Healthcare AI News 3/4/26

News

Oura is testing a women’s health AI model for its smart ring that allows users to ask questions about reproductive health. The feature is an enhancement to Oura Advisor, which analyzes health trends, visualizes collected data, and creates health plans.

Quest Diagnostics adds an AI-powered chat feature to its patient app and portal that answers questions about lab results.

Business

UnityAI, which offers a healthcare agentic AI platform, raises $8.5 million in Series A funding.

OpenEvidence launches Doctor Dialer, which lets clinicians place calls using a customizable caller ID number, send and receive secure messages within the OpenEvidence app, send and receive faxes, leave straight-to-voicemail messages for patients, and automatically create clinical notes.

GenieMD announces a health chatbot that offers free healthcare guidance and connects users to a board-certified doctor for a paid telehealth visit if needed.

Other

A California doctor warns patients that emails linking to a video offering $45 telehealth visits with him via WhatsApp are a scam. The video is an AI-generated fake that uses images of him and a colleague, and recipients, many of them older patients, are asked to provide payment information to schedule an appointment.

A retired pediatrician testifies in Rhode Island Family Court that he asked ChatGPT if physicians can prescribe medications for themselves or family members as he faces scrutiny in a contentious trial over grandparents’ visitation rights. His  son-in-law alleges that the grandfather’s medical advice and prescribing practices contributed to his wife’s death and harmed their child. He also filed a complaint with the state department of health that accused his in-laws of engaging in Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy by prescribing excessive amounts of drugs to his wife and daughter to make them dependent on them.

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Readers Write: How AI is Helping Providers Navigate Regulatory Uncertainty

How AI is Helping Providers Navigate Regulatory Uncertainty
By Mindy Fortson

Mindy Fortson is COO of Experian Health.

Healthcare organizations have always had to navigate change. But lately, it may feel like the ground is constantly shifting, with The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) being the latest example.

While its full impact won’t be felt until next year, many providers who were surveyed say that they are not prepared and expect major challenges with eligibility and billing.

For many revenue cycle teams, this uncertainty may be creating real anxiety in day-to-day operations for staff who are already overextended. They must prepare for stricter eligibility checks, increased reporting mandates, and the likelihood of more patients cycling in and out of coverage. Providers are turning to AI not as a futuristic concept, but as a stabilizing force that brings consistency, clarity, and efficiency to increasingly complex operational demands.

Providers are asking these questions about OBBBA, and responsible AI-driven support may help answer them.

How Will Providers Know Which Patients Are About to Lose Coverage?

One of the most immediate concerns surrounding OBBBA is coverage volatility. The Congressional Budget Office anticipates that 11.8 million individuals could lose health insurance over the next decade due to policy changes, including new community engagement requirements and more frequent eligibility reviews. For providers, the challenge is not only that coverage may change, but that it may change quickly and unpredictably, creating instability at the front end of the revenue cycle.

That raises an urgent operational question: How do we identify coverage risk early, before it turns into denied claims or uncompensated care?

Many eligibility workflows are manual and fragmented and were not built for this level of change. Revenue cycle teams are already balancing staffing shortages, rising claim denial rates, and growing payer complexity.

AI solutions can help providers build more consistent operational foundations. They can identify accurate patient information, automate eligibility and insurance discovery checks, flag incomplete documentation, and lessen the burden of manual tasks.

Denials are likely to become a bigger pressure point under OBBBA, especially when coverage status changes between scheduling, registration, and billing. When teams are already stretched thin, even small documentation gaps can quickly turn into delayed reimbursement and rework. Operational consistency will be one of the most important safeguards providers can build in the years ahead.

Are Providers Ready for a Surge in Self-Pay and Uncompensated Care?

OBBBA is expected to increase the number of patients moving into self-pay categories, which is a group that already represents the highest share of bad debt write-offs. Loss of coverage doesn’t mean that patients stop needing care. But it does mean that providers face greater financial unpredictability.

Providers are asking: How do we maintain financial stability while patient responsibility grows?

Many providers need more reliable ways to understand patient populations, anticipate payment challenges, and engage patients with clearer payment options earlier in the process. AI-driven solutions can bring structure to this complexity by analyzing large amounts of patient data, demographic indicators, and billing patterns to support segmentation and reduce guesswork in collection strategies.

These tools can also identify potential charity eligibility and help providers better anticipate which patients may struggle to pay. Many providers need more predictable workflows for both staff and patients in an increasingly uncertain coverage environment.

How Will Providers Navigate Additional Operational Complexities?

OBBBA introduces a new layer of operational complexity. Each state will implement the provisions of this law differently. Providers will need to understand both state and federal rules to ensure compliance. Eligibility may hinge on employment hours, participation in training programs, or exemption status that can change month to month. Documentation may be incomplete, delayed, or interpreted differently across states.

For providers, the question becomes: How do we confirm coverage status with confidence when eligibility itself is more dynamic?

The risk isn’t only that patients lose coverage. It’s that coverage appears active at one point in the process and changes before a claim is adjudicated. That creates exposure to retroactive terminations, denials, and rework that strain staff.

Managing this kind of volatility requires more than manual verification. AI can help monitor eligibility timelines, flag missing or inconsistent documentation, and prompt earlier intervention when redetermination windows approach.

In addition, providers need access to broader, more complete data than a single insurance record. They will need to know the correct order of benefits if a patient has more than one insurance and whether they are likely to qualify for Medicaid if they appear uninsured. Eligibility may increasingly depend on data elements that providers have not traditionally needed to consider, like employment status or volunteer activities and income verification.

AI can help pull together these disparate data points and support more consistent front-end decision-making, especially when eligibility is dynamic and documentation requirements are evolving.

As implementation unfolds, operational consistency will depend on building workflows that can adapt to these requirements without adding unnecessary friction for staff or patients.

Preparing Now Means Building Stability into Core Workflows

Providers don’t need every answer today, but they do need to be asking the right questions:

• Which patients may fall through coverage gaps?
• How will self-pay growth change financial exposure?
• Where are administrative processes most vulnerable?

In a time of constant change, providers are searching for stability and workflows that are clearer, more consistent, and less reactive. AI, applied thoughtfully and responsibly, can help bring that stability into the revenue cycle. This technology is one of the best ways to ease administrative strain and help staff focus on what matters most.

This Week in Health Tech 3/4/26

Readers Write: All I Needed to Know to Disrupt Healthcare I Learned from “Seinfeld,” the Epilogue: The Summer of George

All I Needed to Know to Disrupt Healthcare I Learned from “Seinfeld,” the Epilogue: The Summer of George
By Bruce Brandes

Bruce Brandes, MBA is co-founder and board chair of WhaleHawk and CEO of Mindyra Health.

In 2014-15, I authored a seven-part blog series at the encouragement of Mr. HIStalk to reflect on my years of lessons learned in this industry through the satirical but surprisingly parallel lens of the greatest sitcom of all time.

Posts like Do The Opposite, And You Want to Be My Latex Salesman, and Yada Yada Yada were intended to reorient the mindset of how healthcare solution companies approach their go-to-market activities.

Similar to my TV friend Larry David as he wrapped “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” over a decade later, I felt compelled to pen this as a bit of an epilogue to my old HIStalk series, while also illuminating a next-generation path forward as we rethink commercial relationships in healthcare.

