Recent Articles:

HIStalk Interviews Blake Walker, CEO, Inbox Health

May 16, 2025 Interviews No Comments

Blake Walker is co-founder and CEO of Inbox Health.

image 

Tell me about yourself and the company.

Inbox Health is a software platform that fully automates patient billing, payment collection, and patient support for medical practices and billing companies. We try to make bills clear, help them get to patients faster, and make them more convenient and affordable for patients to pay. Alongside that, and an important part of that process, is to make sure that patients get fast and empathetic support via phone, text, and real-time chat to get their questions about their bills answered while we’re doing that.

I started in the healthcare space right out of college. I worked on a patient financing startup and quickly learned how problematic the patient AR problem was becoming for medical practices, especially smaller medical practices. I then spent a couple of years working on another patient billing startup and then ultimately founded Inbox Health 11 years ago. I have been with the company ever since, growing it from zero to where it is today, with about 3,500 medical practices using the platform nationwide.

How does the patient’s payment experience influence their satisfaction with the provider?

It’s a huge factor. It’s so intertwined today, the way the clinical experience then carries over into the billing experience. The patient can leave that visit feeling good about the clinical care, but then have such a bad billing experience that their entire perception of that provider is dragged down. 

If there are mistakes in the way their insurance was billed, the provider may end up getting into an argument with them on the phone after the fact. Or even worse, it’s not even the provider, it’s the provider’s billing service provider. The patient may feel that the clinician provided a worse clinical experience because of how the billing went.

Having a great billing experience is critical to making sure that the entire clinical visit is perceived as positive. So much more frequently than ever, that billing experience is a negative one. Patients owe more money. High-deductible health plans are common now, and patients are surprised by the bills they get and are frustrated by them.

As providers, we owe it to the patients to do everything we possibly can to make sure that the billing is done accurately and clearly and that the experience that they have is convenient. Often it’s paper checks only and poor patient support to answer their questions. That will obviously leave the patient with a bad outcome.

How do practices prevent those awkward financial moments that can start or finish a visit, especially when the practice may not know what services the patient will need ahead of time?

Educating the patient about their coverage at the time of the visit, and how that visit is likely to be billed to the patient, is an important starting point. You don’t necessarily need to have it down to the dollar, just that the patient understands that a bill is likely. If they come in to a nutritionist’s office, their child is sick, and you see that they have a high-deductible plan, give them a sense of expectations, such as that it usually takes about two weeks for us to send bills out. Or after your insurance is adjudicated and we know that you’re on a high-deductible plan, I want to make sure to flag that for you. That’s realistic for most practices with just their standard processes for eligibility checks prior to visit and understanding a little bit about the patient’s insurance. The patient can fill in the rest.

Then, whatever you can do to get the bill to the patient as quickly as possible. You don’t want situations where it’s months and then the patient’s getting a bill 90 or 120 days after they came in to see you. I understand that there’s often trouble getting it through the adjudication process with insurance, but getting that timeline as fast as possible so that the patient is in that same frame of mind as when they came in to see the clinician in the first place. Having that be an easy, convenient digital-native experience as much as possible helps to streamline that whole experience. 

How does the method and timing of presenting the bill to the patient affect getting paid?

Most patients want to have both the digital presentment and also the tactile patient statement in the mailbox to know that it’s legitimate. Sending a text message or an email captures their attention, but it doesn’t feel real to them. Once they get the statement in the mail, then it feels more real and they are more likely to pay from the email or text that follows up after the statement. It’s a combination of demographics and who’s more likely to pay from email or text message than a paper statement. But for most patients, email is the most likely way to drive payment.

No method on its own works particularly well. Everyone pays attention to text messages, but are hesitant to click on them and pay because texts are often used for scams. It has to be a holistic approach, where at least in our case, we’re using artificial intelligence to identify what will probably work best for most patients. It’s all dynamic. It has to be an omni-channel, holistic approach to trying to reach the patient in the way that will work best for them and meeting them where they are at any particular time through a process over several weeks and sometimes months.

How common is it for the patient to need or want to contact someone at the practice once they’ve received a bill?

About a quarter of the bills that go out create a question. That’s obviously a huge factor in terms of how you’re running a practice now. If you’re sending these bills out without anticipating and being prepared to answer those questions, it’s going to pull down your collection rates. It’s going to negatively impact the consumer experience with those bills. Most of us aren’t well prepared to do it, but it’s a high proportion that are coming back to the practice with questions. 

A big factor is the amount of money owed. The average family has a $4,000 deductible and it’s not uncommon to end up with a $500 or $600 bill from a standard medical visit. That’s a huge number for most families. You shouldn’t expect that someone who gets a $500 or $600 bill will just blindly pay it from all of this wording that’s on the bill, and why it was billed that way. It’s unlikely that someone will just pay without asking a question.

