Morning Headlines 2/20/25

Azara Healthcare and i2i Population Health Unite to Supercharge Safety Net Population Health Management

Population health and value-based care company Azara Healthcare acquires I2I Population Health Management.

URAC Launches Development of Health Care AI Accreditation

Healthcare accreditor URAC announces plans to release a healthcare AI accreditation program later this year.

Walgreens Gains After CNBC Says Sycamore Takeout Is ‘Alive’

Walgreens shares jump on the news that private equity firm Sycamore Partners has revitalized its interest in acquiring the retail pharmacy chain.

Valsoft Enters the Managed Care Space with the Acquisition of Chordline Health

Canadian software business acquisition company Valsoft acquires North Carolina-based Chordline Health, which specializes in managed care software.

Readers Write: Solving Healthcare’s $125 Billion Fax Problem

Solving Healthcare’s $125 Billion Fax Problem
By Thomas Thatapudi

Thomas Thatapudi, MBA is CIO of AGS Health.

In the six years since Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services called for an end to faxing in healthcare, the industry remains stubbornly attached to fax communications. Fax-led communications solutions are prevalent today, as organizations continue exchanging more than 9 billion fax pages each year, representing about $125 billion in annual costs to the healthcare system.

It is a problematic practice in terms of data integrity, productivity, and efficiency. According to information compiled by DirectTrust, 30% of tests must be re-ordered due to lost faxes and 25% of faxes fail to arrive before a patient’s first visit. Faxes also often require manual indexing for integration into the EHR and other health information systems, a time-consuming process that requires human and financial resources that are hard to come by for many healthcare organizations.

Luckily, fax indexing lends itself to automation. In particular, generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI excel at automating mundane and repetitive tasks. However, it is unrealistic to expect digital workers, such as AI agents that mimic human actions, to accurately index 100% of the faxes from the outset. Thus the best outcomes are realized when digital workers are paired with human counterparts who manage exceptions and handle specialized information and requests, at least until the digital workers have accrued enough on-the-job training via machine learning and deep learning models to take over higher complexity tasks.

Implementing a hybrid fax indexing model accelerates processing and eliminates the care delays that are caused by improperly managed faxes. It also alleviates the strain on increasingly scarce resources, reducing costs and freeing internal staff to focus on higher-value tasks.

However, achieving these outcomes requires careful orchestration of a workflow that seamlessly integrates digital workers (AI agents) and their human counterparts delivering on quality, timeliness, and accuracy.

Designing the Digital Workforce

The heart of a successful hybrid fax indexing strategy is a well-designed digital workflow model that helps orchestrate workflows between humans and digital workers. It starts with mapping the necessary technologies, a step that is best informed by shadowing human indexers to fully understand the process and map any unique needs. This information is also used to plan the implementation and conduct feasibility testing.

Like their human counterparts, digital workers are armed with an array of intelligence and automation tools, including optical character recognition (OCR), to analyze faxed documents and convert them into machine-readable text. They use natural language processing (NLP) models to interpret and manipulate the data contained within. GenAI is then leveraged to classify faxes based on the sender’s documentation format, determine its confidence threshold, and either index it into a documentation management system or EHR or divert it to the validation workflow for manual processing.

Machine learning allows digital workers to adapt to new document formats and categorize data according to providers’ templates and styles. Further, each processed fax enhances accuracy, efficiency, and capabilities while reducing exceptions.

Monitoring effectiveness is crucial to success. Establish clear KPIs, such as the volume of faxes indexed per day, indexing accuracy, turnaround times, and productivity levels to assess progress over time.

AI Grounded in Reality

While automated fax indexing is a relatively new entry into the burgeoning field of healthcare AI, it is quickly making an impact. One health system’s implementation of automated fax indexing has put it on track to save approximately $2 million in annual expenses. Automation has reduced the number of manual indexers that are required to process the health system’s fax volume, which allows key team members to focus on higher-value tasks while achieving a near-perfect accuracy rate and 24-hour turnaround time. As digital workers “learn” over time, the automation rate will increase, while the need for human intervention decreases, adding to the anticipated cost savings.

While it is unlikely that we will see a fax-free healthcare system in the near-term future, leveraging readily available automation and AI tools makes it possible to digitize the process and alleviate its associated cost, productivity, and patient safety burdens.

Automated fax indexing is yet another example of a thoughtful AI application that solves an age-old problem that, until now, has been stubbornly resistant to change.

Readers Write: Are Your Patient Access Metrics Ready for Healthcare Consolidation?

Are Your Patient Access Metrics Ready for Healthcare Consolidation?
By Emily Tyson

Emily Tyson, MBA is COO of Relatient.

The healthcare industry witnessed a surge in merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in 2024, a trend that is expected to gain momentum in 2025. While organizational growth can unlock new potential for patient care and financial performance, it often brings operational inefficiencies that, if left unchecked, can strain staff, frustrate patients, and hinder sustainable success.

One of the biggest hurdles is managing the influx of data from fragmented sources. Adding new providers and locations introduces complexity, making it difficult to maintain consistency in scheduling, patient flow, and care delivery. Without the right tools to consolidate and standardize this data, organizations risk creating bottlenecks that impact the patient experience, disrupt operations, and negatively affect financial outcomes.

To ensure sustainable growth, healthcare organizations need proactive, data-driven strategies that are focused on four key aspects of patient access — provider scheduling performance, call center efficiency, patient experience, and financial outcomes — to not only identify inefficiencies, but also address them before they escalate.

Provider scheduling performance

During periods of growth, whether through acquisition or organic expansion, the last thing healthcare organizations need are scheduling disruptions. Scheduling is a cornerstone of operational success, directly impacting patient acquisition, physician satisfaction, and financial performance.

Accurate data insight is key to identifying gaps and uncovering opportunities for improvement. For example, high patient no-show rates might signal ineffective communication about appointment details, leading to missed visits. Another critical metric is appointment wait time, as patients overwhelmingly identified this as a top frustration in a 2024 survey.

Other essential metrics such as provider utilization rates, rule optimization, and scheduling accuracy reveal how effectively an organization accommodates provider preferences while balancing patient demand. Monitoring these indicators helps prevent overbooking, supports efficient patient throughput, and ensures that providers’ schedules are sustainable.

Metrics like the third next available appointment and waitlist conversion further illuminate the balance between patient access and appointment availability. These insights empower organizations to fill open slots more efficiently, expanding patient access while maximizing financial performance.

Contact center efficiency

During periods of growth and M&A activity, ensuring a seamless transition at the first touchpoint of the patient journey, the contact center, is critical. As new organizations integrate, call volumes naturally increase and require careful management to maintain care quality and consistency.

Proactively measuring and analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) for both efficiency and patient satisfaction allows healthcare organizations to identify potential gaps. For instance, tracking peak call times allows administrators to allocate resources strategically, ensuring that patients receive timely support during high demand periods. The right metrics provide insights to reduce bottlenecks, streamline scheduling, and lower operational costs. Other KPIs like appointment booking efficiency, minutes per call, and staff training time offer a comprehensive view of contact center performance and areas for improvement.

Patient experience

Today’s healthcare consumers demand convenience, and if scheduling processes are complicated or time-consuming, particularly during periods of growth or consolidation, patients are likely to seek care elsewhere. To meet these expectations and enhance both patient experience and contact center efficiency, organizations must monitor patient experience metrics that reflect engagement and satisfaction.

Given that research consistently shows that patients prefer self-scheduling options, empowering patients to take more control of the scheduling process can lead to better outcomes for both patients and staff.

With the right systems in place, providers can track self-scheduling rates and after-hours scheduling activity to gain deeper insights into patient behavior. Other essential patient experience metrics include patient acquisition, referral conversation rates, and appointment abandonment rates, all of which provide a clearer picture of how well the organization is meeting patient needs.

