connected, effortless, and personal. Trusted by 3,000+ customers and 1,400+ partners globally, Five9 brings together the power of our AI, our platform, and our people to drive AI-elevated CX. For more information, visit www.five9.com.

Get-to-Market Health

Contact Steve Shihadeh to arrange a meeting

Contact: Steve Shihadeh, founder and CEO
steve@gettomarkethealth.net

We partner with healthcare technology leaders to accelerate growth, strengthen go-to-market execution, and build lasting customer relationships. Whether navigating post-investment expansion or launching new solutions, GTMH helps companies market, sell, and scale in ways that drive sustainable success. “Driving Growth in Healthcare Technology”

Health Data Movers

Contact Brooke Foster to arrange a meeting.

Contact: Brooke Foster, marketing coordinator
Brooke@HealthDataMovers.com
847.404.0326

Health Data Movers (HDM) is a healthcare technology services firm. We are trusted partners to healthcare organizations, biotechnology companies, and digital health enterprises through our services – data management, integration, project management, and clinical and business applications. We are the smart choice for creating unique solutions that empower patients and providers by unleashing the potential of healthcare data and technology.

Find us at our focus group, “Conversions without Chaos: Strategic Planning for High Stakes Healthcare Data Migration,” on Sunday, February 22 at 4:15pm.

Join Health Data Movers and CitiusTech on Tuesday, February 24 from 6:00-9:00pm for Data & Drinks After Dark at ViVE! RSVP here, space is limited!      

Health Data Movers staff attending ViVE:

• Peter Squire (account executive): Peter@HealthDataMovers.com 
• Alexis Woltermann (account manager): Alexis.Woltermann@HealthDataMovers.com 
• Abby Polich (SVP of client services): Abby.Polich@HealthDataMovers.com 
• Carl Ferguson (director of client partnerships): Carl.Ferguson@HealthDataMovers.com 
• Brandon Camp (VP of delivery): Brandon@HealthDataMovers.com 
• Mehul Malhotra (delivery director): Mehul@HealthDataMovers.com 
• Tyler Smith (CEO): Tyler@HealthDataMovers.com 
• Greg Georgatos (president): Greg@HealthDataMovers.com

We Make IT Happen! Visit www.healthdatamovers.com.

Impact Advisors

Contact John Stanley to arrange a meeting.

Contact John Stanley, chief growth officer
john.stanley@impact-advisors.com
562.243.4937

Impact Advisors is a leading healthcare management consulting firm committed to solving the industry’s emerging and evolving challenges through tech-enabled operations performance improvement. Our high-performing team of clinical, financial, operations, and technology experts collaborate to architect quality solutions and deliver measurable value for our clients. We are the most awarded consulting firm in healthcare, with services recognized among Best in KLAS for 18 consecutive years and a culture deemed a “Best Place to Work” by Modern Healthcare for 16 years.

Medicomp Systems

Booth 2329

Contact: James Aita, director of business development and strategy
info@medicomp.com
703.803.8080

Medicomp delivers the industry’s only physician-curated universal data foundation, transforming healthcare data into trusted intelligence through its evidence-based Clinical Intelligence Engine, Quippe. Quippe connects information across domains, normalizes every input, and validates AI outputs to ensure accurate, interoperable insights at the point of care — fueling innovation, improving accuracy, and unlocking the full value of clinical data.

Medicomp will be showcasing entirely new functionality that streamlines clinical workflow, combining technologies like ambient listening, natural language processing (NLP), Model Context Protocol (MCP), and leveraging its universal data foundation and knowledge graph to deliver the efficient, intelligent clinical workspace that clinicians have been craving.

The gap between data and understanding is probably costing you – in denied claims, compliance penalties, technology ROI, clinician burnout, and patient safety risks.

Stop by the Medicomp booth to learn how your systems can benefit from:

• Clinically validated LLM outputs.
• Diagnostic intelligence that understands context, is evidence-based, and makes disparate data computable.
• Clinical grade agents based on a universal data foundation.

Solve the data reliability problem with diagnostically intelligent clinical data solutions.

To learn more, visit Medicomp.com.