What is the outcome of those billing calls to the practice? Are patients looking for reassurance that the number is correct or perhaps wanting more details that could have been provided on the bill initially?

I would say that about half could have been addressed upfront. Better setting expectations, providing better information on the bill itself, is often a root cause of the questions that come through. But a significant number of them are related to how the billing was done. It’s often somehow related to coordination of benefits, meaning what insurance was billed and in what order was it billed, particularly for patients who have multiple insurances like Medicare or Medicare Advantage plans or multiple commercial plans. A lot of those cases have legitimate issues that feed back to it, and ultimately, that could be prevented to some degree upstream just by collecting better information at the front desk.

I’m just isolating the patient billing itself. It’s a little difficult to control what problems land on the lap of your patient support team because something wasn’t done well up front.

How often does the patient get frustrated by trying to coordinate the practice’s billing, the insurance payment, and their own financial responsibility?

It’s frustrating for everyone. The provider obviously wants the procedures to be covered to whatever extent they possibly could be. The patient is stuck in this loop where they’re asking the provider questions, the providers are deferring to the payer, and the payer defers to the provider. All sides don’t have a full picture. 

The patient is the one who’s left holding the bag with a bill that someone is demanding to be paid and the frustration of two parties that aren’t seeing eye to eye. It’s common for the provider’s answer to be “ask your payer” and for the payer’s answer to be “ask your provider.” The patient may finally give up and pay the bill or ignore it and see what happens. Patients are seeking that alternative more and more.

What are some best practices for reducing how long it takes to receive payment for patient responsibility?

Optimizing the number of touch points and the channels that you are able to reach a patient on in that first 15 days is critical. That’s the first thing.

Second is meeting patients, from an affordability perspective, where they are. Understanding where a patient’s threshold is for when they might need payment plan options and making those payment plans available to a patient readily. You don’t want the patient waiting 45 or 60 days, getting three bills from you, and then picking calling you and saying, “I know you keep asking, but I don’t have $1,500. I just don’t.” Then you tell them that you can take $50 a month and that’s fine. You need to be proactive about how you engage the patient, which channels you engage them on, and then offering the payment plans when it’s applicable to that particular patient.

We do predicted payment plan offers, where we’re looking at various data points about a patient, their bill, and their past history with the practice and then determining which ones to offer payment plans to and what kind to offer.

But if you can do those two things well, that will get you the best possible result. Some of this comes back to the more that you do at the front desk to educate the patient and collect cards on the file, the more you can accelerate that back end as well. But if you can’t influence that or change that for whatever reason, then obviously on the back side, that approach makes the most sense.

How are you using AI now and how will you use it in the next year or two?

AI has always played a role in how we manage the outgoing patient billing process. The biggest changes in how we’re using AI, and how AI will be used in the patient experience moving forward as it relates to patient billing, is on patient support. We are investing heavily in making the patient support experience better by training large language models to answer the patient questions that come back, feeding it data from the patient record to be able to help it answer patient questions, and letting it actually take action, such as the patient didn’t get a paper bill and wants one, so AI sends it. Or creating a payment plan.

Over the next two to three years, you will see a transformational change in how patient phone calls are answered and how patient chats are answered relative to where we were a couple of years ago, or a year ago. Or even right now, where most of that is either going to the practice staff in the office or it’s being outsourced to the Philippines or India to lower-cost resources. The quality of AI for patient support is rapidly improving and will play a cool role in improving the patient experience in many ways, but in particular, around patient billing.

What factors will drive the company’s strategy over the next three or four years?

Investing heavily in the role of artificial intelligence in the patient experience is a main focus for us over the next few years. And in general, partnering as closely as we can with the best-in-class EHRs and practice management systems to make the experience as seamless as possible for patients where their providers are using different EHR platforms is really important to us. Those are the areas we’re investing heavily in. We believe there’s a lot of opportunity to improve the front desk experience. That’s another area where we’re focused on trying to build technology to improve how the front desk experience connects back to the patient billing experience post-visit.

Morning Headlines 5/16/25

May 15, 2025 Headlines No Comments

Datavant to Acquire Aetion, Empowering Healthcare and Life Sciences Organizations to Generate High-Quality, Scalable Real-World Evidence from Connected, Privacy-Protected Data

Health data company Datavant acquires Aetion, which offers a real-world evidence platform for drug companies.

Akido Labs Raises $60 Million for AI Assistant for Doctors

Healthcare AI and medical network company Akido Labs announces a $60 million Series B funding round.

VA hopes to use next year’s EHR rollouts to gain momentum for faster deployments

VA Secretary Doug Colins expects momentum gained during planned roll outs at 13 facilities in 2026 will enable the department to implement new EHR software at 20 to 25 sites in 2027.