Financial outcomes

Effective scheduling and data management play a vital role in driving financial performance. During periods of rapid growth, healthcare organizations should closely monitor key financial metrics that are tied to scheduling and payment processes. Doing so enables them to identify opportunities to streamline operations, reduce costs, and maximize revenue.

Crucial metrics that provide insight into a practice’s financial health include payment collection percentages, reductions in accounts receivable, balances collected through payment plans, and the speed of patient balance collection. By tracking these indicators, organizations can pinpoint inefficiencies, implement targeted improvements, and ensure financial stability during times of expansion.

Setting the state for growth

Tracking the right metrics enables teams to address inefficiencies and achieve sustainable growth by focusing on four critical areas:

• Optimizing scheduling workflows. Track scheduling KPIs like no-show rates, wait times, and provider utilization to balance patient demand and provider efficiency.
• Boost contact center performance. Analyze KPIs such as peak call times, appointment booking efficiency, and staff training to improve operations and care quality.
• Enhance patient engagement. Offer self-scheduling options, track patient satisfaction metrics, and resolve issues like appointment abandonment to align with consumer expectations.
• Improve financial health. Focus on payment collection rates, accounts receivable reductions, and patient payment speed to drive revenue stability.

Intelligent patient access tools such as multi-channel appointment scheduling, provider preference management, and automated appointment reminders allow organizations to accurately track the most relevant KPIs, enhancing operations and improving the patient experience. Combined with robust analytics, these tools enable data-driven strategies, optimize performance, and support sustainable growth.

Healthcare AI News 2/19/25

News

Google launches Co-Scientist, a Gemini 2.0-powered research LLM that researchers say is like having an expert collaborator. Users provide a plain language research goal, after which the tool provides a summary of published literature and cited suggestions for new hypotheses and possible experiments.

Healthcare accreditor URAC announces plans to release a healthcare AI accreditation program later this year.

CVS Health redesigns its app with AI-driven features to provide a personalized health concierge experience. The app allows users to manage prescriptions for their entire family across CVS Pharmacy, CVS Caremark mail order, and CVS Specialty pharmacies. It also allows them to open locked display cabinets and pick up prescriptions using a barcode. Future enhancements include conversational AI for checking refill status and tailored recommendations for chronic condition management.

Business

Innovaccer launches telephone-based AI voice agents for patient scheduling, protocol intake, referral, authorization, care gap closure, HCC coding, and patient access.

HP acquires wearable device maker Humane AI for $116 million, gaining its employees and software while discontinuing the device. The widely hyped product, criticized as a solution in search of a problem, will be retired. The year-old, $699 Humane AI Pin  — which also required a $24 monthly subscription – will become dysfunctional next week when its cloud service shuts down. The startup had raised $230 million and sought a $1 billion buyout.

Ambient documentation vendor Abridge raises $250 million an a Series D funding round. The company was previously valued at $2.5 billion.

Crunchbase lists five healthcare-related companies whose new fundraising rounds suggest a Unicorn Club valuation of at least $1 billion:

• Neko Health (body scanner), $1.8 billion.
• Hippocratic AI (AI agents), $1.6 billion.
• Aragen Life Sciences (drug discovery), $1.4 billion.
• Truveta (healthcare data from its provider owners), $1 billion.
• Cera (digital-first home health), $1 billion.

Research

A UK-based company develops an AI-powered “super test” for prostate cancer screening that offers greater accuracy and sensitivity than traditional tests like PSA. The multi-omics test uses AI to analyze blood and urine samples for the presence of specific genes and proteins that have been clinically associated with the disease.

University of Michigan and other organizations are using a federal grant of up to $25 million to develop an AI-equipped van that can help medical generalists deliver hospital-level services in rural areas.

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 2/19/25

FDA cuts hit AI division, even as Trump invests in the technology

Report says that FDA has laid off many AI and digital health employees who were involved in healthcare AI regulation.

Ex-Palantir Veteran to Run Data, IT Security for RFK Jr.’s Health Department

HHS appoints Clark Minor, a Palantir software executive, as CIO.

MultiPlan Enters New Era and Unveils New Brand, Claritev, Reflecting Company’s Transformation and Mission to Support the Healthcare Continuum

Out-of-network price platform vendor MultiPlan changes its name to Claritev.

Ohio Becomes First State to Require Hospitals to Publish Prices

A new Ohio law prohibits hospitals that don’t post their prices publicly, as required by the federal government, from collecting medical debt and filing negative credit reports against patients.

News 2/19/25

Top News

Abridge raises $250 million in a Series D funding round.

The company says that its ambient documentation product is being used by 100 health systems.

Abridge’s valuation has been reported as $2.5 billion.

Reader Comments

From Dr. Anon: “Re: Oracle Health. We keep hearing about the ‘excitement’ of Oracle shifting ‘to the cloud,’ but I’ve still not been able to get a straight answer on what will happen to all of our custom build when that occurs. And we have tons of custom build based on the old PowerForm / PowerNotes features that supports all of our regulatory reporting requirements. Unfortunately the workflow mPages and dynamic documentation features, on which the cloud implementation will be based, has yet to include key features despite a decade of Cerner / Oracle knowing what is needed.”

From Aca-Doc: “Re: work metrics for physician productivity. My prior chairman was big on metrics for bonuses. As the CMIO, I had to develop reports to show who was at 75th percentile or above on RVUs. Because we’d had problems with people submitting charges without writing a note, the metrics also incorporated a requirement that 95% of notes had to be completed within seven days of the visit. People figured out workarounds. They would sign a blank note on the day of the visit and then go back later and fill in the details. On the other hand, patient satisfaction and outcomes are not necessarily a good indicator of work effort or quality, so it’s not really fair to hold clinicians accountable for these variables over which they have no control.” 

From ViveRant: “Re: ViVE. Now there’s wristband for ‘additional security.’ This is required wear in addition to the badges that now include a picture of the attendee. As when airlines started requiring picture ID, the point was to remove the thriving secondhand market for unused plane tickets. Like CES, ViVE realized that badge pictures are suboptimal since scanning thousands of people is impossible. Adding a wristband that cannot be removed without breaking is possibly easier to spot, but for most, it remains invisible and adds the frustration of unnecessary lines each morning to get a new wristband unless you like wearing a post-shower, now-sodden cloth wristband.” Being cynical, I would wonder what kind of attendee tracking the badge enables, like the RFID that HIMSS planned to use at HIMS11 (also RSNA) so that exhibitors could “derive a more accurate score of a visitor’s buying potential and send a booth alert when a key prospect approaches.” As if that wasn’t creepy enough, the tech company that HIMSS hired for that attendee tracking later incorporated facial recognition and also added a feature that HIMSS didn’t use — value-based booth pricing, so getting stuck in exhibit hall Siberia at least cost less. Also, did the ViVE wristbands have ads?