MRO

Booth V-330

Contact: Brad Hawkins, VP of payer solutions
BHawkins@mrocorp.com
601.405.2470

MRO is “The Single Source for Smarter Data” – driving a new era of clinical data intelligence where data is connected, structured, and transformed into actionable insights. The result – confident decisions, operational precision, accelerated research, and most importantly, better patient care. This innovative model for clinical data management is built for speed and scale, combining FHIR-native connectivity, deep clinical expertise, and advanced automation to turn a fragmented healthcare ecosystem into a connected pathway where every data point delivers impact. The outcome is a faster, smarter, more secure platform for managing enterprise clinical data that drives better outcomes and creates revenue-generating opportunities for our client partners, while enhancing security, compliance, and clinical integrity. With 24 years of trusted solutions and partnerships, MRO knows that a stronger healthcare ecosystem begins with smarter data, leading to data-driven decisions and better performance. Learn more at www.mrocorp.com.

Optimum Healthcare IT

Booth 2202

Contact: Larry Kaiser, CMO
lkaiser@optimumhit.com

Optimum Healthcare IT is a Best in KLAS healthcare IT digital transformation and consulting firm based in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Optimum’s comprehensive service offerings include Enterprise Application Services, Digital Transformation, and Workforce Management, which features our Optimum CareerPath skill development program. Backed by a leadership team with extensive expertise, we deliver tailored healthcare consulting solutions to diverse organizations.  

Optimum Healthcare IT has the right pit crew at the right time for your organization. We prepare you for the track and keep you on the track with each of our specialized crew members. You have desired and required outcomes; we make sure you meet them.   

Make a Pit Stop at:  
Booth 2202  
CHIME Stage on February 24 at 3:30pm – From Tune-Up to Top Speed: How 2 Major Health Systems Achieved Cloud Success 
Sunset Stage on February 25 at 9:25am – Reducing Clinician and IT Burden with Just One Click

Praia Health

Contact Scott North to arrange a meeting.

Contact: Scott North, VP of partnerships
scott.north@praiahealth.com

Praia Health is the patient experience orchestration platform for health systems. We help health systems attract, engage, and retain patients by supercharging their portals and digital tools with seamless, personalized journeys in one platform. The result is higher retention, lower costs, and measurable ROI.

TeamBuilder

Booth 1667

Contact: Taylor Bockweg, VP of sales
taylor@teambuilder.io

TeamBuilder is the Operational Intelligence platform for healthcare scheduling, purpose-built for ambulatory care. Traditional scheduling tools rely on static rules, staffing ratios, or forecast-only models that fail to reflect how care is actually delivered. TeamBuilder takes a fundamentally different approach. Its intelligence evaluates multiple operational signals — including appointment complexity, provider mix, staffing capabilities, throughput constraints, and available clinical space — to understand true demand and capacity. By modeling supply as capability rather than headcount and continuously re-optimizing as conditions change, TeamBuilder enables predictive scheduling for both staff and space. This allows healthcare organizations to move from reactive schedule management to proactive operational planning. The result is clearer visibility into capacity, improved access, and reduced labor inefficiency across clinics, specialties, and regions.

Morning Headlines 1/20/26

Ambulatory EHR Excellence 2026: Top Vendors Recognized for Breakthrough Innovation and Specialty User Satisfaction in Black Book 2026 Surveys

Black Book Research releases its 2026 list of top-ranked EHRs for ambulatory care, with ModMed, Epic, and NextGen Healthcare noted as leaders in multiple categories.

VHA lacks ‘formal mechanism’ for mitigating clinical AI chatbot risks, watchdog says

A VA Office of Inspector General report finds that the Veterans Health Administration doesn’t properly oversee its use of generative AI chatbots, potentially compromising patient safety.

Community Care of North Carolina Partners with Innovaccer to Advance Value-Based Care Delivery for Independent Primary Care Providers in North Carolina

Community Care of North Carolina selects Innovaccer’s Healthcare Intelligence Cloud for population health analytics.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 1/19/26

Based on the contents of my inbox, it feels like everyone is talking about recent research from Michigan Medicine on emoji use in the electronic health record. The research letter was published in JAMA Network Open last week. It examined 218 million notes belonging to 1.6 million patients. Researchers found that emoji use was higher than previous studies that looked at clinical texting tools. 