Unlike George Costanza, I was not special enough to get hired at PlayNow, nor was I Penske material. Instead, over the past 10 years, I’ve been fortunate to have had firsthand experience in growing transformational healthcare companies, including Livongo, Teladoc, Care.ai, and Stryker.  

Operating a healthcare organization has never been more difficult. Financial pressures, dizzying technological advances, workforce challenges, and daily policy uncertainty are among a litany of existential issues. Consequently, every solution company needs to completely reimagine how it discovers, approaches, engages, and closes new business. More importantly, the focus on value, outcomes, and building enduring relationships is paramount. Who knows more about enduring relationships than Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer?

Through “Seinfeld” wisdom, combined with my career journey, I’ve developed an understanding of how healthcare executives prioritize investments, navigate buying decisions, and set partnership expectations. Moreover, I’ve discovered the secrets, strategies, and tactics of successful solution companies and their most effective sales leaders and account reps.  

Go-to-market in healthcare takes too long and costs too much. Reps commonly prioritize the wrong accounts, engage at the wrong time, and make a pitch that sounds like everyone else’s and is more focused on what they want to sell than the problems their prospect seeks to solve.

Like George Costanza’s invention of the IToilet (only “Curb” loyalists may get that reference), the power of agentic AI and a treasure trove of digitized industry data are creating a better way to make your life easier.

I see many healthcare sales reps using ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. to help them conduct market and account research. My question is, does this actually help or hinder a solution company’s go-to-market success?

Are we simply accelerating unwanted outreach? Does rogue, individualized use of generic LLMs exacerbate the inconsistency of a company’s approach and messaging? Is decision-making in healthcare different enough to warrant a more customized approach?

I contend that using generic LLMs for some research is OK, but the findings are superficial and insufficient if you aspire to improve the overall ROI you are getting on your sales and marketing investment.

We must train LLMs to more deeply understand how selling and decision-making in healthcare is different from any other industry. Sales cycles are long because, more often than not, the optimism of a sales rep does not reflect the realism facing buyers. LLMs must be customized to create sales acceleration agents that are deeply trained in our industry dynamics, on each specific account, and on each individual decision maker, contextualized to the unique solution and best practices.

Three key agentic deliverables will ensure the focused, efficient path to growth every company seeks while enabling a more collaborative relationship with clients.

Know WHERE to Go

Is your go-to-market plan rooted in legacy marketing investments, dated market data subscriptions, and antiquated sales enablement tools? Smarter market segmentation must refine your ideal customer profile at a much deeper level than “academic medical centers” or “community hospitals with 250+ beds.” Real data intelligence is informed by patterns across an array of less obvious variables, such as operating metrics, financial trends, workforce dynamics, governance, leadership histories, community influences, etc. so you don’t waste time chasing accounts that will likely never make a buying decision.

Know WHEN to Engage

How well do you understand the priorities of your prospects and honestly assess your solution’s relevancy, respectfully not persisting when your offering is not a fit or the timing isn’t right? A custom healthcare LLM can continuously monitor tens of thousands of digital healthcare-specific data sources — across government reporting, podcasts, industry news, policy trends, videos, clinical journals, financial filings, and social media — and correlate those insights with the context of your value proposition. That allows you to be the first to make timely connections when a potential buyer would be most receptive to your outreach.

Know HOW to Win

Are all of your reps consistently engaging in a way that is hyper-personalized, but rooted in your proven best practices? Too often, companies lead with spam emails, unwanted LinkedIn messages, trade show chocolates, texts, and unsolicited calls that waste time and money while detrimentally littering our industry and damaging your brand. Proper use of modern agents will create customized playbooks that guide informed, personalized conversations and organizational insights that demonstrate your diligence and expertise that will save time for your best reps to manage more accounts and ensure that every rep performs more like your best reps.

George Costanza once warned that “A George divided against itself cannot stand.” Take heed, and rethink how engaging healthcare-specific, custom LLM-trained agents can reduce ineffective sales and marketing efforts to catalyze a new approach for growth, leading to a less-cluttered industry and better outcomes for all.

Readers Write: AI Can’t Feel Emotions, But It Can Be Designed to Care

AI Can’t Feel Emotions, But It Can Be Designed to Care
By Richard Mackey

Richard Mackey, MBA is CTO at CCS.

AI-assisted chronic disease management is becoming a reality. Some of the biggest AI companies have set their sights on healthcare with the launch of solutions like ChatGPT for Health and new personal health data management tools like those offered by Claude from Anthropic.

Chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and depression require not just medical oversight, but consistent engagement, trust, and behavioral support. AI tools are starting to offer just that, both inside and outside of the traditional care environment.

Still, if those AI interactions feel cold, impersonal, or judgmental, they can drive disengagement, the opposite of what’s needed to improve long-term patient outcomes.

Done poorly, AI can amplify the very problems that it is supposed to solve. Done well, empathetic AI becomes a force multiplier, extending the reach of human care, building trust at scale, and helping people feel supported, even when interacting with a “machine.”

When Empathy Is a Design Challenge

Empathy in AI isn’t about simulating emotions or pretending to be human when it’s not. AI shouldn’t try to be human, but it does need a native understanding of the emotional context of the interaction and an ability to respond in a way that feels respectful, supportive, and authentic. In other words, empathy in AI is a design problem, one that spans data, UX, language, and intended purpose.

Consider the example of a patient managing type 2 diabetes. If a patient stops using their continuous glucose monitor, a typical automated system might flag it as noncompliance. But an empathetic AI agent that is trained not just to process the data but also to understand human behavior might recognize subtle signals in the data that indicate emotional burnout or socioeconomic barriers, and adjust the tone of outreach accordingly. That could mean offering reassurance instead of reminders, or escalating the case to a human clinician or social worker for follow-up.

Striking the right tone and balance in the design of communication with the agent, seeking to understand or offer encouragement, for example, will make a meaningful difference in whether a patient reengages or shuts down.

The ROI of Empathy

In value-based healthcare, where providers and health plans are financially accountable for outcomes, empathetic AI that is embedded in chronic disease management workflows can have measurable impact. AI can use sentiment analysis or behavioral cues to help identify patients who are at risk of disengagement or decline, triggering proactive interventions from human outreach staff.

AI can also handle routine administrative tasks with appropriate tone and timing and without clocking out at the end of an eight-hour shift, freeing up human clinicians to focus on complex, relationship-based care that fosters engagement and sustains motivation.

The result is fewer hospitalizations, higher therapy adherence, improved satisfaction scores, and ultimately, better chronic experiences and better health outcomes at lower cost.

Designing for Trust in the Age of Automation

As AI becomes more embedded in the healthcare ecosystem, its ability to convey empathy in a transparent way must be a priority. Research has already shown that it’s possible, with human respondents identifying AI responses as more empathetic and engaging across scenarios ranging from crisis situationsand cancer care to everyday communications from healthcare providers.

The consumer world is quickly operationalizing this approach, with companies like beauty brand Sephora and airline Qatar Airways scoring accolades for their AI assistants’ optimal blend of digital efficiency, personalization tools, and engagingly empathetic personality. As companies like OpenAI and Anthropic turn their attention to healthcare, they are likely to lean into a similar empathy-first approach to assist individuals with healthcare-specific tasks.