ViVE Conference Day 1 and 2 Observations from an Attendee

• 10,000 attendees (2,500 more than ViVE 2023 in Nashville), 30% are C-Suite-level. 725 provider and payer organizations represented. 5,000 scheduled meetings over the course of the conference.
• Nashville has not been spared from the latest Arctic blast. There were snow flurries falling during the (partially outdoor) opening night reception.
• The show floor feels both active and quiet; there’s definitely a lot of people and a lot of activity, yet nothing feels frenetic or chaotic. It feels like everything flows and runs smoothly.
• The layout of the show floor is different in notable ways from two years ago. There is less empty space. Every inch is used in a way that’s compact but doesn’t feel cramped.
• It feels like there are a lot more vendor booths, and they’ve cut back on some of the free space as a result. Also, the primary stages at each corner of the show floor have much less seating compared to two years ago.
• 99% of the booths seem to be taken. I’ve only seen three booths and one meeting cube on the floor plan showing as unfilled.
• AI is definitely a core focus and some of the biggest booths are heavily AI-oriented.
• Vendors I’ve noticed who have a diminished or no presence (smaller booth, much fewer attendees): Health Gorilla, Graphite Health, Moxe, eClinicalWorks, Interfaceware, Quest Diagnostics. I’m sure there are others.
• I continue to question how valuable a booth is. If you have a catchy brand or offering that’s likely to attract the attention of a wanderer, I can see it helping. If you’re meeting- and one-on-one-focused, I feel like a meeting area is a better investment.
• The Provider and Payer Connect Lounge, where vendors have scheduled meetings with provider and payer orgs, is huge this time around, with at least 170 small tables for meetings. The Investor Connect Lounge feels smaller and anecdotally, I haven’t run into nearly as many investors.
• Being a repeat ViVE attendee, I feel my organization has a much better game plan for the conference. I’m clearer on who to meet with and how to make connections happen. I’m more realistic about who actually attends and how to find them. I think vendors coming to ViVE need to understand that it is focused on doing business with investors and health system/health plan prospects. The days are heavily structured around meetings and more curated interactions with providers, payer, and investors. Some folks are here to learn or explore, but many are on a mission and will treat everything tangential to that mission as a distraction. If you are a B2B company, like a professional services org, you need to hit every aisle of booths and seek out partnerships or prospects. You have to have the right strategy to make the conference worthwhile, and for some it probably isn’t the right fit.
• Nashville is expecting one to four inches of snow starting late Tuesday night, so there is a lot of chatter about folks changing flights and abandoning town. I’m expecting Wednesday to be dead, and I’m surprised the ViVE organizers haven’t addressed the elephant in the room and given guidance on whether they’ll even keep Day 4. I feel bad for those slated to hold key meetings or to present on the final day. Though the weather’s unusual, it isn’t unheard of in Nashville in February. ViVE should really stick to March.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “How AI Addresses Resource Constraints Within Identity Data Management.” Sponsor: Rhapsody. Presenters: Lynn Stoltz, MS, director of product management, Rhapsody; Drew Ivan, MS, chief architect, Rhapsody; Michelle Blackmer, chief marketing officer, Rhapsody. Discover how to overcome the toughest challenge in identity data management: resource constraints.  The presenters will cover how Rhapsody EMPI with Autopilot solves resource challenges like limitations in time, talent, and budget; Reduces costs and risks associated with inaccurate data; and boosts identity data accuracy through 98% decision-making precision.

HIMSS25 Guide: HIStalk sponsors can provide conference participation details by February 24 to be included in my guide.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Keebler Health raises $6 million in seed funding. The Durham, NC-based company’s software performs medical records review to help providers assess and adjust risk under value-based care contracts.

I missed this from mid-January. A private equity firm acquires ComplexCare Solutions, a carve-out from Inovalon. The company offers an independent health assessment and member engagement platform.

Avandra, which operates a medical imaging data network, raises $17.75 million in funding.

Sales

• Community Hospital Corporation will deploy CarePilot’s AI scribe solution. Founder and CEO Joseph Tutera, Jr. ran unsuccessfully for governor of Kansas in 2017 at age 16, then started a business early in the pandemic buying respirator masks and COVID tests from Asia and reselling them to US customers.
• MultiCare Connected Care will use Tuva Health’s open-source technology to manage and analyze data for 375,000 patients and has taken an ownership stake in the company through its investment arm.
• Montefiore Health System selects Amazon Web Services as its cloud provider and will transition Epic to AWS.

People

Germany-based medical inhaler digital therapy vendor VisionHealth promotes Peter Shadday to CEO. He replaces founder Sabine Häussermann, PhD, who will move to chief scientific officer.

Oncology software vendor OncoHealth hires Jon Maack, MBA (Definitive Healthcare) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Innovaccer launches telephone-based AI voice agents for patient scheduling, protocol intake, referral, authorization, care gap closure, HCC coding, and patient access.

DrFirst enhances its IPrescribe electronic prescribing app with a feature that lets providers call patients from their personal phones while displaying their practice’s name as the caller ID.

Healthcare accreditor URAC announces plans to release a healthcare AI accreditation program later this year and seeks advisory committee members to help develop standards.

DirectTrust opens a 60-day public comment period for draft criteria for its new Identity Provider and UDAP Identity Provider programs.

Arcadia launches new solutions for modeling care networks, managing value-based care contracts, identifying care gaps, and developing AI models to identify disease progression and risk.

Symplr announces an AWS-powered platform that integrates 28 applications in a unified user experience.

MultiPlan changes it name to Claritev and announces its intentions to broaden its product lines beyond reducing payments for out-of-network provider claims.

Clarigent Health, a Cincinnati Children’s startup that developed an AI-driven tool for schools to analyze counseling session recordings for suicide risk, shuts down. The company had received $1 million in NIH funding, but a 2023 newspaper investigation found no evidence supporting its claims and raised accuracy concerns due to the AI being trained on recordings from a majority-white population.

Government and Politics

HHS appoints Clark Minor, a software executive at Palantir, as CIO. The intelligence data firm won a contested $415 million NHS contract in 2023, drawing criticism over sole-source awarding and full NHS data access. HHS, a Palantir client, has paid the company $300 million over four years.

Stat reports that FDA has laid off many AI and digital health employees who were involved in AI regulation.

A new Ohio law forces hospitals to comply with the widely ignored federal price transparency rule by prohibiting non-compliant hospitals from collecting patient medical debt.

Sponsor Updates

• Cordea Consulting introduces its Innovation Lab video series.
• Clinical Architecture joins the CHIME Foundation to collaborate on healthcare IT innovation.
• Optimum Healthcare IT achieves Amazon Web Services Healthcare Competency status.
• CloudWave will present at the North Carolina Healthcare Association Winter Meeting February 20 in Raleigh.

Blog Posts

• AI and healthcare: What clinicians need to know (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• How Cybersecurity Ambassador Programs Strengthen Your First Line of Defense (CereCore)
• Navigating the Current State of AI and Automation in Revenue Cycle Management (AGS Health)
• Looking toward the future of healthcare: Altera leaders’ predictions for 2025 and beyond (Altera Digital Health)
• Seven Habits of Client-Focused Companies (Clearsense)
• Powering Pharmacogenomics: Clinical Architecture’s Role in Advancing Personalized Medicine in the NHS (Clinical Architecture)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 2/18/25

Abridge Announces $250M Series D Investment and New Contextual Reasoning Engine to Streamline Clinical and Financial Workflows at the Point of Care

Ambient documentation company Abridge confirms reports of a $250 million Series D funding round, bringing its total raised to over $450 million.

Carecierge Revolutionizes Healthcare Delivery with Cutting-Edge Tools for Care Teams

Carecierge launches to offer physician practices workflow optimization software.

Innovaccer Launches ‘Agents of Care’ to Transform Healthcare Operations, Enhance Care Delivery

Innovaccer develops AI agents to help providers automate tasks related to patient scheduling and intake, referrals, prior authorizations, care gap identification and coordination, coding review, and patient access.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 2/17/25

I spent some time this weekend doing something that I’m sure many techie readers have done at least once. I supported an elderly relative who was having technology issues.

My particular relative is in her late 90s and still lives fairly independently, which is impressive in itself. Even more impressive is the fact that she understands the value of the internet in helping her stay connected with the rest of the world, especially as she describes it, “now that my friends who actually used the telephone are all dead.”

We’ve seen plenty of data on the fact that older people do indeed use technology, and we know that utilization numbers are growing as the population ages. Still, actually spending time with someone who is nearly 100 years old and watching them interact with technology was particularly educational.

She called me initially to say that she thought she had a virus on the tablet she uses for internet access, Based on her description, I knew it would be easier to just go see what was happening myself rather than trying to figure it out over the phone. For some of my other older relatives who primarily use PCs and laptops, we’ve installed remote access solutions so we can troubleshoot when they have issues, but I have exactly zero experience doing remote access on tablets.