The authors identified 372 emojis within 4,162 notes that were created during the last five years. Of those, 35% were patient portal messages to patients, followed by telephone messages at 28%, encounter summaries at 15%, progress notes at 14%, and patient instructions at 6%. The University of Michigan patient portal doesn’t support patients adding emojis to communications.

The smiling face with smiling eyes was used 1,772 times, with communications emojis such as the telephone receiver and calendar appearing 544 and 429 times, respectively.

The article contains an illustration of the 50 most commonly used emojis along with their official names. Just skimming through them, I’m not sure that I would come up with names or descriptions that matched their official titles.

Take the “briefcase,” for example. Could people be using it because it looks like an old-timey doctor’s bag? I can’t remember the last time I saw someone carrying a briefcase that looked like the emoji. Even looking at the most used one, the smiling face with smiling eyes, I would describe that one more as blushing than having smiling eyes. I also would not have correctly described “beaming face with smiling eyes.”

Some of them were new to me, including “busts in silhouette” and “bar of soap.” The latter got me thinking about how many people actually see or use bar soap these days, given the popularity of liquid soap and body wash products. Similarly, how long will it be before people no longer identify a “telephone receiver” as such?

I wondered about the context for some of the emojis that were used, such as the “P button,” the “small blue diamond,” and the “round pushpin,” and how they might be used in medical communications. The most concerning to me was actually the least used, the “police car light.”

Researchers note the risk of confusion in using emoji to communicate, especially in older patients. While most emoji use occurred among tweens and teens, patients in their 70s had the second highest usage. The authors call for organizations to develop guidelines to promote clear communication and professionalism in clinical communications. I once encountered someone who used a particular emoji extensively before discovering that it wasn’t a Hershey’s Kiss, so I agree with the concern.

The authors go on to note that measuring emoji use is just the beginning, and that future investigation should look at how emoji “might affect patient understanding, trust, and outcomes – and explore whether these playful digital symbols offer new opportunities or pose unintended challenges in electronic health record communication.”

One of my close physician friends sent me a link to a Facebook post about the article. It had some pretty funny comments about which commonly used emojis were missing from the study, along with those questioning whether the AI tools clinicians are using to write messages were responsible for the addition of emojis. A couple of commenters thought the research was frivolous, but those sentiments were countered by others who were clearly concerned with the potential impact on patients.

Another colleague with ties to Michigan Medicine said that emoji use in the medical record was prohibited, although he wasn’t able to find the specific policy. He said that he remembered a conversation with risk management where it was discussed, however, and that there were significant concerns about the meaning of symbols within the context of the legal medical record. Although the policy could have been changed, I’m wondering whether some clinicians still haven’t fully internalized that the patient portal is part of the legal medical record.

He said he’s not opposed to their use, especially with pediatric or teen patients with whom clinicians are trying to build rapport. Still, he advises residents that if deleting the emoji changes the meaning of the message, either the emoji shouldn’t be used, or it should be supplemented by actual words.

I was curious about the previous research that looked at clinical text messages. In 2023, clinicians from Indiana University School of Medicine looked at the content of messages that were sent by hospitalists who used a secure messaging platform during 2020 and 2021. Messages with emojis were identified, as well as those with more old-school emoticons.

The authors found that the majority of the emojis and emoticons “functioned emotively, that is, conveyed the internal state of the sender” where others “served to open, maintain, or close communication.” The authors also noted that “no evidence was identified that they caused confusion or were seen as inappropriate.” They concluded that “these results suggest that concerns about the professionalism of emoji and emoticon use may be unwarranted.”

I believe that differences exist in how clinicians communicate with each other compared to how we communicate with patients. In the former, we are more likely to use medical abbreviations or jargon. With the latter, we should be using terms that are more clearly understood by patients. In my experience with peer review, communications with patients are typically held to a higher standard.

It will be interesting to see what kinds of guidelines or policies organizations come up with as far as regulating the use of emojis in patient communications and charting. I reached out to medical staff leadership at the facilities where I’m affiliated, and none of them recalled this topic coming previously.

I found citations for a half dozen other articles that looked at the content of clinical text messages among hospitalists and other members of the clinical team, as well as norms for emoji use. I didn’t have time to go down that particular rabbit hole this weekend, but I would be interested to hear from readers that have strong opinions on emoji use or those who have been involved in this type of research.