Sprinter Health Raises $55 Million To Expand Access To Preventive Care And Close Critical Care Gaps For People Nationwide

Sprinter Health, which offers virtual and in-home preventive care, raises a $55 million Series B round.

News 5/16/25

May 15, 2025 News No Comments

Top News

image

Tucson-based CureIS Healthcare files suit against Epic, alleging that the company harmed its business by blocking access to billing data from Epic-using customers and falsely claiming that Epic’s products could replace those of CureIS. The complaint alleges these actions by Epic:

  • Engaged in a “widespread scheme” to disrupt competitors in the managed care data reconciliation space.
  • Enforced an “Epic-first” policy that pressures EHR and RCM customers to adopt Epic’s own software alternatives, which Epic promotes in a brochure titled “Products You Can Replace with Epic.”
  • Coerced shared customers to terminate their CureIS contracts and restricted the access of those customers to their own data.
  • Attempted to obtain CureIS’s proprietary product information under the pretense of integration planning.
  • Committed trade libel by telling customers and prospects that CureIS products create a security risk when integrated with Epic.

An Epic spokesperson provided this response: “Epic believes in free and fair competition, and we also believe our customers are in the best position to choose the right solutions to meet their needs — whether with Epic or by adopting other products and services. We are aware of the complaint filed by CureIS and we look forward to setting the record straight in court.”


Reader Comments

From VTInquirer: “Re: [ambulatory EHR/PM vendor name omitted]. The CEO of a provider organization told me they are exploring alternatives because the vendor can’t certify as a compliant EHR until they release some kind of patch whose ETA is November 2025. Can anyone verify?” I’ve omitted the vendor’s name pending reader confirmation (I’m 100% sure the company won’t do so). Chime in if you know the company and the issue.

image

From Gin Diesel: “Re: your Epic report. I ran across this in a Google search and found it fascinating.” Thanks for stirring that memory since I totally forgot about “Epic: The Cold, Hard Facts” that I wrote way back in 2016 using custom research data from Peer60 (now Reaction). We received responses and comments from nearly 100 Epic-using health system CIOs, along with 39 CMOs, 22 CEOs, and dozens of CFOs and CNOs. My intro hinted at the sassiness to come:

Everybody in healthcare IT has a strong opinion about Epic. Most of the people who express those opinions confidently (and sometimes loudly) don’t have any first-hand experience with the company or its products. It’s like asking an armchair quarterback dribbling wing sauce onto his shirt how Peyton Manning should be reading the defense. On the “Epic is great” side are loyal customers who are financially vested in Epic’s success; consultants who make a great living riding on Epic’s coattails; and research firms who sell reports after talking to a few Epic-using hospital employees of unstated job titles. The “Epic is evil” contingent has a significant portion of people whose employer is losing business to Epic; experienced industry specialists who Epic won’t hire since they aren’t new graduates; and those naysayers who just don’t like Epic’s success. Also in the anti-Epic camp are critics of electronic health records who use Epic as an example of how technology has ruined medicine.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

image

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Zen Healthcare IT. Zen combines a modern API for healthcare with a traditional interface engine platform, providing a single, unified solution for all healthcare interoperability use cases. Zen’s Stargate Gateway provides certified access to the national data exchange networks, including Carequality (Implementer), eHealth Exchange (Validated) and CommonWell Alliance (Service Adopter & Connector). TEFCA is accessible via our certified connections with QHINs such as CommonWell Health Alliance and eHealth Exchange. For direct interface use cases, our Gemini Integration platform combines a robust, secure, and scalable integration foundation with advanced data transformation services, making integrations faster, easier and less costly. Built with a security first mindset, all Zen hosted solutions are HITRUST CSF r2 certified. Whether you want to be “hands on” with an integration engine, or “hands off” with an API, or both, we put the Zen in Interoperability. Thanks to Zen for supporting HIStalk.


Sponsored Events and Resources

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

image

Complement 1, which offers virtual lifestyle modification for coaching for cancer patients, raises $16 million in seed funding. India-based founder and CEO Karan Bajaj, MBA has an interesting background – brand manager for P&G, author of several novels, yoga teacher, executive of Discovery Networks, and founder of a company that applies technology to alleviating poverty in India.

image

Behavioral health and substance abuse operations software vendor Dazos raises $25 million in Series A funding.

Health data company Datavant acquires Aetion, which offers a real-world evidence platform for drug companies.

image

Sprinter Health, which offers virtual and in-home preventive care, raises a $55 million Series B round. Co-founder and CEO Max Cohen, MBA came from Google and Facebook.

Cohere Health, which offers prior authorization solutions, raises $90 million in Series C funding. Co-founder and CEO Siva Namasivayam, MS, MBA is an industry veteran who has held leadership roles at Gartner, Perot Systems, MphasiS, and SCIO Health Analytics.