I had a couple of thoughts about how I could help her, including doing a factory reset on her device versus buying a newer tablet versus replacing it with something else like a touch screen laptop. I’m not a fan of tablets because I think the user interface is clunkier than what you get on a Windows interface, plus the ability to install remote access software would be a plus. Like many older people, she’s significantly hard of hearing and also has a tremor, which can make it interesting when the user interface requires fine motor control. I packed a bag of different devices and headed out.

The first thing I identified was the fact that she actually has two tablets, although it was initially unclear why she needs two or how she decides which one to use. Seeing them jogged my memory, as I remembered hearing about this from another relative who had  helped her manage two email accounts and two Facebook accounts. She didn’t understand then that accounts can be accessed across different devices, so she had just made new accounts when she got the second device.

I asked her to show me how she uses each one and what kinds of sites she accesses with them so that I could see it for myself and not make any assumptions about her technology needs. As I watched her, we had some good conversations about how Facebook actually works and the fact that it primarily exists to make money off of people’s viewing habits, by way of explaining why her feed was entirely clogged with junk and not things she actually wanted to see.

In addition to social media, she’s a fairly heavy user of MyChart, which always impresses me. She gave me access to her account many years ago so I could help explain some of her lab results. Although Epic has proxy functionality, she prefers that I use her login and password.

That made sense once I saw her password management system in person. She uses an old Rolodex to keep track of her passwords, with a card for each website or app. Thank goodness she doesn’t write down her usernames right next to the passwords, but still it was enough to make me cringe. She writes down new passwords when she changes them, but doesn’t always cross out the old ones, which added to the adventure as I was trying to gather all of her important information in case we had to do a factory reset on her devices.

It was interesting to see the password choices of someone in their 90s, especially for sites that require some degree of complexity. I laughed when I came across a password of “OldLady” plus her age to satisfy the numeric requirement of her last password reset. There were plenty of passwords with names of people who I’ve never heard of and also words in another language. I was glad that I didn’t see “Password123,” the name of her late spouse, or other easily guessed options. We talked a little about how the Rolodex probably isn’t a great idea unless she’s willing to keep it in her lockbox, but I made a note to myself to explore password manager solutions for tablets.

One of the issues that she was having with the tablet interface was not being able to unsubscribe to emails or easily mark them as spam. As a Windows user, I can see clear links in the different email clients I use. For her, she would need to press and hold on the screen to get a dialogue that would allow her to do this, which was difficult given her motor abilities even though she is using a stylus.

She agreed to let me access her email from my laptop so I could rapidly clean up her inbox and take care of a lot of junk mail. As we began that process, I discovered how difficult it is when you don’t have a smart phone and systems want to text you a code to confirm that you are logging in on a new device. Although some of these platforms also allow you to receive a phone call for a verbal code, you can imagine the comedy of errors that ensues when the person is using a landline and a telecommunication device for the deaf to receive her phone calls.

After clearing up her primary problem — which was annoying popup ads that were being generated by a solitaire game that she didn’t remember installing — and working to clean up her tablets, we decided to send the older one to the next electronics recycling event to reduce any future confusion. Now that we had her back in action with a device she knew well, I decided to forego auditioning new devices since I have good hopes that we can probably get another six months of use out of this one. No need to upset the proverbial apple cart if we have something that meets her needs. I know from experience that the future value of a problem can sometimes be worse than the current value of a problem, but I’m willing to play the odds on this one.

The experience was a good one to remind me that although many of the elderly have access to technology, they may not understand how it works or how to stay out of trouble when they’re online. It also gave me a new appreciation for people with mobility and sensory challenges who are trying to access technology platforms. That will give me some things to think about the next time I have to write scripts for end user testing. I’m glad I could help her and she treated me to an ice cream at the end, so you can’t go wrong with that.

If you work for a technology vendor, do you consider the needs of the elderly or those who have additional needs as you design your solutions? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 2/17/25

Agentic AI Startup, VoiceCare AI, Launches to Automate Healthcare Back Office and Super-Staff Workforce

Mayo Clinic will pilot voice AI agent technology from VoiceCare AI, which recently launched with $3.85 million in funding, in three areas for pre-authorization and benefit confirmation.

Donate Life America and Epic Bring Organ Donor Registration to MyChart

Epic integrates organ donation registration capabilities into MyChart in collaboration with the non-profit Donate Life America.

Trusting Health Care Systems to Use Artificial Intelligence

A JAMA commentary piece notes that patients don’t trust how health systems will use AI, leading author Jessica Ancker, MD, MPH to recommend that health systems clearly disclose AI interactions, specify who can access AI-generated data, and inform patients when AI is used to influence clinical decisions.

Monday Morning Update 2/17/25

Top News

A JAMA commentary piece notes that patients don’t trust how health systems will use AI, but then again, they don’t trust health systems in general.

A cited study found a mean health system overall trust score of 5.23 on a 12-point scale. Only 40% of respondents expressed high trust, down from 72% pre-pandemic.

The author, Vanderbilt informatics professor Jessica Ancker, MD, MPH, recommends that health systems clearly disclose AI interactions, specify who can access AI-generated data, and inform patients when AI is used to influence clinical decisions.

She also notes that people tend to be wary of technology they haven’t personally experienced, such as self-driving cars, but usually warm up to it once they see it for themselves.

Reader Comments

From Peds MD: “Re: Epic’s Care Everywhere. Responding to the HIStalk post last fall where Care Everywhere failed to match a critical newborn, Epic relaxed its requirements to make matches if you have the patient’s Care Everywhere number (from the place you are querying) and two other matching demographics. Today we had a patient who had “some kind of heart surgery” as a child in 2001, and it was medically important to know exactly what was done. Because they had moved across the country, I couldn’t match the patient using regular demographics — everything had changed except their name, sex, and date of birth — but when I obtained and entered the Care Everywhere number from the other hospital’s HIM department, the match came back immediately. We are still working with Epic on improving matching, but I think it’s important to recognize progress, as it made a big difference in this patient’s care. Kudos to HIStalk for helping in this.” I posted the reader’s original problem description last year. Thanks for the update and thanks to Epic, which I can say always responds quickly and personally to address issues that readers have reported here.

From Silken: “Re: Epic and SaaS. I’ve seen online commentary about the benefit of Epic moving to SaaS model. What do you and your readers think?” For me, I see the possible customer advantages of running a SaaS versus on-premise and cloud-hosted products. However, technical punditry and wishful thinking aside, you have to assume that Epic is like all companies in being most likely to take whatever path benefits it most. Thoughts:

• Big, Epic-using health systems aren’t visibly demanding a SaaS model, at least when it comes to voting with their dollars, which is the only vote that counts. They have already invested in Epic-driven infrastructure, IT expertise, and long-term budgets. These are sunk costs that shouldn’t influence future decisions, but hospitals are generally risk-averse and don’t relish major disruptions like retraining and workflow changes, especially in the absence of a clear business benefit.
• Even though Epic’s maintenance costs are high, SaaS wouldn’t necessarily be cheaper over time since it’s still up to Epic to set prices.
• Many health systems already operate a de facto SaaS model by hosting Epic for affiliated hospitals and clinics. This may be more cost-effective than Epic offering SaaS directly to an ever-decreasing number of unaffiliated small hospitals and practices.
• SaaS benefits include scalability and faster onboarding of acquisitions, but drawbacks include a reduced ability for customization, forced upgrades on Epic’s schedule, and tighter vendor lock-in.
• The Change Healthcare breach heightened concerns about reliance on a single vendor, possibly making CIOs skeptical that Epic SaaS would be more secure or resilient than their own IT capabilities.
• SaaS would increase health system dependence on Epic, with unknowns about what a post-Judy Epic looks like.
• Oracle Health talks up cloud-native ambitions but lacks market momentum, industry focus, and credibility to provide much of a medium-term threat. Health systems care less about technology compared to business results, proven ROI, and vendor responsiveness and stability. Oracle’s commitment, performance, and retention of internal healthcare expertise remains unproven, and customers have been historically burned by big tech outsiders who barged into (and then out of) healthcare. 
• A full Epic rewrite is unlikely unless the reward to Epic clearly outweighs the risk. Few vendors have pulled this off. Meditech did it seemingly effortlessly with Expanse and Cerner (as a publicly traded company) sweated through many bad years until Millennium was fully baked. Otherwise a lot of vendor-touted technology improvement is pig lipstickery, and sometimes that’s all customers care about anyway.
• Epic dominates the market and will eventually run out of deep-pockets health systems to sell to. It doesn’t need to chase new customers by teasing their CTOs into an advanced state of technical arousal.
• Potential drivers for change are Oracle Health rebounding as a serious competitor; a demand for cloud-native AI and analytics; and regulatory pressures around interoperability and cybersecurity (which seem to be lessening by the day).