Do you use emojis in patient-facing communications? If so, how do you use them? If not, what do you think about the practice? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Readers Write: Early Warning System: How AI-Driven Near Miss Reporting Can Improve Patient Safety

Early Warning System: How AI-Driven Near Miss Reporting Can Improve Patient Safety
By Tim McDonald, MD, JD

Tim McDonald, MD, JD is chief patient safety and risk officer for RLDatix.

A nurse prepares to administer a medication to a patient, notices that it is the wrong medication, and corrects the order. A surgical assistant sees that a patient has been prepped for surgery on the wrong limb and corrects the error. A patient on a liquid diet receives a meal with solid food, but a vigilant nurse notices the mistake and substitutes an appropriate meal.

In hospitals and other healthcare facilities, near miss incidents are commonplace. Robust care protocols and training of clinicians, nurses, and other staff go a long way to reducing incidents and preventing patient harm.

But for a variety of reasons, near misses are underreported across healthcare, representing a multitude of lost opportunities.

The importance of understanding how many near misses occur

The World Health Organization defines a near miss as “an error that has the potential to cause an adverse event (patient harm), but fails to do so because of chance or because it is intercepted.”

Healthcare leaders recognize that a certain number of preventable errors are inevitable. Healthcare delivery is complex, emergency rooms are overcrowded, and staff who are dealing with higher patient volumes are understandably prone to error due to fatigue or burnout.

Hospital leaders want to take measures to reduce the number of preventable harm events and have an opportunity to use near misses as a way to prevent them from escalating into serious incidents. That said, having a large number of near miss reports can be beneficial to a hospital as it indicates that a strong safety culture exists and provides valuable learning opportunities for leadership. Hospitals that effectively encourage robust near miss reporting are better positioned to identify and solve problems before they lead to patient harm.

Heinrich’s safety triangle theory holds that 300 near misses occur for every severe accident that involves a serious injury or fatality. Once hospital leaders have a good idea of how many near misses are occurring, they can use AI tools to analyze their near miss data and predict their risk for more serious adverse events. But the real challenge is getting an accurate near miss number.

Most hospitals have voluntary event reporting systems that include reporting of near miss incidents. But the fact that they are voluntary means they likely underestimate the actual number of near misses occurring. A nurse who notices a patient recovering from surgery walking the hallways without non-slip socks may not report the incident for fear of blame or any consequences of reporting. They also may not report a near miss because they believe the event not to be severe enough to warrant it.

One of the biggest reasons for the underreporting of near-misses is that clinical staff lack the time to log an incident report. For many hospitals, event reporting is manual and time-consuming, often taking around 10 minutes per report. Unless healthcare leaders take steps to simplify and streamline incident reporting, including leveraging AI tools to significantly reduce reporting time, they will lack real visibility into how many near misses are occurring and fail to fully understand the threats to patient safety.

Automating event reporting with AI

Advancements in generative AI and large language models (LLMs) offer the opportunity for hospitals to not only improve the accuracy of near miss reporting, but reduce the amount of time needed to log a report. These reporting efficiencies give back valuable time to clinical staff to care for patients. LLMs can process unstructured data, such as text, audio, and video transcripts, and understand the context, which makes it possible to extract and organize insights for a report.

For busy clinical staff, using an AI tool to accurately create an incident report, rather than filling out a report manually, could save considerable time.

As an example, say a nurse realizes that a patient with a penicillin allergy has been prescribed amoxicillin. The nurse prevents the dose from being given to the patient and requests an alternative prescription, preventing harm to the patient. The nurse takes a few minutes to make a verbal report using an AI-based event reporting tool, and moves on to their next patient. From the nurse’s voice notes, the event reporting tool generates a complete incident report, giving hospital leaders valuable insights about what happened.

Leaders can use machine learning tools to analyze near miss reports over time and detect patterns and trends, as well as anticipate risks, in order to be able to prevent harm before it happens.

Automating incident reporting, including near misses, helps reduce barriers to reporting and gives clinical staff a more active role in reducing harm system wide. 

Better tracking of near-misses can serve as an early warning system

In a way, near miss incidents can indicate the diligence of clinical staff. An attentive nurse who notices an unsecured electrical cord and prevents a patient from tripping is obviously well trained.