Compensation for executives at Atrium Health, now part of Advocate Health, jumped 41% last year, with EVP/Chief Innovation and Commercial Officer Rasu Shrestha, MD, MBA earning $3.3 million and EVP/Chief Information and Analytics Officer Andy Crowder, MHA making $2.3 million.


Announcements and Implementations

Google-owned Fitbit Labs adds a Gemini-powered lab results summary creator, a symptom checker, and an alert for unusual trends to its app. The enhancements are being released for testing.

Two-thirds of 9,000 nurses who were surveyed by Black Book Research cited poor EHR usability and documentation burden as major sources of their job dissatisfaction. Among nurses under 40, two-thirds say that EHR experience ranks among their top three considerations when evaluating new employers. Just 11% believe that their EHR vendor or IT department takes frontline nurse impact into account when making changes.

AGS Health opens an office in Guadalajara, Mexico and will hire 150 employees to provide clinical administrative services.


Government and Politics

image

The Department of Justice is reportedly conducting a Medicare fraud investigation of UnitedHealth Group’s Medicare Advantage business. Hard-hit UNH shares dropped sharply on the news. They have lost more than 50% in the past month, erasing $250 billion in market capitalization.


Other

More than half of surveyed Swiss physicians say that their EHRs don’t improve patient safety, while two-thirds of hospital doctors cite EHR inefficiency as wasting their time. The authors conclude that IT configuration and support strongly influence user satisfaction related to the same EHR.


Sponsor Updates

  • Redox partners with cognitive and behavioral health assessments software vendor Creyos.
  • Health Data Movers names Mina Banoub integration engineer.
  • Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new episode of its “Leader to Leader” podcast titled “Driving Innovation at Emory Healthcare: Leveraging Cloud and AI for Better Patient Care.”

Blog Posts


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 5/15/25

May 15, 2025 Dr. Jayne 1 Comment

I was at a neighborhood gathering the other night. One of my neighbors was talking about her health experiences, and in particular, with wearable devices. Just from what I could see, she had an Oura ring, an Apple watch, and a continuous glucose monitor sensor. Someone asked her if they were recommended by her physician, and her response was essentially that she was following various wellness influencers for recommendations.

One of my older and more curmudgeonly neighbors (who is of course my favorite) made a comment about “not wanting all those people spying on me,” which made me smile. He’s the kind of guy who can type up a binding contract in minutes and can explain the appropriate use of a comma at the drop of a hat, so I enjoyed hearing his thoughts on End User Licensing Agreements and how “the young people are just giving their rights away.” The comments shocked the neighbor with the wearables since she had no idea that her health data isn’t covered by HIPAA when using consumer devices.

I did a quick web search later that evening and discovered that only roughly 9% of users actually read the licensing agreement or terms and conditions that come with new devices, services, or subscriptions. That number actually seemed high to me considering the number of agreements we all run into on a given day. I know I haven’t read one in a very long time, and when I do look at them, I tend to only look at specific portions. I avoid wellness apps and services that touch my health data, so that’s one level of privacy defense right there.

Another search brought me a decade-old Atlantic article that said that if people read the agreements they encountered in a year, it would take 76 work days. Still, knowing the risks of having data shared makes you want to think twice before signing up for anything, and three times for anything involving sensitive information.

From Forest Fan: “Re: visit notes summary. What should the patient do when the documentation is not accurate? One of my doctors was doing a lot of copy-paste, not reviewing, etc. He had the meds all wrong. Medicare uses that documentation to decide whether to authorize his recommended treatments, so I started to think that I need to pay attention. An RN who did the Epic implementation for this organization recommended speaking up, but UGHH. How to do this? It doesn’t seem right to correct my physician.”

From the physician perspective, I’ve seen so many inaccurate notes over the years that nothing shocks me. Early in my career, many of them were errors in dictation and transcription. Most of them were when physicians didn’t read their notes after they returned from the transcription service, but instead simply signed them and sent them out the door. Generally they had an accurate physical exam, diagnosis, and plan content, so I could overlook the semantic issues.

As EHRs came onto the scene, we started to see templated physical exams that were entirely fanciful. My favorite was the one from an orthopedic surgeon who claimed to have performed an eye exam that included visualizing the fundus. I’ve never been in an orthopedic office where an ophthalmoscope was present, so either this was some kind of multispecialty clinic and the physician is a serious outlier or it was simply erroneous.

By this point, I was knee-deep in EHR deployments. I recognized it as either laziness or unwillingness for the provider to spend time customizing his exam template or inappropriately restrictive behavior by IT folks unwilling to support personalization due to fears of increasing their maintenance burden. Now, many of the consultation notes I see are so much gibberish that I end up talking more with the patient to understand what actually happened.