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents book their medical appointments by telephone or patient portal. Some say they do it at the check-out desk at the end of their visit, which I’ve seen almost universally with dentists but commonly with doctors, although that experience probably involves routine chronic condition management.

New poll to your right or here: How much of your job performance can be measured using objective metrics?This came to mind while reading an article about how much of a pay cut office employees would take to work fully remotely. The article noted that managers who oppose WFH often oversee employees whose performance isn’t easily quantified by output metrics, which forces them to rely on in-office proxies such as hours worked, enthusiasm, and the perceptions of colleagues and customers. Another question might be that if your job performance isn’t being mostly measured by metrics, then why not? Is your work inherently unquantifiable, or is it that managers haven’t created the right metrics and instead rely on direct observation?

HIStalk sponsors: fill out this form to tell me about your HIMSS25 plans by February 24 and I will include you in my guide, which will look like the one above from last year..

Readers provided microphones and speakers for students in Ms. B’s elementary school classes in Kinston, NC. She reports:

You would not believe how student engagement has changed in our classroom!!! We faithfully use the devices during our math lessons. Students love when they are able to clearly share their thinking, using the microphone, as they give explanations while solving rigorous word problems. Being in the spotlight, they aren’t shy to speak out for all to hear. The Bluetooth speaker sits stationary in the center of the room so all voices are projected throughout. I love the range and how I’m able to walk around freely without even realizing that it’s still on. The students are able to hear me no matter if I’m in the front of the room or in the back of the room.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “How AI Addresses Resource Constraints Within Identity Data Management.” Sponsor: Rhapsody. Presenters: Lynn Stoltz, MS, director of product management, Rhapsody; Drew Ivan, MS, chief architect, Rhapsody; Michelle Blackmer, chief marketing officer, Rhapsody. Discover how to overcome the toughest challenge in identity data management: resource constraints.  The presenters will cover how Rhapsody EMPI with Autopilot solves resource challenges like limitations in time, talent, and budget; Reduces costs and risks associated with inaccurate data; and boosts identity data accuracy through 98% decision-making precision.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

ProPublica examines the history of Zolgensma, a taxpayer- and charity-funded gene therapy for a rare nerve disease in infants whose rights were acquired by a startup. The chief scientist gained partial ownership, the startup went public, and Novartis later bought it for $8.7 billion, netting the scientist $400 million, an investor $315 million, and the CEO $190 million. Novartis then priced the drug at a record $2 million per dose. Medicaid spent $309 million on it over four years, while Novartis made $6.4 billion. The article notes that 10 gene therapy products now cost more than $2 million per dose once Novartis set the price bar so high.

People

WellSpan Health SVP/CIO Hal Baker, MD announces that he will retire in July. He encourages those who might want to succeed him to apply for the York, PA-based job, telling me that “We have a fantastic team, are doing some very cool cutting edge stuff in AI, and I think my 30 years working for a single employer says about as much as one can about how good the opportunity is.”

Announcements and Implementations

Meditech signs its 100th Meditech as a Service client.

Epic integrates organ donation registration capabilities into MyChart in collaboration with the non-profit Donate Life America.

Mayo Clinic will pilot VoiceCare AI’s voice AI agent in three areas for pre-authorization and benefit confirmation.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence deploys the first batch of 200 tablets to Air Assault Forces medics, who will use them to document frontline care in the military’s self-developed Electronic Primary Medical Records system. The tablets were donated by the Come Back Alive foundation, which supports members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Other

In England, a trade union raises concerns about a hospital’s plan to use license plate recognition software to impose fees and fines. The website of technology provider ParkingEye says that the advantages are to “increase parking revenue, reduce car park abuse, and improve customer satisfaction,” also noting that 30 NHS trusts already use its systems. Complaints abound, mostly about being erroneously told by someone on site that it was free to park or to get validated, having their credit card hit with a huge charge with no response to appeals, and angry excuses of the “I was only a little over the time limit and it wasn’t my fault” variety.

Sponsor Updates

• Health Data Movers hires Andrew O’Hara as a health IT recruiter.
• TruBridge announces its selection as a preferred partner to healthcare services company Cibolo Health.
• Visage Imaging General Manager, North America Brad Levin recaps the first Sharp HealthCare Spatial Computing Health Care Summit in San Diego.
• Contessa Health (TN) works with Netsmart to develop and configure the first application in a suite of tools that is its new population health management platform for palliative care at home.
• Nym publishes a new case study, “Transforming Medical Coding at Inova.”
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a new white paper, “Improving Efficiency & Meeting User Demand with ITSM Practices in Healthcare.”
• Praia Health announces it has been granted a second patent for its account and experience orchestration technology.
• QGenda offers a new case study, “North American Partners in Anesthesia Achieves Faster, More Accurate Payroll with QGenda’s Schedule-Driven Time and Attendance Solution.”
• Waystar earns top rankings for its payment solutions in eight categories, according to Black Book Research’s latest analysis of AI-powered RCM software platforms.
• WellSky publishes an EHR checklist for behavioral health facilities.

Blog Posts

• Best Practices for Collaborating with Payers (FinThrive)
• CMS TEAM is coming: Why CIOs must act now on EHR optimization (Nordic)
• Top Physician Communication Frustrations (PerfectServe)
• The Cost of Doing Nothing (Praia Health)
• How Redox and Databricks are transforming prior authorization through interoperability (Redox)
• Powering the Prior Authorization Transformation (Surescripts)
• How a Healthcare Platform Transforms Patient Care & Operations (Symplr)
• How to Align Operations + Technology to Improve Patient Access (Tegria)
• Value-based care requires creativity and technology partnerships (Wolters Kluwer Health)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 2/14/25

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Sworn in as 26th Secretary at HHS, President Trump Signs Executive Order to Make America Healthy Again

Newly sworn in HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., JD, LLM will manage a $2 trillion budget and oversee CMS, CDC, FDA, NIH, the Public Health Service, HHS OIG, AHRQ, Office for Civil Rights, and ASTP.

CVS shares pop 15% on big earnings beat, even as high medical costs drag down insurance unit

CVS Health reports Q4 results: revenue up 4%, EPS $1.30 versus $1.58, beating expectations for both and sending battered shares up 15%.

Vitalchat Secures Series A Funding Led by GHC Industries to Scale Virtual Nursing and Telehealth Solutions

Vitalchat, which offers an AI-powered inpatient virtual nursing and procedural telehealth platform, raises $6 million in a Series A funding round.

News 2/14/25

Top News

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, JD, LLM is sworn in as HHS secretary.