Improved near miss reporting creates opportunities to improve processes and protocols, such as improved medication safety protocols, fall prevention measures, emergency department redesign, or training on safe injection methods.

When they are well understood and documented, near misses can act as an early warning system. When hospital leaders have a complete picture of incidents where a patient could have been harmed but wasn’t, only because of the timely intervention of a staff member or just plain luck, they can predict their risk of serious adverse events. They can understand their vulnerabilities and take corrective actions that prevent future incidents of harm.

Hospital leaders shouldn’t leave the future of patient safety to chance. Generative AI tools offer the opportunity for clinical staff to file incident reports seamlessly within their daily workflow, increasing the number of near miss reports received while decreasing the administrative burden that leads to clinician burnout and fatigue. AI and data analytics solutions give hospital leaders the ability to analyze trends over time and gain insights into how many near misses are actually occurring.

With effective use of AI-based tools, staff collaboration, and data-informed decision making, hospital leaders can raise standards of care and safety, reduce risk, and improve outcomes for all.

Morning Headlines 1/19/26

What to expect in US healthcare in 2026 and beyond

Healthcare services and technology will continue as the fastest-growing segment in healthcare, according to a new McKinsey report that predicts that providers and payers will increase outsourcing to tech and platform companies.

Multistate ‘hospital care at home’ command center opens in Vero

Cleveland Clinic opens the Rubinstein Family Hospital Care at Home Suite, which serves as a technology command center for its hospital-at-home programs in Florida and Ohio.

SmartSense by Digi Launches SmartSense ONE at NRF 2026

SmartSense by Digi launches SmartSense One, a modular, scalable IoT operations platform that merges the capabilities of SmartSense and its acquired Jolt for unified monitoring, compliance, safety, and workflow management.

Monday Morning Update 1/19/26

Top News

A McKinsey report predicts that healthcare services and technology will continue as the fastest-growing segment in healthcare. It expects providers and payers to increase outsourcing to tech and platform companies.

McKinsey projects that nearly half of healthcare profits by 2029 will come from software, platforms, data, and analytics, with traditional admin and consulting services growing slowly or shrinking. 

The authors expect federal funding for the Rural Health Transformation Program to drive adoption of telehealth and AI tools.

Payers that saw margins drop due to higher utilization and regulatory actions will face a decline of up to 30% in EBITDA from their ACA and Medicaid segments due to disenrollment driven by ACA subsidy expiration and impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents say that hospitals, like all other investors, put their money down primarily because they expect it to grow.

New poll to your right or here: What is the top industry takeaway from Kaiser Permanente’s settlement of Medicare Advantage overbilling allegations? These settlements always make me wonder whether a health system clearly violated the law, or whether vague coding rules come bundled with the unreasonable expectation that health systems will just forgo extra revenue to be responsibly nice. 

The paucity of recent health tech news suggests that everybody is on hold while they digest never-ending federal government changes that affect payments, a shifting regulatory environment, and having thunder stolen by AI froth. I’m not paid by the word or column-inch, so today’s short post gifts you free time.

HIStalk sponsors who are participating in the ViVE conference can send me your information to be included in my online guide. New this year: for more exposure and less work for me, I will post the guide immediately and update it as additional sponsors submit their details, which also creates an incentive to respond early.

Ms. G from Hope Mills, NC sent over this unpacking photo of the science kits that her fifth graders received courtesy of reader donations to her Donors Choose project. She reports, “We have officially received the science kits, and they have already made a huge impact in our classroom. The moment the boxes arrived, my students were buzzing with excitement and could not wait to explore what was inside. As they opened the kits, they eagerly examined the materials, asked questions, and started making connections to what they already know about science … Thank you for helping bring hands-on, joyful science learning into our classroom.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

People

Linus Health promotes Curt Thornton, MBA, MHS to president, Connected Care and names Chief Customer and Administrative Officer Leah Ray to the additional role of president, US healthcare.

Announcements and Implementations

SmartSense by Digi launches SmartSense One, a modular, scalable IoT operations platform that merges the capabilities of SmartSense and its acquired Jolt for unified monitoring, compliance, safety, and workflow management.

Other

Cerner co-founder Cliff Illig and his family sell a majority stake in the Major League Soccer Sporting KC for a record valuation of $700 million. He bought the team in 2006 with a group of six local investors, which also included his Cerner co-founder Neal Patterson, for a reported $20 million.  