From the patient perspective, I can’t stand errors in my chart. It’s one thing if they’re in a narrative or free text box that isn’t discrete data. As the reader noted, these are seen by insurance folks when notes are sent as documentation of the need for a prior authorization or other approval, so they’re certainly problematic. However, when discrete data is wrong, that’s a different kind of problem since it could be used behind the scenes in various algorithms that form care recommendations and no one is aware that they’re incorrect.

Errors aren’t just a nuisance, but can keep you from getting the care you need and can prevent you from receiving recommendations for care you might not even know you needed. Still, because of the traditional power imbalance between physicians and patients, it’s hard to bring it up.

I’ve had to bring it up myself and have used different strategies depending on the level of the error. For minor errors, I’ve sent messages through the patient portal and asked the clinician to update the note. I think it’s important to have that written record. For more serious errors, I’ve addressed them in person at a subsequent visit and somewhat forced the correction or amendment to be done real time.

For major errors, I’ve invoked my rights under HIPAA and sent a formal communication to the physician and asked for them to modify the chart and send me a corrected copy of the documentation. HIPAA requires that patients submit these requests in writing, after which providers have to either make the changes or provide a written denial with explanation. I’ve also specifically requested that they reach out to downstream systems that may have consumed the erroneous data and address it there or notify me where their data is flowing so I can make the appropriate requests.

For the major errors, I’ve also sent letters to the higher-ups making sure that they know what is going on in their practices. At one, a clinician put inaccurate information into my chart three visits in a row, so I cited that as my reason for leaving the practice and removing them from my referral list as a physician. Shockingly, I’ve never received a response from any of those administrative communications, which I think is a reflection on how little people value accuracy or loyalty these days.

Have you had to correct your medical record, and how did you approach it? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 5/15/25

May 14, 2025 Headlines No Comments

Complement 1 Secures $16M Seed Round to Scale Clinically Validated Cancer Lifestyle Modification Platform

Complement 1, which offers a digital lifestyle modification and personalized coaching app for cancer patients, launches with $16 million in seed funding.

Behavioral Health Software Provider Dazos Raises $25M Series A

Behavioral health CRM, billing, and business intelligence software company Dazos raises $25 million in Series A funding.

Cohere Health Secures $90M Series C to Expand AI-Powered Platform Transforming Health Plan Clinical Decision-Making

Prior authorization software vendor Cohere Health announces a $90 million Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to $200 million.

Healthcare AI News 5/14/25

News

image

OpenAI launches HealthBench, a physician-developed benchmark that evaluates large language models on real-world medical decision-making. It uses 5,000 realistic clinical conversations to grade models on communication quality, instruction adherence, accuracy, context awareness, and completeness.

Google is expanding its Gemini AI assistant beyond smartphones to other Android devices such as smart watches, cars, TVs, and extended reality headsets.

AI answer engine Perplexity adds PayPal “buy now” buttons to its results, enabling in-app purchases as it promotes “conversation-driven commerce.”


Business

Oracle Health launches its Clinical AI Agent in Canada, offering health systems automated note drafting and voice-enabled EHR navigation.

image

Patient-provider communication platform vendor OhMD launches Nia, an AI voice assistant that manages routine patient requests for scheduling and refills while routing sensitive requests to medical practice teams. OhMD co-founder and CEO Ethan Bechtel has executive industry experience with EMR Edge, Blueprint Health, and MBA HealthGroup.

image

The New York Post profiles Doctronic, a startup whose symptom-checking chatbot suggests potential diagnoses and then offers a $39 virtual physician visit to review. The company says its chatbot’s diagnosis and treatment plan match the doctor’s 70% of the time and that the platform serves 50,000 users weekly.


Research

image

Australian researchers report that over 1,000 health-related GPTs in OpenAI’s GPT Store operate outside medical device regulations. Authors of two of the 10 most-used GPTs declined to provide details, while the remaining eight offered no evidence of safety or regulatory approval.


Other

A House budget reconciliation bill would impose a 10-year moratorium on state and local regulation of AI.

A New York Times article notes that AI hasn’t displaced radiologists as some once predicted, highlighting that Mayo Clinic has grown its radiology staff by 55% over nine years and formed a 40-member AI team to build tools that support clinicians. Experts say that outsiders often misunderstand the role of radiologists, who in addition to reading images also advise physicians, review medical records, speak with patients, and contextualizing findings for a particular patient.


Contacts

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

HIStalk Interviews Don Woodlock, Head of Global Healthcare Solutions, InterSystems

May 14, 2025 Interviews 1 Comment

Don Woodlock is head of global healthcare solutions at InterSystems.

image

Tell me about yourself and the company.

I’ve been in our industry for my whole career – 14 years at IDX, 15 years at GE Healthcare, and eight years here at InterSystems, where I run our healthcare solutions. These are the applications that we sell to the healthcare industry, which includes an EMR that we sell outside the US and an interoperability data product line called HealthShare that we sell around the world. 