He will manage a $2 trillion budget and will oversee CMS, CDC, FDA, NIH, the Public Health Service, HHS OIG, AHRQ, Office for Civil Rights, and ASTP.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Inbox Health. Inbox Health directly addresses one of the fastest-growing problems in healthcare — the challenge of patient A/R. Built for healthcare revenue cycle leaders, Inbox Health automates patient billing and patient payments and modernizes the patient support experience. Inbox Health improves patient engagement by providing clear medical bills immediately after service; choice of payment methods and communication channels; and fast, empathetic support through the phone and live chat. By improving the patient experience, practices see an increase in profitability, cash flow, and collection speeds. With Inbox Health, customers report a 60% increase in collection speeds in the first 60 days. Inbox Health provides an automated, streamlined platform that increases revenue, saves time, and reduces costs. Inbox Health serves over 3,000 healthcare practices and more than 2 million patients a year. Headquartered in New Haven, CT, Inbox Health was recently named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in America. Thanks to Inbox Health for supporting HIStalk.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “How AI Addresses Resource Constraints Within Identity Data Management.” Sponsor: Rhapsody. Presenters: Lynn Stoltz, MS, director of product management, Rhapsody; Drew Ivan, MS, chief architect, Rhapsody; Michelle Blackmer, chief marketing officer, Rhapsody. Discover how to overcome the toughest challenge in identity data management: resource constraints.  The presenters will cover how Rhapsody EMPI with Autopilot solves resource challenges like limitations in time, talent, and budget; Reduces costs and risks associated with inaccurate data; and boosts identity data accuracy through 98% decision-making precision.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CVS Health reports Q4 results: revenue up 4%, EPS $1.30 versus $1.58, beating expectations for both and sending battered shares up 15%. Executives emphasized plans to boost margins in its Aetna insurance unit, which was hit by high utilization costs, and refine drug pricing models.

Revenue cycle automation vendor Candid Health raises $52.5 million in a Series C funding round.

No-code healthcare workflow automation and integration platform vendor Keragon raises $7.5 million in seed funding.

Vitalchat, which offers an AI-powered inpatient virtual nursing and procedural telehealth platform, raises $6 million in a Series A funding round. CEO Michael Raymer, Chief Marketing Officer Jennifer Haas, and board member Peter Neupert spent time at Sentillion / Microsoft and the executive team has deep health tech experience in general.

Half-year results of Pro Medicus, Visage Imaging’s Australia-based parent, report a 35% jump in revenue from North America.

Oracle EVP and lobbyist Ken Glueck fires off another unhinged rant against Epic and CEO Judy Faulkner after his initial diatribe last spring. Snips:

• “We set on a path to build a modern EHR Cloud, focused on innovation while Epic built a yellow brick road to nowhere. At Epic, product demos were replaced by campus tour.”
• He spends most of his 21 paragraphs accusing Epic of favorably editing its own Wikipedia page, although he (a) admitted that it’s possible that nobody associated with Epic actually did this; and (b) didn’t elaborate on why Epic would find Wikipedia pages important enough to justify “a more sophisticated, coordinated, and sustained effort.” 
• Glueck says that Epic has run a smear campaign against Oracle EVP/GM Seema Verma, who he says riled Judy by pushing interoperability in her former role as CMS administrator. (note: Verma’s Wikipedia page is certainly an interesting read without any Epic embellishment).

Oracle Health employees reacted negatively on Reddit:

• “Childish and stupid. Truly embarrassing.”
• “Who the hell is Ken Glueck and is this external for clients to read? That’s totally embarrassing. Also, Feinberg said Epic isn’t our competitor anyway, so what’s the problem?”
• “I am not sure I have witnessed a more profound ass kissing. How the hell does a professional organization let a piece like that out the door?”
• “To paraphrase Steve Jobs, real wizards ship.”

Sales

• Cordea Consulting brings Jupiter Medical Center (FL) live on Epic on Amazon Web Services.

People

RWJBarnabas Health hires Roshan Hussain, MBA, MPH (UK HealthCare) as SVP/chief data and analytics officer.

Mark Amey, MBA (Alameda Health System) joins Ellit Groups as COO.

CloudWave promotes Tina Brown, MBA to VP of cloud operations; Tony Rienzo to VP of service delivery; and John Duffy to VP of cloud infrastructure.

Evidently hires Kai Romero, MD (By The Bay Health) as head of clinical success.

Jay Volk, JD, LLM, MA (EtherFax) joins Weave Cloud Solutions as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Medicomp System announces support for USCDI Version 3 and Version 4 for its Quippe platform, which gives its partners access to SDOH screening tools and export capability to FHIR.

Surescripts announces Touchless Prior Authorization.

Apple adds heart rate monitoring to its new $250 Powerbeats Pro 2 earbuds.

Meditech renames its patient portal to MyHealthHub.

.

Apple launches the Apple Health Study in collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which will use the Research app to explore how data from Apple devices relates to health.

In England, Fordcombe Hospital goes live on Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise EPR.

Government and Politics

Politico reports that three HHS / ASTP technology executives who were hired into newly created positions four weeks ago appear to no longer work for the organization – Meghan Dierks, MD (chief AI officer); Alicia Rouault (CTO); and Kristen Honey PhD, MA (chief data officer).

Other

Former Theranos CEO and federal inmate Elizabeth Holmes tells People that she is still filing patents and plans to re-enter healthcare technology after her scheduled release in 2032. Critics say that the article might indicate that she is angling for a sentence reduction or possibly a White House pardon by creating sympathy for her children, ages 2 and 3, who were born during her fraud trial. She says that her newfound passion is to become an advocate for reforming the US criminal justice system.

Sponsor Updates

• Digital Health New York inducts Capital Rx into its inaugural Hall of Fame as part of a cohort of companies that have built the foundation of New York’s Digital Health ecosystem.
• Black Book Research publishes its first comprehensive industry review of AI applications in revenue cycle management.
• TruBridge names Jerry Canada and Dris Upitis to its board as a part of cooperation agreements with Pinetree Capital and Ocho Investments.
• Clearsense announces a strategic rebrand, the relocation of its headquarters to Nashville, and the addition of new features to its 1Clearsense data-enablement platform.
• Jack Squires (WellSky) joins Healthmonix as sales executive.
• Riverside University Health System – Behavioral Health (CA) adds Netsmart’s CareRouter mobile dispatch tool to improve the efficiency of its Mobile Crisis Response Program.
• WellSky launches a new patient panel, available in the WellSky CarePort Connect solution, that will equip providers with critical and holistic knowledge of their patient population.
• Health Data Movers hires Andrew O’Hara as a health IT recruiter.
• Inovalon releases an eight-episode podcast, “INOvators 2025 Forecast.”

Blog Posts

• 5 Tips for Achieving 2025 Readiness in the IDD Industry (Netsmart)
• 211 Day: Celebrating Innovation Meeting Impact (Findhelp)
• Healthcare Insurance Discovery: How It Works and Why Providers Need It (FinThrive)
• Riding the Wave Into 2025: Top 5 Highlights From Five9 SKO (Five9)
• The Importance of Migrating from Your Legacy ERP to a Modern Cloud-Based Solution: Doing Nothing is Not a Strategy (Impact Advisors)
• How MyHealthHub elevates the patient experience (Meditech)

Contacts

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

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 2/13/25

California legislators are getting on the AI regulation train. A bill was introduced earlier this week that would prevent AI systems from calling themselves health professionals. Mia Bonta represents California’s 18th Assembly District, which includes the East Bay area, and chairs the Assembly Health Committee. She stated, “Generative AI systems are not licensed health professionals, and they shouldn’t be allowed to present themselves as such.”

The legislation, AB 489, is supported by SEIU California and the California Medical Association. It would help patients understand whether they’re interacting with a licensed professional or an AI-powered chatbot. Perhaps clear definitions around the idea of “AI nurses” would have helped avoid some of the confusion that the new Secretary of Health and Human Services encountered when he was recently at the Cleveland Clinic.