The key to success will be maintaining transparency and trust in the AI-powered healthcare ecosystem as we leverage the technology’s seemingly near-limitless potential. The bottom line is that we don’t need AI to have feelings, but we do need it to understand ours, especially when and where support and care is needed most as a patient.

Morning Headlines 3/4/26

TPG Partners with Findhelp to Expand Access to Essential Services for Underserved Populations

Social care technology vendor Findhelp secures $250 million in new funding.

KeyCare Raises $27.4 Million to Scale their AI-Powered, Epic-Based Virtual Care Solution for Health Systems

KeyCare, an Epic-based virtual care company, raises $27.4 million in funding.

Quantum Health Acquires CirrusMD to Advance Healthcare Navigation with Physician-Led Virtual Care

Employee-focused healthcare navigation company Quantum Health acquires virtual care provider CirrusMD.

FDA Warns 30 Telehealth Companies Against Illegal Marketing of Compounded GLP-1s

FDA sends 30 telehealth companies letters warning them against making false or misleading claims about compounded GLP-1 products offered on their websites.

News 3/4/26

Top News

Findhelp secures $250 million in new funding.

The company’s consumer-facing connected safety net,, which does not require users to register, facilitates referrals to community-based services for critical needs such as food, housing, utility assistance, and transportation

Reader Comments

From NewMexicoFNP: “Re: Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services. CEO Wayne Gillis describes on LinkedIn how his hospital’s labor costs increased by $400,000 per month after its Epic go-live, He blames inefficient workflow design and governance decisions that were made during implementation. His team identified five major drivers of waste — duplicate documentation, excessive inbox alerts, unused order sets, inefficient medication reconciliation steps, and time-consuming chart navigation. They eliminated redundant configurations, reduced alert noise, streamlined order sets and med rec clicks, and improved chart access to reclaim $287,000 per month in labor costs, modestly above their pre-implementation baseline.” His most interesting point is that the changes they made to save $3.4 million per year involved undoing “best practice” recommendations.

From Harlan: “Re: FDA breakthrough designation for AI tools. There are no measurable endpoints in adaptive AI that learns from interactions, so what is being validated, the model, the training, or the company’s governance process? Post-market monitoring and version control will matter more than pre-market review. It doesn’t do any good to certify a snapshot that is deployed as a moving target.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS26 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

KeyCare, an Epic-based virtual care company, raises $27.4 million in funding. The company will use the proceeds to expand its AI capabilities and to continue scaling its platform.

Bloomberg reports that Oracle Health EVP Sanga Viswanathan and SVP Suhas Uliyar are leaving the company, although its sources seem to be anonymous Reddit posts. Some of those Reddit posts also claim that SVP/Chief Health Officer Bharat Sutariya, MD, MS has left. Bloomberg notes that SVPs Quais Taraki, Ofer Michael, and Max Romanenko departed the company recently.

Q-rounds, which offers an app that notifies patients, nurses, and family members of the status of clinician bedside rounds, announces $1.8 million in funding. The company launched in 2018 in partnership with the University of Minnesota and M Health Fairview.

Arrive Health and DoseSpot combine to create Interra Health, which offers software to support prescribing for providers and patients. Bain Capital Tech Opportunities serves as the majority owner of the new company. DoseSpot CEO Josh Weiner becomes CEO of Interra, while Arrive Health CEO Kyle Kiser becomes a board member and senior advisor.

Sales

• The Allina Health Minneapolis Heart Institute selects Innovaccer’s Story Health virtual specialty care and patient monitoring platform.
• Ardent Health will implement Hellocare.ai’s AI-assisted virtual nursing, telehealth, and virtual patient safety monitoring modules.

People

Wolters Kluwer promotes Stacey Caywood, MBA to CEO and executive board chair.

John Nicolosi, PharmD (LucyRx) joins Judi Health as chief administrative officer.

Clear promotes David Bardan. MBA to SVP/GM/head of healthcare and gov tech.

Announcements and Implementations

Healthcare service desk operator Ellit Groups implements Talkdesk’s Healthcare Experience Cloud.

CoxHealth (MO) goes live on Epic.

Starkey Ranch ER & Hospital (FL) implements Juno Health’s EHR.

No-code business application development platform vendor Knack launches Knack Health, a platform for creating internal tools, patient-facing forms, and operational workflows.

Government and Politics

The VA will expand its use of ambient scribe technology, developed by Knowtex and Abridge, from 10 pilot sites to 130 medical centers, with assistance from software and AI development companies Rise8 and Thoughtworks.

The FDA grants breakthrough device designation to RecovryAI’s physician-prescribed post-operative recovery Virtual Care Assistants.

Privacy and Security

CancerX and Clearwater launch the CancerX Cybersecurity Mark program to ensure that oncology-related technologies meet enterprise-grade security standards before they are deployed within health systems.

Other

Lee Health (FL) CEO Larry Antonucci, MD, MBA details the health system’s efforts to unify its treatment plans for sickle cell patients, including the creation of a sickle cell patient registry and personalized sickle cell action plans that are embedded in its EHR. The tools support 400 patients.

A VA study of 12,000 patients with chronic kidney disease finds that those whose care was managed virtually by a nephrologist had a 15% lower mortality rate than those whose care was managed solely by a primary care provider. The same set of patients also exhibited significantly higher rates of medication adherence.

Sponsor Updates

• VectorCare launches its Open API 2.0 and an integration with Bambi, which offers software for non-emergency medical transportation.
• First Databank connects its FDB Vela EPrescribing Network with Photon’s digital prescription marketplace.
• CereCore offers “The Buyer’s Guide to IT Managed Services: Your Guide to Smarter Healthcare IT Decisions.”
• Philips Capsule launches its Device Driver Interface Library to verify compatibility of devices with its medical device integration solutions.
• CloudWave appoints Brian Lamberger as general manager of cybersecurity solutions.

Blog Posts

• Preventing Denials by Navigating the Complexities of Notice of Admission (NOA) (AGS Health)
• The human side of AI: How small steps can empower, not replace (Altera Digital Health)
• Care management software: Overview and 10 options for 2026 (Arcadia)
• Top Occupational Medicine EHR Software in 2026 (Bizmatics)
• The Mechanics of Medication Management: Conversations at ViVE (DrFirst)

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 3/3/26

Interra Health, created through the merger of DoseSpot and Arrive Health, ushers in a new era of transparency for patients and providers

Arrive Health and DoseSpot combine to create Interra Health, which offers software designed to enhance the prescribing process for patients and providers.

An app that answers ‘When will the doctor be here?’ raises $1.8 million

Q-rounds, which offers an app that notifies patients, nurses, and family members of rounds, announces $1.8 million in funding.

Ease Health Emerges from Stealth with $41M from Andreessen Horowitz to Redefine the Operating System for Behavioral Health

Behavioral health software startup Ease Health raises $41 million in Series A funding.