Otherwise, InterSystems is also a data platform company. Most famously, Epic is built on our technology, but about 1,000 other systems have been built on our technology as well. We’ve been in the industry a long time, specializing in data and interoperability, with special skills in healthcare.

How central is healthcare to the overall mission of the company, which has $1 billion in annual revenue and 2,000 employees?

We are primarily in healthcare, where we have a deep focus and experience base. It has been our longest business. Our technology is applicable to a few other industries, so we have built up financial services and supply chain product lines and teams, but our heart remains in healthcare.

We have been foundational, so everybody doesn’t necessarily know our name. We are behind other vendors as the interoperability or data platform for many customers. We’re not always out there with the front-end face of healthcare software, but we’re certainly in there on the heavy duty lifting, performance, and scalability of the healthcare data side.

What are the latest developments in the company’s technology?

We are not unusual in that we’ve been focused a lot on how Gen AI can make a big difference to our products and to our customers’ workflow. Each of our products has had exciting innovations, with new features and modules that are enabled by Gen AI. We are certainly in that AI era, a good AI era, and we’re a couple of years into it.  We have a lot more years of innovation and hopefully making healthcare a lot better with this technology.

What parts of healthcare do you expect to see profoundly affected by AI, especially in quality, cost, and access?

At least the first few years, we’re focused on the user experience and having the use of technology like ours, like EMR, be a whole lot more fun, delightful, natural, and more human to use. We moved to graphical user interfaces 20 or 25 years ago. We thought that was a big shift, but it’s still hard to use. It’s still a lot of pointing and clicking, dropdowns, and tabs. It’s not a very natural experience.

With GenAI and approaches like ambient or natural chat user experiences, we will be able to create software that’s a whole lot easier to use, to get information out of, and have it pay attention to our instructions and do useful things for us. Historically, software has been kind of dumb. It follows the instructions of the user, stores the information that I type in, and then shows it back to me a few days later when I ask for it again. AI can allow us to build a lot smarter software that will be more helpful to us as users and hopefully will help transform the industry.

We first focus on the user experience. Down the road, we’ll start to move into other areas around clinical decision-making, workflow optimization, and a better patient experience. There’s a lot of places we could go with this technology. 

You just announced IntelliCare, a next-generation, AI-centered EHR that is available only outside the US. What were the lessons learned in developing it?

We took a bet that worked out, which is that AI should be natively built in the EHR versus just a partnership with somebody else. That’s really working out. It’s enabling us to do closer integration of the technology into the workflows of the user instead of having it be an arm’s length relationship. That’s been good.

It takes more R&D to do that. We’ve had seven teams working on this across our EHR development teams. With enterprise EHRs versus best-of-breed departmental systems, enterprise has won out as the right strategy. I don’t think that AI is that different. You want to embed it into that enterprise feel versus having it be a best-of-breed type system. We made that decision early on that we would do this natively. That cost us more, but I think it’s going to pay off, and it is already paying off with some of our early adopter sites.

Other lessons learned with AI is that it’s important to work closely with our customers. There’s a lot of trust issues with AI. There’s a lot of education issues in terms of how these systems work, how we test and validate them, and how we get comfortable with the way that our data is handled by a cloud AI provider.

There’s a lot of new ground on the InterSystems side, but also on the customer side in terms of governance, legal, safety, and a comfort level with AI overall. We’ve had to spend more time than I would have guessed on the customer side, educating them and getting them comfortable with what we’re doing. Maybe part of my education push on AI was observing how much the market needed to learn about AI in order to adopt it well. We’ve just encountered a lot of that with our early sites.

How does traditional software development, maintenance, and support change when you add an AI component?

The good news is that all of these large language model vendors basically use the same APIs and the same way to call them. There’s not a lot of technical investment that you’re making in one road that’s not useful for another road if people continue to leapfrog each other and things change. 

What is really tricky is the testing and validation process, because when you are dealing with generative AI and you ask the same question multiple times, you’re not going to get the same answer back. There’s a non-deterministic aspect to the way large language models work, even on the inbound side. If somebody’s asking a question about a patient chart or whether they have been seen for this condition before, there might be multiple ways that that clinician might ask essentially the same question. There’s non-deterministic aspects on the user side and then certainly non-deterministic aspects on the answer side. 

We had to invent our automated testing process and our validation process from scratch. That is much different than our traditional process, where we want them to fill out these four dropdowns and get the answer “32” in the end. For this non-deterministic process, we’ve had to build up a completely different automated testing infrastructure and validation infrastructure. We have a lot more human validation with real physicians and nurses in the process. Testing, measuring accuracy, and then maintaining that accuracy as the model providers come up with new versions is a whole different design and architecture that we needed to build around this.

How are you using AI tools personally?