Another AI-related headline that caught my attention this week was around using the technology to “make our physicians superhuman.” A health system is using AI tools to help detect lung cancer by using radiology reports where nodules are mentioned, then reviewing and tracking those reports. One of the organization’s leaders stated that physicians are “receiving a CT report on the patient, then having to read the entire body of it and make multiple decision analyses of the individual nodules. Let’s automate that. Let’s make our physicians superhuman in their ability to manage the number of patients under their purview.”

I don’t have an issue with the concept of making physicians more efficient or allowing them to better manage the patients in their care. I do have an issue with the use of the word “superhuman,” though. As someone who saw patients in emergent settings through the worst parts of the COVID pandemic, I feel strongly that this idea of physicians needing to be superhuman is detrimental. It conditions us and our patients that physicians aren’t allowed to fail, have a bad day, or make mistakes. It can raise patient expectations beyond what one can reasonably deliver. I saw this acutely during the pandemic, when we were expected to see ridiculously high patient volumes without appropriate personal protective equipment, support staff, or supplies.

I’ve practiced in a small town as well as in the big city. I honestly feel like the time I spent in rural America and interacted with my patients regularly outside the office was better as far as helping set expectations about what physicians should and could do. When you see your patients at the grocery store picking up bread and milk just like everyone else, it gives both the clinician and the patient a different perspective. There’s nothing more human than sitting in the stylist’s chair at the local hair salon or “beauty parlor” with foils all over your head and chatting with your patient over a People magazine. I definitely miss those times when I’m working on projects that turn patients into numbers and physicians into productivity widgets.

I frequently work on EHR adoption and optimization projects, so I always like reading about others’ efforts in the literature. A recent article on team approaches to training and optimization caught my eye. The authors surveyed health organization informatics leaders and received 193 responses from 147 organizations. Some of the statistics were rather interesting: “Of these, 69% offer ongoing EHR training, and 52% offer some version of an ETOP (EHR Training and Optimization Program).”

That leads me to wonder what the other organizations are doing. One might assume that they are training once and then just hoping that clinicians wing it as they go. The authors suggest that ongoing optimization and training programs can lead to reduced healthcare worker burnout through improved EHR efficiency and satisfaction. They recommend that additional research be done “to identify the optimal features, methods, and outcomes of ETOPs, and to disseminate them across HCOs.”

Although I’ve seen cool presentations at various EHR user group meetings about how different organizations approach it, I know that in my own consulting practice, what I see varies widely.When I was a health system informaticist, I certainly didn’t want to reinvent the wheel when I could copy from someone who was successful. The article confirms the variety of different offerings, including tip sheets, videos, training software, one-on-one training, clinic rounding by trainers, and formal programs.

As keen as physicians are on the concept of evidence-based practice in caring for patients, I would think they would be more excited about developing best practices for implementing and maintaining EHRs. I think we’re going to see shifts in what is needed as the clinician workforce demographics change, and it will be interesting to see how the research keeps up with this evolution.

Worker retention is a huge issue in healthcare. Especially in cities with multiple health systems, there can be frequent movement among IT roles as people try to improve their compensation. It always amused me as a health system leader that I couldn’t pay my valued workers more, but if they quit and I had to replace them, I could get the role moved into a higher salary band. It seems like it would have been easier to just pay people commensurate with their skills and experience, but hey, I’m just the doctor.

A healthcare article states that the average worker with capped vacation days takes 14 days off annually, while those with unlimited PTO take an average of 16. This is in stark contrast to European countries, where more paid time off is typically the norm. Jefferson Health notes that “executives typically use for to six weeks of PTO annually,” but doesn’t mention how much other employee classifications typically use. I would be interested to hear from care delivery organizations that have unlimited PTO and what their statistics are like. I’m happy to maintain your anonymity.

I appreciate the shout out from Mr. H last week as he mentioned the expanding partnership between EHR vendor CampDoc and Scouting America (formerly known as Boy Scouts of America). I read the press release in detail and noted that CampDoc will also be used for the 2026 National Jamboree.

This means that CampDoc has replaced Cerner, which made a simplified version of its flagship software available for previous major scouting events ,including the 2019 World Scout Jamboree where I made friends with quite a few Cerner implementation specialists who were there to support us. I have to say that it was the easiest version of Cerner I’ve ever used since we only had to document the important parts of acute patient care. We didn’t have to worry about the other data elements that are required for long-term population health, preventive screenings, or billing.

I hope the folks from CampDoc get into the spirit — the Cerner team had patches to trade and were a lot of fun. If you work for CampDoc and you are looking for someone to advise you on how to be the coolest kids at camp, I might know someone.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 2/13/25

Candid Health Raises $52.5 Million Series C to Enhance GenAI Features, Expand Revenue Cycle Automation Platform to More Providers

RCM automation company Candid Health announces Series C funding of $52.5 million, bringing its total raised to $99.5 million.

Keragon, an AI-powered healthcare automation platform, secured a $7.5M seed round six months post-launch

Healthcare automation startup Keragon raises $7.5 million in a seed funding round, bringing its total raised to $10.5 million since launching in 2024.

Leading Global Healthtech Company, Harrison.ai, to Bring Proven AI-Powered Medical Diagnostic Support and Workflow Solutions to the United States; US$112 Million Series C Fuels Global Expansion

Australia-based Harrison.ai, which offers AI diagnostic solutions for radiology and pathology imaging, will use $112 million in new funding to expand its US operations.

Healthcare AI News 2/12/25

News

Nine hospitals in the UK are using AI to prioritize high-risk patients who are stuck in the NHS’s 7.5 million-long waiting list. The C2-Ai system has flagged 1,000 patients who are at risk of deterioration during their wait to be seen, which reduced surgery-related complications and shortened inpatient stays by four days. 

Mass General Brigham and IBM partner through the IBM Sustainability Accelerator to develop an AI tool that will predict extreme heat events, identify at-risk patients, and send warnings to those who are at risk. Previous research indicates that heat event days will cause 235,000 ED visits, 56,000 hospital admissions, and $1 billion in costs, much of that in urban areas. 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicts in a blog post that AI will soon reach human-level problem-solving ability (AGI), a transformation that will be comparable to the invention of the transistor. Key points:

• AI intelligence scales predictably with investment since it correlates with the log of resources used.
• AI costs drop 10x every 12 months, far outpacing Moore’s law.
• Exponential AI investment will persist due to its super-exponential socioeconomic value.
• AI agents will handle most tasks of mid-level professionals but won’t generate big ideas, will require human oversight, and will still fail in some areas.
• AGI’s greatest impact will likely be in science.

Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD urges the FDA not to classify AI as a medical device if it simply synthesizes and presents information, warning that excessive regulation could hinder AI integration into EHRs and limit its ability to generate clinical insights. He emphasizes that AI is most effective when it is embedded in physician workflows with access to EHR data.

Business

Australia-based Harrison.ai, which offers AI diagnostic solutions for radiology and pathology imaging, raises a $112 million Series C funding round. The company will use the proceeds to expand its US operations.

Cedars-Sinai nurses are piloting an AI tool that was developed by Aiva Health, which was developed through the hospital’s accelerator program. Nurses dictate into the nurse assistant app, which then populates Epic fields upon their approval.

Research

An American Medical Association survey finds that two-thirds of physicians recognize the benefit of AI. Use of AI in practice doubled in one year to 66%, while 57% see administrative burden as its biggest opportunity.

Other

A student-run media site profiles how Brown University Health physicians are using AI, including simplifying the language of surgical consent forms and using OpenAI’s Voice Engine to provide patients who have lost their voice with a text-to-speech tool that sounds like them.