Revology Launches Strategic Revenue Cycle Partnership with Margaret Mary Health

Margaret Mary Health transitions (IN) 53 staff members to employment with Revology, its new RCM vendor.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 3/2/26

Clinical informatics is a broad subspecialty. Board certification requires being knowledgeable across a broad range of domains. The American Board of Preventive Medicine, which along with the American Board of Pathology can grant certification, distills it for its website:

Physicians who practice Clinical Informatics collaborate with other health care and information technology professionals to analyze, design, implement and evaluate information and communication systems that enhance individual and population health outcomes, improve patient care, and strengthen the clinician-patient relationship. Clinical Informaticians use their knowledge of patient care combined with their understanding of informatics concepts, methods, and tools to: assess information and knowledge needs of healthcare professionals and patients; characterize, evaluate, and refine clinical processes; develop, implement, and refine clinical decision support systems; and lead or participate in the procurement, customization, development, implementation, management, evaluation, and continuous improvement of clinical information systems.

The description doesn’t specifically describe patient-facing tools, but it does cover individual health outcomes, improving patient care, and building the patient-physician relationship. These goals are easier to accomplish when clinicians have tools at our disposal that help patients understand their own health situation and provide education and information.

Plenty of other entities are trying to grab our patients’ attention, which can lead to interesting conversations in the exam room as we work to counter medical misinformation or try to lead patients to consider evidence-based care plans.

I was surprised to see a study in Communications Biology this week that looked at direct-to-consumer testing. The results of tests that look at the microbiome of the digestive system varied dramatically among laboratory providers. The authors sent identical stool samples to the vendors, but each identified different bacterial levels, and only three of more than 1,200 bacteria were consistently identified across all the reports.

It wasn’t just variability between single samples that were sent to multiple facilities, but also among identical samples that were sent to the same facility. For one set of samples, the lab identified one submission as “unhealthy,” while two identical submissions were “healthy.”

The authors hoped to better understand the consistency and reliability of direct-to-consumer testing, which is not required to comply with the same level of regulations that traditional clinical laboratories must meet. Many of these tests fall under the category of “wellness” rather than being designed to diagnose a specific condition. Many physicians find the term “wellness” irritating because it has been used to hawk everything from unregulated botanical substances to jade eggs that are to be placed in the vagina to enhance sensuality (they are also an infection risk and may cause pelvic floor dysfunction, so those are a “no” when patients ask.) 

The authors found that bacteria in the genus Clostridium had the most variability in the reports. Three labs failed to detect it in one or more samples, and one reported it at five times the expected level.

The authors attribute the variability to different reference databases, reporting cutoffs, sample processing protocols, testing methods, and quality control standards. One of their goals was to make a point that just because a direct-to-consumer test is popular doesn’t mean that it is accurate, and that patients should understand the limited evidence that is behind such tests.

As a middle school science fair judge, it is an issue when three identical runs of the same experiment give different outcomes. For those who are curious, the paper details how exactly they prepared the identical specimens, all of which were obtained from a single donor.

Some direct-to-consumer tests get a lot of attention and often lead to patients arriving at the office of their primary care physician, asking us to treat something that isn’t actually a problem. I’ve seen multiple people bring in salivary hormone test panels that aren’t evidence-based and also allergy testing results that can be downright dangerous if not handled appropriately.

I enjoy working with patients who are engaged and want to take action, but these visits often lead to lengthy conversations that may not fit in the typical busy primary care schedule. Also, patients are almost universally unaware that at-home tests are not of the same level and quality as those that we would order in the office or during a virtual visit.

The authors call on the industry to take concrete steps to improve the transparency and interpretation of gut microbiome testing. These could also be applied to other types of testing. Specifically, they call on labs to address the idea of clinical validity and whether testing yields data showing correlation or causation with respect to a given health factor.

They also call for improved analytical performance in the testing process, maximizing both accuracy and precision. They go further to recommend that the industry work with testing companies and other stakeholders to create guidelines for testing, which would improve the validity of testing as well as the confidence of consumers who seek it.

Although patient-directed stool testing isn’t something you typically hear much about, research like this highlights some of the opportunities for clinical informatics experts to lend their knowledge to the task. We can help identify if a population-level issue  needs to be investigated, perform qualitative and quantitative research to understand the scope of the problem, support researchers as they seek data and information around the topic, and identify how the findings might be used to improve patient care.

We can also configure the tools at our disposal to help identify which patients would benefit from such testing, configure clinical decision support systems based on new evidence, and automate the creation of treatment plans based on the results while delivering effective patient education along the way.

Many of my colleagues think that clinical informatics team members just build order sets and flowsheets in the EHR all day. They don’t necessarily have exposure to all the different types of healthcare technology we can employ and how it can have an impact on the patients and communities that we serve.

As more of us enter the field, we should be able to provide that kind of education and exposure to our specialty. Our colleagues should know what we can do, just as they know how a cardiologist or pulmonologist can contribute to the care team.

What’s the most interesting clinical informatics project your team has done? Has your group built any tools that address direct-to-consumer testing or management of those results? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Readers Write: Healthcare’s Seasonal Surge is Upon Us. Is Your Health System Ready?

Healthcare’s Seasonal Surge is Upon Us. Is Your Health System Ready?
By Dusti Browning, RN

Dusti Browning, RN, MSN is VP of growth and client solutions for Conduit Health Partners.

Seasonal surges happen every year, and 2026 is particularly brutal. The flu was already associated with 120,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths by the end of 2025.

The winter months often bring with them a tidal wave of respiratory viruses, influenza, RSV, and COVID. Clinicians expect them. But while these spikes in patient volume are predictable, too many health systems find themselves in a challenging supply-and-demand environment that can negatively impact patient care and the bottom line.

A recent report found that 60% of nurses are experiencing a significant uptick in patient volume and case complexity amid the current flu season. As seasonal surges collide with ongoing emergency department (ED) overcrowding and staffing shortages, health systems face mounting pressure to find scalable, practical solutions.

The national report surveyed 64 nurses, half working in triage and half in transfer centers, and found that 70% of nurses believe that offering 24/7 virtual nurse triage prevents unnecessary ED visits. In fact, additional industry data points to an ED avoidance rate of 72 to 76% over the past two years, meaning nearly three out of four triage encounters are resolved without an ED visit.

While hospitals and health systems can’t eliminate seasonal surges, they can anticipate them and implement systems that reduce strain.

Protecting System Capacity Remotely

The report found the most frequent patient concerns during the seasonal surge include minor respiratory symptoms, medication management, chronic disease follow-up, and low-acuity infections. Around 75% of nurses report that remote solutions help manage these issues effectively. This is significant given the challenges facing health systems during seasonal surges. A separate study found that 35% of patients that present to an ED during the winter months wait four or more hours for a bed.

Safeguarding capacity in today’s EDs is an imperative, with stats from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showing that 42.7 visits per 100 people start in the ED. As those numbers continue to increase, virtual nurse triage provides an alternative access point that is proven to reduce strain on health system EDs during seasonal surges.

Notably, the recent patient access and throughput report found that nearly one in three avoided emergency visits associated with nurse triage after regular clinic hours. This demonstrates that real-time clinical access can help patients reach the right level of care at times when they are more likely to turn to the ED. The end result is improved overall access to care, better outcomes, and lower costs. A measurable decrease in staff burden and burnout further strengthens the impact.

Enhancing Patient Experience

When seasonal outbreaks occur, capacity is at a premium, but so is staffing. Burnout continues to be rampant in healthcare. A recent survey conducted by The Harris Poll of 1,504 frontline health care employees revealed that 55% are looking for job openings, interviewing, or planning to switch to a new role in the next year.