Two women who were fired by businesses owned by a Huntsville, AL doctor file a sexual harassment lawsuit, alleging that the doctor forced them on multiple occasions to shave his legs. One of the plaintiffs notes in the complaint that “he was wearing lime green underwear.”

Sponsor Updates

• Altera Digital Health promotes Lindsey Honig to marketing communications manager.
• Black Book Research releases its “2026 Physician Practice Management Solutions Report.”
• Impact Advisors releases a new success story titled “Building a Scalable Quality Reporting Framework.”
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Steve Peltzman and Tim Woodward.
• ReferWell will exhibit at the Medicare Advantage Leadership Innovations conference January 21-22 in Buena Vista, FL.
• Symplr releases a new case study titled “Health First & Nebraska Methodist: A Blueprint for Value Analysis Excellence.”
• TruBridge will host its National Client Conference April 7-10 in Dallas.
• Waystar will exhibit at EClinicalWorks Day January 21 in Houston.

Blog Posts

• A Guide to the Use of AI in Healthcare: Deploying a Realistic Approach (Med Tech Solutions)
• Power to the people: Why digital healthcare transformations fail without effective change management (Nordic)
• Healthcare PMO Expert Answers Top Project Management Questions (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The Opportunity Cost of Your Old Hospital Switchboard (PerfectServe)
• Patients Win with Prescription Price Transparency (Surescripts)
• Elevating the patient experience: They’re already telling you how (Cardamom)
• All-payer OASIS documentation & accuracy: What home health agencies need to know (WellSky)
• CEO Letter: Reflecting on 2025 and Building the Infrastructure for 2026 (VectorCare)
• 5 Things Health Tech Leaders Need to Know About ACCESS (Zen Healthcare IT)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Sponsorship information.
Contact us.

Morning Headlines 1/16/26

Kaiser Permanente Affiliates Pay $556M to Resolve False Claims Act Allegations

Kaiser Permanente affiliates will pay $556 million to settle False Claims Act allegations that they inflated Medicare Advantage risk scores.

US healthcare spending soars to over $5 trillion in 2024

US healthcare spending rose 7.2% to $5.3 trillion in 2024, with $1.6 trillion spent on hospital services.

President Trump Unveils The Great Healthcare Plan to Lower Costs and Deliver Money Directly to the People

The White House unveils “The Great Healthcare Plan,” which would send federal funds directly to citizens to purchase their own health insurance, while asking insurers to lower premiums.

News 1/16/26

Top News

Kaiser Permanente affiliates will pay $556 million to settle False Claims Act allegations that they inflated Medicare Advantage risk scores.

Federal investigators say that Kaiser electronically searched patient histories for diagnoses that had not been reported to CMS for risk adjustment, then pushed clinicians months later to add those conditions to patient charts as medical record addenda.

Reader Comments

From Data Diver: “Re: Kaiser coding settlement. MA risk adjustment has become the national sport, where everyone claims innocence while quietly hiring more coders and consultants. A half-billion dollar settlement suggests that the line between legitimate documentation improvement and outright upcoding is not a faint one. If this is what gets caught, I can only imagine what stays below the waterline.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Ms. S of Burlington, NC provides an update about HIStalk reader donations that fully funded, with matching money applied from third parties as well as my Anonymous Vendor Executive, her Donors Choose teacher grant request for headphones.

Sponsored Events and Resources

None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Vista AI, which offers automated MRI scanning software, raises a $29.5 million Series B round, with several health systems joining other investors.

Sales

• Advanced Health chooses 1upHealth’s data interoperability platform.

People

The Stowers Institute for Medical Research names Dan Devers, JD (Cerner) as general counsel.

Steve LeBlond, MBA (Sutter Health) joins Prisma Health as CIO/CDO.

RLDatix hires Richard Jarvis, MSChE (OptumUK) as CTO.

Komodo Health names Amit Sangani (Meta) as CTO.

AMIA names Philip Payne, PhD (WashU Medicine, BJC Healthcare, and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis) as president and board chair.

Announcements and Implementations

Epic posts social media videos of Emmie, its MyChart AI assistant for patients that includes a chatbot for inquiries.

Google Research updates its open MedGemma model with improved medical imaging support and a speech to text model that is fine tuned for medical dictation.