Harvard Medical School psychiatrist and bioethics professor Rebecca Brendel, MD, JD ponders whether AI should be used in end-of-life decision-making, raising these issues:

• Clinicians will respect the wishes of a patient as long as they are competent to make decisions and don’t want something that is medically contraindicated.
• AI might help after the initial diagnosis if decisions will be made between treatment and palliation.
• It might also help in situations where patients are incapacitated, have few relationships, and have avoided treatment.
• It’s not enough to decide from the odds of survival alone since people who have experienced a sudden tragedy wouldn’t necessarily have the same wishes as someone who has battled a chronic illness over time.
• Decisions of high consequence should always be made by humans.
• Information asymmetry has always caused healthcare professionals to be held in high esteem, but AI might outperform humans in some aspects, which would shift professional emphasis to how they use information and interact with patients.

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 2/12/25

PSI Secures $156M VA Contract for EHR Test & Evaluation Support

The VA awards Planned Systems International a contract to support the EHR Modernization Integration Office’s software testing and evaluation as Oracle Health is rolled out to additional facilities.

Apple brings heart rate monitoring to Powerbeats Pro 2

Apple adds a heart rate monitoring feature to its newest earbuds that is compatible with its Health app and several other popular fitness apps.

Backline by DrFirst, Five Wishes, and MyDirectives Partner to Offer ACP Complete, a Beginning-to-end Advance Care Planning Solution

Backline by DrFirst, Five Wishes, and MyDirectives launch ACP Complete, an advance care planning solution that guides patients via virtual consultations.

News 2/12/25

Top News

Doximity reports Q3 results: revenue up 25%, EPS $0.40 versus $0.26, beating analyst expectations for both and sending shares up nearly 40% on the news.

DOCS  shares have gained 170% in the past 12 months, valuing the physician professional network company at $14 billion.

Co-founder and CEO Jeff Tangney holds shares worth nearly $5 billion.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Check out what HIStalk sponsors will be doing at the ViVE conference in Nashville next week. 

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Symplr. Symplr is a leader in enterprise healthcare operations software and services with a first-of-its-kind operations platform. Trusted in nine of 10 US hospitals and 400+ US health plans, Symplr optimizes operations and maximizes care powered by its cloud-based workforce, quality, provider data management, and spend solutions. Gain efficiencies, reduce complexity, and improve outcomes where it matters most. Thanks to Symplr for supporting HIStalk.

I found this Symplr explainer video on YouTube.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “Successfully Navigating Post-Acute Rev Cycle Challenges.” Sponsors: Inovalon and KanTime. Presenters: David Swenson, senior manager of sales engineering, Inovalon; Lucy Lopez, VP of product management, KanTime. Learn how to speed up your revenue cycle processes and avoid the common RCM and eligibility errors that cause delays and denials. Discover strategies to boost your bottom line: streamline eligibility verification, simplify complex processes, and optimize denial management for improved cash flow.

Instant Access Webinar: “How AI Addresses Resource Constraints Within Identity Data Management.” Sponsor: Rhapsody. Presenters: Lynn Stoltz, MS, director of product management, Rhapsody; Drew Ivan, MS, chief architect, Rhapsody; Michelle Blackmer, chief marketing officer, Rhapsody. Discover how to overcome the toughest challenge in identity data management: resource constraints.  The presenters will cover how Rhapsody EMPI with Autopilot solves resource challenges like limitations in time, talent, and budget; Reduces costs and risks associated with inaccurate data; and boosts identity data accuracy through 98% decision-making precision.

Survey: “Data Quality Survey 2025.” Sponsor: Clinical Architecture. This annual survey measures the perceived quality of the data in healthcare, the impact of data quality on individual and collective objectives, and the factors contributing to poor quality. We do this across different healthcare market segments since each segment creates, collects, uses, and disseminates the data differently. Responses are welcome and appreciated from those who are associated with providers, payers, life sciences, public health, academia, value-based care, analytics vendors, EHR vendors, and consultants.

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Sales

• Columbus Community Hospital (NE), Pipeline Health System (CA), Sioux Falls Specialty Hospital (SD), and West Calcasieu Cameron Hospital (LA) will roll out Altera Digital Health’s Paragon Denali EHR.
• Vizient selects Andor Health’s ThinkAndor virtual care collaboration software.
• Southern Illinois Healthcare will implement Counterpart Health’s AI-powered physician enablement and patient insights software.
• The VA awards Planned Systems International a contract to support the EHR Modernization Integration Office’s software testing and evaluation as Oracle Health is rolled out to additional facilities.
• AdventHealth will implement care coordination software from Aidin at its hospitals in nine states.
• Door County Medical Center (WI) will replace Meditech with Epic in February 2026.
• Doctors Hospital (FL) selects virtual care technology from CareView Communications.
• Virtua Health (NJ) will use Unite Us software to standardize its Health-Related Social Needs referral process.

People

LeanTaaS promotes Tim Vasil, MS, MBA to CTO.

Episcopal Health Services (NY) names John Rossi (Stamford Health) VP and chief digital information officer.

Upfront Healthcare promotes Lisa Rhind, MA to SVP of client services.

Industry long-timer Tom Griga (The HCI Group) joins Divurgent as SVP of client service. 

OncoHealth names Jon Maack, MBA (Definitive Healthcare) as CEO.

Todd Dunn, MBA (The Innovators Journey) joins Accuryn Medical as chief transformation officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Lincata introduces LincTV, an HDMI plug-in device that enables Epic MyChart Bedside to run on existing TVs. The device supports virtual nursing and patient monitoring by connecting to cameras, microphones, and motion sensors. Chairman and CEO Tom White, MBA is an industry veteran who previously co-founded Vocada and Phynd, which were acquired by Nuance and Symplr, respectively.

AdvancedMD releases its first major enhancements to its EHR, PM, and patient engagement platform since the company was acquired by Francisco Partners last fall. Updates include redesigned Patient and Responsible Party cards, a population health reporting system, and clinical notes auto-save.

Backline by DrFirst, Five Wishes, and MyDirectives launch ACP Complete, an advance care planning solution that guides patients via virtual consultations.

A new Black Book Market Research report names Clearwater as the leading healthcare cybersecurity firm.

KLAS’s inaugural report on revenue cycle optimization ranks Guidehouse, Chartis, and Tegria as top performers for Epic users; Signature Performance for Oracle Health; and Huron for Meditech. Huron, Chartis, Healthrise, and Impact Advisors lead in identifying high-value optimization opportunities.

Other

Saudi Arabia’s deputy minister for e-health and digital transformation says that Seha Virtual Hospitals is using advanced AI to analyze images and screen people for chronic conditions. It is connected to 200 hospitals via the country’s HIE.

Three Germany-based university hospitals saw no significant change in inappropriate imaging ordering following their implementation of a clinical decision support system. Those orders made up  5% to 8% of the total.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity sponsors the Wolfson Children’s Challenge to support Wolfson Children’s Hospital (FL).
• Healthcare IT Leaders appoints CEO Ben Hilmes, MHA to its board.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health” podcast, “Interview with Aaron Neinstein, MD.”
• Vyne Medical announces that its hosted Trace Platform and Refyne Denials Management solutions have earned certified status by HITRUST for information security.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast,: “Selling Pharmacy Benefits: Relationships, Rebates, GLP-1s, and More, with Bridget Mulvenna.”
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a new white paper titled “Improving Efficiency & Meeting User Demand with ITSM Practices in Healthcare.”
• Clearwater will present at the University of Louisville’s ISACA Kentuckiana Chapter’s Secure Digital Conference February 14.

Blog Posts

• Denial Remediation: Preventing Denials (AGS Health)
• The journey toward better healthcare is underway: A look at Sunrise (Altera Digital Health)
• CIO Insights: Seizing Big Tech Opportunities for Greater Impact (CereCore)
• Extreme Usability in Post-Acute Care: Technology That Works the Way You Do (Netsmart)
• “This is how I do it”: uncovering gaps in data-driven clinical workflows (Philips Capsule)
• Overcoming Capacity Management Challenges in Patient Access (Tegria)
• Our 11th Best in KLAS: Leading the Future of Healthcare Analytics (Dimensional Insight)

Contacts

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