While AI and automation are primed to ease administrative burdens in the coming years, the reality is that patients and families in distress often need to speak with a human being. When staff are lacking and already under immense strain, patient experiences are negatively impacted. Lengthy wait times to get to a professional or a frustrating technology-first approach can cause patients to turn to the ED out of desperation. Virtual nurse triage offers a more accessible, clinically appropriate alternative.

The patient access and throughput report found that roughly one in four nurses witness or suspect worsened outcomes due to delays in access or coordination. The findings reinforce the efficacy of virtual nurse triage to address operational challenges of seasonal surges and improve patient outcomes and experiences.

Readiness When Demand Peaks

The CDC predicts that flu activity could continue to rise in the coming weeks. Seasonal surges don’t have to mean bottlenecks and burnout. The data show what works: nurse-first, telephone triage reduces visits to the ED, eases the operational burden of overcrowded waiting rooms, and reduces the risk of worsened outcomes.

As health systems prepare for the next seasonal wave, integrating nurse triage into access pathways isn’t just operational. It is essential for protecting capacity, easing staff strain, and improving patient care.

HIStalk Interviews Guillaume Castel, CEO, PerfectServe

Guillaume Castel, MBA is CEO of PerfectServe.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

I have been CEO at PerfectServe for almost seven years. We have been working hard and making a lot of progress in driving value for our customers and our partners.

Almost seven years ago, we had a different vantage point on the constituents we serve, typically hospitals, health systems, and physician groups. Our commitment to them was that we were going to get the right communication workflows to the right people at the right time using the right channel. To accomplish all this, we went about acquiring and putting together four companies and then a fifth one.

If you fast-forward to today, we have more than doubled the size of our company. We are now 400-plus employees around the United States and Canada, along with some contractors outside the US. We have been deliberate about driving one big value proposition, which is accelerating speed-to-care across the continuum for all users and doing it from the cloud.

Doing all this the right way took some time. Integrating the pieces the right way took some time. But now we have a value proposition that resonates across diverse stakeholders in the United States, increasingly in Canada, and we are knee-deep in some really interesting conversations in Europe.

What does the clinical communication systems market look like, and how do EHR vendors fit in it?

We think of solving two reasonably evergreen problems. One is making sure that your workforce is optimized in the workplace and in the right place. Right people in the right place at the right time, clinicians and staff, to meet the demands of patients. Then once they are there, that they have an almost intuitive way of communicating and collaborating with one another. We are focused on those two big problems.

The second one leverages clinical communication capabilities. We have been ahead of the market in using logic, routing, and technologies to enable complex workflows for typically very large health systems. We partner with a ton of ecosystem vendors. We keep a catalog of 270 integration points with our competitors, with our friends, and obviously with the EHR companies.

I am proud to say that in many instances, we drive value with and for the EHRs with a number of our customers. Having this open-minded view of how to collaborate with clinical systems inside hospitals will continue to be important.

What metrics do health systems use to measure return on investment?

It has changed a lot. If you go back five to 10 years, it was throughput, length of stay, patient satisfaction, and physician and clinician productivity. Those metrics continue to be extraordinarily important for us to track. But now, what is always front and center on the minds of decision makers is clear and demonstrable ROI. 

We have put together a comprehensive platform that offers a lot of capabilities. Our conversation is, this is what we do at PerfectServe. Our Unite platform delivers value across the continuum for all of your users. We can help you with clinical communication issues. We can help you with provider scheduling issues. We can help you with your physician group and practice management issues. We are increasingly helping you with transfer center and operator console software issues. And last but certainly not least, we follow patients when they go home with well integrated patient and family communications.

This allows us to say, tell us what you are using today. Tell us all your scheduling systems across your various sites of care. Tell us about your pagers. Tell us about your sometimes point-to-point texting capabilities. Tell us about your old-school faxing capabilities. Tell about all the servers you have in the basement of your hospitals that are allowing you to power transfer centers.

We can rationalize all of that and drive almost immediate financial ROI for them. This has been a successful strategy for us. It does not exclude the clinical benefit that we drive, and we continue to be clinician-focused. But that immediate consolidation play with guaranteed financial ROI and tackling problems like physician and clinician burnout has been resonating for us in a way that we frankly did not fully anticipate five to seven years ago.

How is the industry looking at how provider scheduling impacts job satisfaction and burnout?

We continue to be surprised with the fact that there continues to be a need for fairness in how schedules are built. Fairness may be as simple as, “I don’t want to be on call three times this week,” or “I want to make sure that I can go attend my kid’s recital on Sunday. Therefore, take my preferences into account.”

Our technology allows administrators and sometimes physician leaders to make sure that all those preferences are taken into account when the schedule is being created, and that people feel that they have been heard. This concept of technology being leveraged to create fair and equal schedules, removing human bias and taking preferences into account, has led to health systems and large physician groups having higher retention rates with their clinicians over long periods of time.

We continue to refine that model. We make sure that when an administrator creates a schedule with our technology, it is a near-perfect schedule that requires as little human intervention as possible.

How are health systems and provider groups using technology to manage inbound communications?

It is going at a rapid pace. We are excited about solving, in partnership with some of our largest customers, this equation and algorithm for almost real-time alignment of patient-to-clinician supply and demand. You will see soon, and in fact a couple of instances are already live, the ability to flex the number of clinicians and support staff that you have in any given location based on the type of patients coming in and the acuity that they are presenting with.

That cannot be predicted six months ahead. You can build a really good schedule six months ahead, but day-to-day changes happen, and we need to be able to embrace that. Our technology is flexible and reflects near-realtime preferences. We can recalibrate who should be where and why.

It’s not as simple as saying that physician Guillaume is going to work from 8 to 4 in this location every Thursday. Sometimes it will be 7 to 3. Sometimes it will be 8 to 6. This alignment of supply and demand is paramount to the wellbeing and the financial health of all of our customers.

How has the role of contact centers changed?

This concept of a contact center is probably the least well-understood part of the hospital. It is the face of it. It is bidirectional. It is both outbound and inbound. It now requires vendors to be nimble with AI capabilities that support patients, their families, clinicians who call the hospital, and even ambulances that call the hospital with an important case that needs care teams to be mobilized in very short order.

The diversity of use cases that go through a transfer center or a contact center has changed a lot. We are proud to have a technology that powers that transfer center. When I think about the product that has driven the most momentum for us over the last couple of years, it’s probably that.

It’s this strategic control point, where you have agents who are trying to match incoming calls from a diverse set of stakeholders. It could be an ambulance, a patient, a family member, or a clinician calling from a physician group who is trying to get an update on their patients that have been admitted. We make sure that those agents can do their best work by having access to schedules and using proper routing and clinical communication to actually deliver a message that will get to the right person at the right time.

That is real innovation, real-time productivity, and true operational improvement for health systems. We are gaining a ton of momentum on that front, and we think that it’s a very big control point for the rest of our technologies.

How do you incorporate AI into your strategy and product roadmap?

We serve about a million users, and as such, we take our job seriously. We embrace AI, but we are also careful, because we cannot afford to make mistakes with models that are imperfect.