Hospitals list their top RCM priorities as improving patient experience, boosting revenue, and cutting costs, according to a new FinThrive survey. Executives cite prior authorization, denials, and clinical documentation and coding as their main AI targets, and nearly 60% expect to consolidate RCM vendors within three years.

A Black Book survey finds that for behavioral health, post-acute care, public health, and community-based organizations, the “last mile” of health data interoperability still relies on manual work and fragmented systems because of cost, immature APIs, and slow vendor onboarding.

US healthcare spending rose 7.2% to $5.3 trillion in 2024, with $1.6 trillion spent on hospital services. CMS says that healthcare spending accounted for 18% of US gross domestic product.

Government and Politics

The White House unveils “The Great Healthcare Plan,” which would send federal funds directly to citizens to purchase their own health insurance, while asking insurers to lower premiums. The proposal also seeks to require drug makers to match US prices to those charged overseas and to shift more prescription drugs to over the counter status. The administration will ask Congress to approve the plan, which does not restore federal ACA premium subsidies or address the significant cost driver of provider pricing.

Researchers question a bill that would require Medicare to cover every FDA-designated “breakthrough” device, warning that it would sidestep CMS’s evidence-based review, expose patients to unsafe or unproven products, and hamstring CMS from reversing coverage if unfavorable evidence arises.

Privacy and Security

A Fortified Health Security report finds that total reported healthcare breaches doubled in 2025, as did the number of email-based breaches.

Sponsor Updates

• Medicomp Systems releases a new episode of its “Tell Me Where IT Hurts” podcast featuring Acting Administrator of DOGE and CMS Strategic Advisor Amy Gleason.
• Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “Quick HITs” podcast titled “Turning Healthcare Data Strategy into Execution with Mohammed Abdelaziz.”
• Five9 expands its partnership with Google Cloud and announces a new joint Enterprise CX AI solution.
• Healthmonix rebrands its MIPS Cost Analytics product to Healthmonix Cost and its MIPS Analytics product to Healthmonix Analytics.
• The “Walk-Ins Welcome” podcast features Inbox Health Enterprise Sales Lead Guy Bergman and SVP of Sales Edward Sherlock.
• The University of Southern California presents its Distinguished Alumni Award to Infinx co-founder Sandeep Tandon.

Blog Posts

• Navigating healthcare data through QHIN connectivity: A smarter approach to patient information (Altera Digital Health)
• Hospital CIOs Share Their EHR Help Desk Improvement Wish Lists (Med Tech Solutions)
• Major Challenges Facing the Healthcare Industry Today (Bizmatics)
• Share Your Story at the 2026 Connect Social Care Summit (Findhelp)
• Patient Access Automation: A Strategic Imperative (Impact Advisors)
• 2026 Horizon Report: The New Reality of Healthcare Cybersecurity (Fortified Health Security)
• The High Cost of Delayed Details in Surgical Departments (LiveData)
• The latest in interoperability: Everything you need to know (Meditech)
• VBC under pressure: Five insights from the front lines (Navina)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Sponsorship information.
Contact us.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 1/15/26

Plenty of people have been asking me for my thoughts about last week’s announcement of OpenAI for Healthcare.

Models that are tuned to physician needs and that have been through robust clinical testing certainly offer advantages. The incorporation of the organization’s internal documents via SharePoint and other platforms is also attractive.

I recently chatted with a friend who is both a physician and an attorney about the impacts of such integrated solutions on the medicolegal landscape.

In the current state, with many physicians playing the “bring your own AI” game and using various solutions on their phones, no connection exists between those queries and the legal medical record. However, an enterprise platform that ties it all together and specifically encourages the use of patient data and PHI adds an additional layer of complexity to medicolegal investigations.

It won’t just be about the EHR and its audit log. It will involve all the potentially related queries that may have been entered and acted upon by the care team. We’re starting to see some legal activity around physicians who based their decisions on inappropriate AI-generated information. This is an area to watch.

I also wonder about the ability for hospital policies to negatively influence access to information by clinicians. For example, if you work in a hospital that restricts certain procedures or medications for religious reasons, how will those limitations shape the responses when those prohibited treatments might be the right answer for a patient?