We provide our employees with OpenAI licenses with an enterprise agreement, where they can use it for company confidential stuff. We’re enabling our employees, myself included, to use and take advantage of the technology.

For me, I use it most for coding side projects. I do a lot of AI side projects just to keep current with the technology. These large language models are excellent at writing code, answering technology questions, debugging, and stuff like that. It’s remarkable how well these technologies work as maybe junior programmers or code developers along with you. 

One way to view these AI technologies, at least for the next couple of years, is for empowering every human employee here with a co-marketer, co-developer, or a co-implementation person who can help them be better at their job, be more productive, debug problems faster, and that kind of thing. 

The industry could use basic AI education to navigate the opportunities and risks with AI effectively. I’ve always enjoyed teaching, so I am doing five or 10-minute videos called “Code to Care” to explain AI concepts. I always have enough content because buzzwords are being thrown out that people don’t understand or that vendors overuse. I am enjoying putting together that AI education. It’s important. HIMSS, HLTH, and ViVE have a lot of sessions where educators don’t get into enough depth, or maybe they don’t know enough depth, to help you understand some of the newer topics and approaches.

I don’t know if it’s to the company’s benefit or not, but I certainly enjoy doing it. I enjoy hearing from people across the industry who have known me over the years who like my video content. It’s important that we navigate this AI wave effectively.

What has been the impact of moving to the cloud?

I’m finding that our customers are struggling with anything on-prem these days. Maintaining a data center and keeping hardware and storage current, updated, and patched for security vulnerabilities is a growing challenge. More and more of our existing customers are asking us to host their platforms or offer the same functionality as some kind of service or equivalent. 

For our net new business, we almost do everything as a service. People within health systems and payers don’t want to be doing this anymore. It just doesn’t make sense economically. It’s the predominant model that we find to make software and technology available to customers. We do the heavy lifting, such as maintaining the staff, buying hardware if we’re doing it ourselves, or procuring it from one of our cloud partners. The industry is just kind of done with on-prem software and relying on their software vendors to manage it as a hosted or software-as-a-service platform.

Is interoperability a solved problem?

[Laughs]. No, no, no, no. I definitely think that the ball has moved, which is great. When I started in interoperability, the use case was a provider seeing a patient, let’s say in the ED, and wanting to know what happened with this patient outside of my health system. That is getting solved. National networks like CommonWell or vendor networks like Epic’s Care Everywhere have done a fabulous job with that use case, and the ball has moved.

But we’re trying to do new things. We are working hard on the payer-provider interaction, like electronic prior authorization, clinical data exchange, payer data exchange, and patient and member access to their information. Those are new exciting use cases that we’re working on as an industry.

The industry still struggles. We are in the middle of this with our technology and services with mapping data in one format and making it consumable and useful in another format. So it’s definitely not a solved problem. We are enjoying a great growth of FHIR as an approach and a set of standards, and that is helping with all of these new use cases. 

Things are getting better. We’re moving on to slightly more advanced problems from an interoperability point of view, but it’s certainly not a solved problem at all.

What near-term trends will influence the industry and the company?

InterSystems has been around for 47 years. We have a slide that we talk about, which is the advent of micro-computing, PCs, the Internet, cloud computing, and now Gen AI.  Each of these is maybe a 10-year-long transformation that has allowed us to do great new things. All of those significantly advance the impact that computers and software have had in healthcare. Gen AI is going to be either no different, or even better, than some of those prior transformations. That’s a terrific trend. 

I also think that cooperation among payers, providers, public health, Medicare plans, and others within a community is getting stronger. It will make it easier as a patient and as a caregiver for your family to navigate the healthcare system. I hope that technology, interoperability and cooperation across communities will continue to improve. I certainly see it improving with customers that we work with.

Morning Headlines 5/14/25

May 13, 2025 Headlines No Comments

UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty steps down, company suspends annual forecast

UnitedHealth Group announces that CEO Andrew Witty has resigned, and that it will suspend its 2025 financial forecasts due to rising medical costs in its Medicare Advantage business.

Epic Systems sued by CureIS Healthcare for alleged ‘scheme to destroy’ its business

CureIS Healthcare, a managed care services company focused on government programs, files a civil suit against Epic for anticompetitive practices.

Introducing HealthBench

OpenAI launches HealthBench, a physician-developed benchmark that evaluates large language models on real-world medical decision-making.

Hinge Health targets $3 billion valuation as IPO markets signal comeback

Digital musculoskeletal care company Hinge Health hopes to raise $437 million in its upcoming IPO for a valuation of $3 billion.

$6 billion Commure was just ordered to stop selling a hot healthtech product in its latest legal challenge

A federal court orders Commure to stop marketing and selling its Strongline Pro wearable panic button for staff safety based on the allegations of Canopy Works, the original developer of the technology.