The way we think about AI at PerfectServe is twofold. One is internally, where we have embraced AI for the last two years. It has made us more productive. It has made us more efficient. It has made our people happier. There is no end in sight. We have appointed a person who runs AI across all programs at PerfectServe. We have a clear mission to make our company go faster.

Then you have AI applied to our capabilities that are customer-facing. A simple view that I believe is exactly right is that AI will help us get more out of workflow software by converting what was viewed as a workflow into actual work, enabled by agentic AI.

We have seen clear examples. If you are running a call center, you can definitely improve the experience by embracing AI at the first layer of triage levels so that the call gets to the right person in that transfer center, the right way, and with the right context. This is embracing AI in a way that makes an operational difference for the health system without putting at risk any of the clinical outcomes.

We are just starting there. We have a roadmap full of AI projects that are being applied to our work in the ambulatory setting, inside the operator console work that we do in health systems, and increasingly in our provider scheduling capabilities.

What are your lessons learned in leading the company so long and seeing it reach $100 million in annual recurring revenue?

Listen to customers. Invest in technologies that are differentiated, that can stand on their own, and that have real logic. We don’t invest in me-too products that are simple. We think that those will disappear fast.

Integrate your capabilities. Have an open mind to spending money to integrate with all the other vendors that hospitals and physician groups use. We will eventually prove to all of them that our products not only can integrate, but can also enhance the strategy they have already decided.

We had a breakthrough in 2022-2023 where we talked about putting together capabilities that had not been put together before. As recently as earlier this week, we see competitors following our strategy, and it makes us proud. We are focused on the next best thing that we will add to our roster of services and capabilities.

What makes me proudest is our people. We have more than 400 people who spend every day thinking about how they can make our customers better and how we can stitch together better solutions to drive value for them financially, operationally, and clinically. It has worked for us. We still have work to do, but it has been a great ride.

Have you seen challenged startups that might be ripe for acquisition that could help you expand your product?

We are super disciplined. The problem with the market right now is that there is a misalignment between startup valuation expectations and what we believe to be the actual embedded value in the asset that we are interested in. We look at four or five companies every week. When we find the right match between value, culture, and the people that are coming along with the technology, we will pull the trigger, and we will make sure that our customers are aligned with our strategy.

M&A is part of our strategy, and so is building new capabilities internally. We have a track record of doing that. The Healthcare Operator Console product is a good example.

If we pay attention to what our customers are telling us, and if we continue to have a mind pointed towards the future, we will put the right stuff together. That has worked well for us.

Consolidation of capabilities is only starting, and scale is going to matter. The track record is going to matter. Being secure for our customers and proving that every day is going to matter. Embracing AI, integrating, and making sure that we’re present for all stakeholders.

There’s a ton of momentum on the ambulatory side right now, with big multi-specialty groups that have clear enterprise-level software and AI needs. We are happy to be present there. We see very good synergies between those groups and the large health systems that we are lucky enough to have as partners.

We like our position. We work hard every day to make sure that we stay ahead. Research firms have been kind to us, and I think that we have earned it. Gartner has placed us at the top of the Magic Quadrant three years in a row, and we don’t take that lightly. We have had the same success with KLAS reports.

We are focused. We continue to pay attention to what the market is saying. We listen to our customers. We keep our culture. We believe that this is the right recipe for continued success.

Morning Headlines 3/2/26

AHA Comments on ASTP/ONC Health Care Technology Interoperability Proposed Rule

AHA asks for seven changes to ASTP/ONC’s HTI-5 proposed rule, including setting a reasonable transition timeline for changing the certification program to FHIR-based criteria.

UMMC officials say normal operations will resume Monday after cyberattack

University of Mississippi Medical Center will reopen its clinics on Monday, noting that it can now access patient records, following a February 19 ransomware attack.

BrainCheck Raises $13 Million to Expand AI-Enabled Cognitive Care Platform

Digital cognitive assessment and care platform company BrainCheck announces $13 million in Series A funding.

Monday Morning Update 3/2/26

Top News

AHA asks for these changes to ASTP/ONC’s HTI-5 proposed rule:

• Set a reasonable transition timeline for changing the certification program to FHIR-based criteria.
• Maintain criteria for C-CDA since rural providers depend on it.
• Retain certification criteria for privacy and security, transitions of care, and decision support interventions.
• Retain real-world testing conditions.
• Issue broad guidance on AI before defining how it fits within information blocking.
• Retain the “infeasibility” exception that allows providers to deny third-party requests to modify medical records.
• Repeal the disincentive actions that can be taken for information blocking.

Reader Comments

From K-Pop: “Re: medical innovations. This TV series shows cool technologies that are actually real.” Gizmodo lists real-life technical innovations that have been shown on HBO Max’s “The Pitt” that include hand-held ultrasound, AI-assisted transcription, and virtual reality.

From Janus: “Re: conferences. ViVE is an expensive conference, and reading that people attend without a plan makes me cringe. Then folks like Clear are sitting in on all these regulatory meetings pushing products that don’t actually provide any real value. Do patients even WANT Clear? Also, is anyone at HHS considering the fact that patients don’t trust them, and the idea of a nationwide framework / TEFCA is terrifying for a lot of Americans?”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents say that using conferences as a way to meet with customers or prospects efficiently is their top reason for attending. Most don’t place ROI on generating leads.

New poll to your right or here: What does vendor litigation over network patient data sharing say about interoperability governance?

Listening: reader-recommended The Shoaldiggers,  a nine-piece band from NC whose eclectic music, as portrayed on You Tube, requires a van full of instruments such as mandolin, banjo, flute, washboard, a bow-played handsaw that sounds like a theremin, and a comically large upright bass. They are a testimonial for seeing local talent instead of ignoring music that isn’t from your college years or getting locked in to catchiness-engineered hits that feature “performers” who can’t write music or play an instrument.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS26 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

People

Christina Waters, MBA (AssistRx) joins PerfectServe as chief revenue officer.

Announcements and Implementations

A study finds that primary care physicians who cut visit volume by 10% spent more time per visit in Epic, while their after-hours work and inbox time also increased. The authors conclude that asynchronous EHR work continues even when visit volume declines.

The FDA issues 510(k) clearance for six indications to Qure.ai’s algorithm for chest x-ray analysis, increasing its total to 26.

A new KLAS early insight report on digital pathology finds that while adoption by US healthcare organizations lags that of global counterparts at just 15%, use is growing due to newly FDA-cleared products and the possibility of billing for the service.

Privacy and Security

University of Mississippi Medical Center will reopen its clinics on Monday, stating that “we can access patient records” following a February 19 ransomware attack.

Other

This must-read post seems relevant to how small-business health tech folks like physicians and boutique consultants could use healthcare AI. It’s also convinced me that I need to dig deeper into Anthropic’s Claude. An attorney describes how his two-person business law practice competes with huge firms by building its work around Claude:

When legal AI companies talk about customizing AI to a firm’s playbook, they are solving a problem that barely matters and ignoring the one that does. The real leverage comes not from which template the AI starts with, but from the instructions that tell it how to think about the work …. I’ve created custom instruction files, called “skills,” that encode my analytical frameworks, my preferred formats, my voice, and my judgment about how specific types of legal work should be done. When I upload a contract for review, Claude doesn’t apply a generic framework. It doesn’t even apply my firm’s framework. It applies my framework, the one I’ve developed over a decade of practice, automatically. The difference between a firm playbook and an individual lawyer’s encoded judgment is the difference between giving someone a recipe and teaching them how to cook.