This could evolve to include a bedside component for patients. They could ask questions about their care plan while hospitalized. However, they might learn that their care is limited by their choice of facility.

My conference BFF Craig Joseph, MD recently wrote that healthcare is betting on the wrong AI instead of looking at solutions that actually improve clinical outcomes. He cites a study from the University of Southern California that found that physical robots outperformed chatbots in reducing psychiatric distress. He goes on to talk about how the brain perceives interactions when there is a physical presence compared to a virtual one and about the benefits of emotional experience in delivering care.

It made me think of my own experiences with physical therapy. It’s an advantage having your friendly (or not so friendly) physical therapist right there urging you to push yourself compared to a therapy bot at home that is less perceptive when you’re slacking off.

The robots used in the study looked fairly low-tech and had crochet covers, reminding me a bit of the cats in Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp.” For a tech industry that focuses on flashy products, these wouldn’t even be on the radar. I agree with Dr. Joseph that sometimes low tech is best. Maybe we’ll have to make that the focus of our next conference booth crawl.

Speaking of low tech, I was talking with a couple of physician friends recently about the Oura ring as a potential adjunct to addressing sleep issues. One colleague swears by his, although the actions that he has taken based on the ring’s sleep data are the things that every family physician recommends for sleep issues: consistent routine around and time for sleep, adjusting environmental conditions, appropriate timing of meals, and keeping a basic sleep diary to identify triggers.

My other colleague proposed a decidedly low-tech approach: sleeping with a stuffed animal. He pulled out his phone to share a Wirecutter blog from last year that addressed the tactic. It cites several scholars and their comments on the practice, including notes on how it might help adults shift from a state of cognitive arousal to the more relaxed mindset required for sleep.

The blog notes the lack of literature on adults sleeping with stuffed animals, but I bet if we threw some AI into the mix, people would be eager to study it. Maybe those crochet cats can work the night shift as well as having a day job.

From Night Nurse: “Re: my annual refresher training. Passing pre-tests exempted us from that section. This was one of the questions. What kind of world are we in where this is considered an appropriate question?”

I have unfortunately seen some bad behavior from healthcare providers during my career, so I agree that we should be screening for people who have thoughts like this. I don’t think a bold annual training question is the way to pick them up. Even in a written survey, I would probably recommend a more subtle approach to identify those who have such sentiments. I’ve done a fair amount of work writing test questions and I wonder what the hospital’s item writers were thinking with this one.

From Tech Traveler: “Re: swearing. I’m a medical device representative and read your blog to keep up with healthcare tech topics so I can commiserate with the physicians I call on. I’m in and out of operating rooms and physician lounges all day and notice that there’s a certain amount of swearing that goes on among physicians, but it seems to vary by specialty and age as well as by topic. I’ve joked about doing a research project to explain the phenomenon, but it looks like researchers beat me to the punch.”

The article notes that although swearing is “often dismissed as socially inappropriate,” it has been linked to increased physical performance through state disinhibition. That is a psychological state in which individuals are less likely to restrain their behavior. The authors propose that this leads to flow, confidence, and focus, with those who swear being able to perform better on strength and endurance tasks than those who used neutral words.

They note that “these effects have potential implications for athletic performance, rehabilitation, and contexts requiring courage or assertiveness. As such, swearing may represent a low-cost, widely accessible psychological intervention to help individuals “not hold back” when peak performance is needed.”

Another one of the practices where I receive care has finally given in to the private equity company that has been pursuing it for the past couple of years. The physician mentioned this at a recent visit and shared the behind-the-scenes story. She has been struggling since she opened a second location, but has been keeping her head above water through the availability of same-day dermatology appointments, which turned local primary care doctors into a loyal referral base.

We’ve all been impressed by her ability to fit people in. Who doesn’t love being able to have a patient’s suspicious lesion removed in a timely fashion? Before she opened, patients often waited months for appointments.

Although she offers some cosmetic dermatology services, the practice is heavily skewed towards medical dermatology. She shared that automatic payer downcoding has been financially devastating. Her attempts to promote the more lucrative cosmetic treatments, which are typically cash pay, couldn’t compete with local med spas that run coupon specials. She decided to give in with five years to retirement. We’ll see how well that same-day availability holds up with private equity operations leaders at the helm.

If your care providers have been acquired by private equity, what changes have you noticed? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

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