Also possibly relevant, Block, the parent company of Square and Cash App, will lay off nearly half of its workforce despite strong business performance. CEO Jack Dorsey says that expanded use of AI allows smaller teams to operate more efficiently and effectively, and he predicts that most companies will follow a similar path within the next year. My observation is that many corporate executives are so convinced, logically or not, that AI will dramatically reduce their headcount needs that they are willing to undertake big downsizings now and figure out the details later.

Epic is right up there with Wendy’s for sassy corporate tweets. I want to believe that doctors aren’t really using MyChart to hit on women, but I’ve worked in hospitals too long to rule it out.

Sponsor Updates

• CVS Caremark expands its use of Surescripts Touchless Prior Authorization.
• Nym celebrates its eighth anniversary.
• Optimum Healthcare IT receives a 2026 ServiceNow Partner of the Year Award.
• Qure.ai’s FDA cleared indications now total 26 across nine products for X-ray and CT, exceeding 65 CE certified indications and other global validations.

Blog Posts

• How AI-Enabled Biomarkers Improve Early Cancer Diagnosis. (Qure.ai)
• Revenue Cycle Tech That Pays for Itself: Building the ROI Case for Automation (Vyne Medical)

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 2/27/26

Health Gorilla Files Motion to Dismiss, Reaffirming Confidence in Interoperability System

Health Gorilla files a motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by Epic and several health systems, which alleges that it enabled third parties to improperly access patient data by misrepresenting their purpose for obtaining records.

Honest Health Raises $140 Million to Advance Value-Based Care for Health Systems; NewSpring Leads Investment

Value-based care enablement company Honest Health announces $140 million in new funding.

Oracle Health Launches Device Validation Program to Streamline Medical Device Integration and Accelerate Innovation in Healthcare

Oracle Health launches a paid program that will validate medical device connectivity, functionality, and workflow alignment.

Third Way Health Raises $15M to Expand AI-Powered Healthcare Front-Office Operations

Healthcare operations software vendor Third Way Health raises $15 million in Series A funding.

News 2/27/26

Top News

Health Gorilla files a motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by Epic and several health systems, which alleges that it enabled third parties to improperly access patient data by misrepresenting their purpose for obtaining records.

Health Gorilla argues that both Carequality and TEFCA require mandatory dispute resolution before litigation, that the interoperability frameworks assign enforcement authority to Carequality and the TEFCA RCE rather than private litigants, and that the complaint alleges at most that Health Gorilla should have been more suspicious rather than that it acted with actual knowledge of willful misconduct.

An Epic spokesperson says that Health Gorilla remains responsible for safeguarding patient data and understanding how it is used, and adds that the matter should be resolved in federal court for transparency.

Meanwhile, LlamaLab, which was also named in the lawsuit, files its own motion to dismiss the document, arguing that Epic bypassed its own contractual dispute obligations and wrongly included the company in the case among several unrelated defendants. LlamaLab, which sells medical records to negligence law firms for $50 per request, says that Epic is protecting its dominance and targeting companies that make it easier for patients to retrieve their own medical records.

Reader Comments

From Beagle Eagle: “Re: Epic v. Health Gorilla. If interoperability only works when one dominant EHR vendor plays traffic cop, then it was never really interoperability. Either the governance frameworks function as designed, or we admit that the network-of-networks model is mostly branding. Watching vendors argue in federal court about who gets to define ‘treatment purpose’ feels like a preview of how TEFCA disputes will play out when real money and market share are at stake.”

From Thalamus: “Re: UMMC downtime. Every health system says downtime procedures are solid, yet hospitals or clinics still go dark for days when ransomware hits. If core ambulatory operations can’t function without network access, then business continuity planning is still theoretical.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

ViVE down, HIMSS to go. My guide to HIMSS26 will be updated ongoing (see Dr. Jayne’s unsolicited testimonial). HIStalk sponsors can provide their participation information to be included. Companies that aren’t sponsors can still get in on the action by contacting Lorre to sign up.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS26 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The chief legal officer of personal health record company ChartSquad warns that law firms and other organizations, including their intermediaries, cannot misrepresent themselves as treating providers to obtain medical records from exchanges. She adds that attorneys should not pay third-party companies to retrieve records, then bill the patient for that service, when established legal pathways allow them to obtain records directly from patients or providers with proper authorization.

Sales

• Wayne General Hospital (MS) will deploy Eko Health’s Sensora AI cardiac detection platform and digital stethoscopes in its emergency and primary care departments.

People

Teresa Tonthat, MBA (Texas Children’s Hospital) joins Cook Children’s Health Care System as SVP/CDIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Mend launches Nutrition for Healing, a free educational resource that addresses evidence-based nutrition as a cornerstone of healing and recovery. Mend’s CEO is industry veteran Paul Roscoe.

A NEJM editorial says that the human-in-the-loop principle should be treated as a design specification that includes three parts: the clinical loop at the point of care, the governance loop, and the learning loop that oversees ongoing monitoring and model updates.

Oracle Health launches a paid program that will validate medical device connectivity, functionality, and workflow alignment.

Government and Politics

CMS develops a Medicare App Library on Medicare.gov that beneficiaries can use to find and access digital tools that meet standards for security, privacy, use of medical evidence, usability, and equity. The use cases include “Kill the Clipboard,” conversational AI assistance, and prevention of diabetes and obesity. The library is part of the CMS Digital Health Tech Ecosystem.

A federal jury convicts Texas medical laboratory owner and former professional football player Keith Gray of running a genetic testing fraud scheme that billed Medicare $328 million, of which $54 million was paid. His labs paid kickbacks to marketers to supply DNA samples and Medicare beneficiary information that was used to bill for medically unnecessary genetic tests. Gray earned a bachelor’s degree in actuarial science and mathematics from UConn and played center on its football team, although his NFL career consisted of only a few weeks on a practice squad.

Privacy and Security

Cognizant-owned TriZetto updates the size of its 2024 breach to 3.5 million people.

University of Mississippi Medical Center clinics remain offline from a confirmed ransomware attack on February 19. Officials say that the attackers have communicated them, but declined to divulge the amount of ransom requested. UMMC hopes to reopen the clinics on Monday. 

Other

Epic CEO Judy Faulkner posts a tribute to Meditech’s Neil Pappalardo, who died last month:

Neil Pappalardo, who founded MEDITECH in 1969, passed away in January at the age of 83. He created a great company.

Neil helped Epic get a start. He and others at MEDITECH shared advice with me; for example, how to assign offices, what to do about titles, forms to fill out such as for vacation — and everything they shared was very helpful. They care for their customers, they focus on technology, and they never went public, so they avoid the tyranny of the quarter. Epic holds MEDITECH in high regard.

Years ago, when they were helping us get started, Neil invited me to his home for dinner. I realized it was unusual when his kids asked why a piece of folded cloth was next to each plate. I felt honored to be there.

Dolly Parton never ceases to amaze me and everybody else (after all, she wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” in the same day), so it’s not shocking that East Tennessee Children’s Hospital renames itself Dolly Parton Children’s Hospital.

Sponsor Updates

• Fortified Health Security names Harold Hansen EOD security analyst and Alex Goldstein third-party risk analyst.
• Inbox Health becomes an UrgentIQ preferred patient payments partner.
• Shannon Health (TX) goes live on Mednition’s Kate AI.
• Optimum Healthcare IT posts a new episode of “Visionary Voices” podcast featuring Trinity Health.

Blog Posts

• HFMA Region 5 SES 2026: Leadership Is the Differentiator (FinThrive)
• 15 Essential Contact Center Metrics and KPIs to Measure in Healthcare (Five9)
• Evaluation of AI in Patient Communications (Impact Advisors)
• How our Digital Front Door strategy is easing administrative burdens and boosting the patient experience (Meditech)
• How Effective Are Your Health System’s IT Cost-Cutting Measures? (Med Tech Solutions)

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 2/26/26

I appreciated Mr. H’s comments earlier in the week about the challenges that companies encounter when trying to justify the cost of ViVE and HIMSS exhibits via booked revenue.

As a CMIO, I am unlikely to do business with someone just because I saw their booth at a conference. In fact, having a poorly prepared or apathetic booth staff is probably worse than having no booth at all.

Years ago, my CIO had recommended that I follow up with a vendor whose rep he had spoken to at a high level. I arrived at the booth, identified myself, and said that my CIO had referred me to take a look. I received the conversational equivalent of a pat on the head, with an instruction to come back when my CIO could also participate. I guess they missed the title on my badge and didn’t understand that I was the one with the actual decision-making authority for clinical applications.

In preparing to attend ViVE, I spent too much time deciding what to wear given temperatures ranging from 50 to 80 degrees. And of course, figuring out which shoes to pack. I was grateful to have HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE document to help me scope out some visits with vendors that weren’t on my list.

I noticed that some savvy vendors didn’t list booth numbers, but instead provided a list of their executives who would be on site and instructions on how to book a meeting. I also appreciated those who highlighted members of their company who would be speaking, the planned topics, and where to find them. Those kinds of listings are more likely to catch my attention than a boring blurb about being a cloud-hosted SaaS platform just like everyone else.

In traveling to ViVE on Sunday morning, I was caught in the gap between the Department of Homeland Security saying that they would be suspending TSA PreCheck security lines and the subsequent reversal of the decision. I travel often and at generally the same time, so I recognize a lot of the TSA staffers that typically work PreCheck at my airport. They’re usually pretty chill, even during busy Monday rushes.

Going through the “regular” security line on Sunday, the agents seemed more stressed. Travelers were also certainly stressed. Many who usually go through PreCheck didn’t seem to know how to put their items in a bin or get through quickly. Fortunately, I had seen the announcement of closures before I went to bed on Saturday night and left early. Even so, the security line was extremely long. About an hour later, the PreCheck line was back open, providing relief to the chaotic main screening line.

I’ve been part of several startup companies, so I understand what it’s like to have to show up and work without pay while you’re waiting for your next funding check to clear. Several members of my family were without pay during the last government shutdown. It can be devastating for the average US family that isn’t positioned to absorb that financial challenge.

When traveling, remember that kindness costs nothing. If you have friends or neighbors who are being impacted by government shutdowns that seem to be our new normal, consider offering whatever support you can.

ViVE is an interesting conference due to its co-location with CHIME events. These tend to draw more CIOs, which can make for a higher proportion of conversations with attendees who not only have a budget for solutions, but also the authority to spend it. Still, a “see and be seen” element exists. 

I overheard a couple of folks talking about how they didn’t really have a plan for the conference. They weren’t sure why they were there, or how their attendance was adding value. They were, however, happy to have gotten away from the northeastern US before winter storms hit, and seemed to appreciate the California sunshine.

I also overheard someone who said that he was prospecting for his company that was less than a week old. As a seasoned buyer, I hope he’s not leading with that tidbit.

ViVE provides meal service for a portion of the conference. They had a large seating area, but it was crowded. Outside food truck options were available and popular, but my schedule sent me to the grab-and-go option more than I would have liked.

It was great to see old friends and meet new people. Monday was my busy night attending vendor events. The Healio AI launch party was seafood forward and seemed to have a good turnout. From there, I was off to the Supreme Communications event, which was casual but fun, and then to the Abridge soiree at the Ritz Carlton. I spotted quite a few CMIOs from top 20 health systems at that one.

The best party of the night by far was hosted by Evergreen Healthcare Partners and Fortified Health Security at the Grammy Museum. Attendees had access to an exhibit featuring Tejano music queen Selena. The menu choices were on point, particularly the mini salted caramel chocolate tarts. I had an early morning of work waiting for me in the Eastern time zone, so I was back at my hotel early.

Following my calls, I made my way to the convention center and attended a few sessions that seemed meatier than those that I encountered at HLTH in the fall.

I noticed several people who were wearing microphones even though they weren’t speaking. I wonder how much of their day they record, or maybe they just aren’t taking their microphone off between times they need it. It reminded me of the early days of Google Glass, when people had to wonder if they were being recorded. If you are one of those folks who always has a microphone at the ready, feel free to weigh in with your strategy.

The most eye-catching booth backdrop that I saw was this one from the Berwyn Group. It drew me into stopping in to hear their pitch, where I learned about how they support organizational population health efforts by ensuring the accuracy of information when patients are deceased. I hadn’t thought about that in detail, other than how it impacts me in primary care. The team was great to talk to and explained their business well, so if you’re in the market for a solution to support death audits, give them a look.

As always, IMO Health brought their footwear A game to the conference. On the last day of the show, I saw a woman who was walking to the show floor wearing flip flops at 8 a.m. I don’t know if that was her first choice, or whether it was need-based following less than stellar footwear selections earlier in the week, but kudos to her for sporting them proudly.

I have enjoyed my time in the industry and in seeing tools evolve. I had a chance to chat with the folks at Medicomp Systems, who showed me their generative AI capabilities and how new elements are working seamlessly with the Medicomp Quippe tool. I was glad to see that one of their demo personas named “Seymour Patients” continues to be alive and well, or at least as much as one can be in the virtual world.

Overall, it was a more productive week than I anticipated, which is always a nice surprise. Now I’m hoping for the best for my trip back to the East given the number of canceled and delayed flights and the amount of snow on the ground.

If you attended ViVE, how was it? What were your biggest takeaways? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 2/26/26

Baba raises $6.5M Seed led by General Catalyst

Baba, which offers Medicare beneficiaries tech-enabled patient advocacy and care navigation services, raises $6.5 million in seed funding.

CMS announces library of digital health apps for Medicare beneficiaries 

CMS develops a Medicare App Library to help beneficiaries access apps focused on eliminating manual check-in, conversational AI assistance, and diabetes and obesity management.

QC Capital Announces Strategic Investment in My Pediatric Doctor to Expand Nationwide 24/7 Pediatric Urgent Care Telehealth Access

Online urgent care provider My Pediatric Doctor secures funding from QC Capital Group.

Oura launches a proprietary AI model focused on women’s health

Smart ring-maker Oura develops an AI model that its Oura Advisor chatbot will use to offer wearers customized insights about women’s health.