News 5/14/25

May 13, 2025 News No Comments

Top News

image

UnitedHealth Group announces that CEO Andrew Witty has resigned for personal reasons and has been replaced by Chairman and former CEO Stephen Hemsley.

The company also announced that it will suspend its 2025 financial forecasts due to rising medical costs in its Medicare Advantage business.

UnitedHealth Group has recently struggled with the Change Healthcare cyberattack; the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of its insurance business; and consumer backlash over high costs and denied claims.

UNH shares dropped 18% Tuesday following the announcement.


Sponsored Events and Resources

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

image

Healthcare RCM and patient care software company TruBridge reports Q1 results: revenue up 3.7%; adjusted EPS $0.36 versus $0.19, beating revenue expectations but falling short on earnings.

image

Care coordination company Olio announces $11 million in Series B funding, bringing its total raised to $26.5 million.

image

OpenAI launches HealthBench, a physician-developed benchmark that evaluates large language models on real-world medical decision-making. It uses 5,000 realistic clinical conversations to grade models on communication quality, instruction adherence, accuracy, context awareness, and completeness.

image

A federal court orders Commure to stop marketing and selling its Strongline Pro wearable panic button for staff safety. Canopy Works, the original developer of the technology, alleges that Commure resold its system until their partnership ended in 2023, after which it accuses Commure of launching a similar product almost immediately.


Sales

  • The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic expands its use of Baton Health’s physician credentialing system. 

People

image

Children’s Wisconsin names Benjamin Mansalis, MD (Indiana University Health) chief information and digital officer.


Announcements and Implementations

image

Epic integrates lifestyle medicine assessment tools from The American College of Lifestyle Medicine with its EHR. Tools include a short form-assessment, diet screener, and physical activity review.

Virtual healthcare company Ovatient launches the MyCare Anywhere patient engagement app using technology from League. Patients at MetroHealth (OH), which co-founded Ovatient in 2022 with MUSC Health (SC), will be among the first to use it.

Exalt Health implements WellSky’s Specialty Care EHR at its inpatient rehabilitation facility in Arizona. The company will soon roll out the software at three sites in additional states.

image

Sanford Health implements organ donor registration via Epic’s MyChart. The collaboration between Epic and Donate Life America streamlines registration with pre-populated information, adds the registrant to the National Donate Life Registry, and updates their medical record to ensure that donor preferences are accessible to care teams anywhere.

image

PsychNow launches Chapter, an AI co-pilot that captures a behavioral health patient’s history and assessment from their initial visit conversation.


Government and Politics

CMS and ASTP issue an RFI titled “Health Technology Ecosystem” that seeks public input on digital health products in the Medicare population, with a focus on interoperability.

image

The US Navy’s Military Sealift Command is upgrading its IT infrastructure, including linking the US Naval Ship Mercy, a humanitarian and military vessel, to the federal MHS Genesis EHR. Hospital Ship Joint Task Director Mike Taylor says they are considering incorporating AI into the ship’s healthcare operations: “… I don’t want AI making decisions to shut off a network point, a port that goes to an IV infusion pump. We’re watching it carefully. We’re excited to implement some facets of AI, especially in the security arena, but we’re treading lightly at this point.”


Other

AdventHealth will launch a hypertension management program this summer across 370 care sites that will incorporate remote patient monitoring devices and virtual visits.

Frustration with timely prior authorizations takes the top spot in payer-provider collaboration challenges, according to Black Book Research. An overwhelming majority of surveyed providers typically experience prior auth delays of more than five days, while just 29% of payers say that they have implemented electronic prior authorization tied to EHRs.


Sponsor Updates

  • Black Book Research releases a Q2 update to its “Global EHR Market Report, revealing a growing shift in international healthcare IT dynamics.
  • Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “The Bridge to Value-Based Care: Unified Claims Processing, with Dr. Sunil Budhrani.”
  • The “Risk Management: Brick by Brick” podcast features Censinet CEO Ed Gaudet in an episode titled “The Power of AI in Risk – Healthcare Cybersecurity: From Digital Risk to AI Governance.”
  • Clearsense announces that Director of Healthcare Product Strategy Amy Staly, RN has received PerfectServe’s Nurses of Note Innovative Technology Utilization Award.
  • Clinical Architecture releases a new case study featuring LifePoint Health titled “From Fragmented to Future-Ready: How Data Governance Fueled Clinical Transformation.”
  • Consensus Cloud Solutions will present at the HIMSS New England conference June 5 in Norwood, MA.
  • Direct Recruiters unveils a new website.

Blog Posts


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 5/13/25

May 12, 2025 Headlines No Comments

UPMC Enterprises and Redesign Health Launch Chronic Pain Management Company, Glimmer Health

Physician practice-focused chronic pain management startup Glimmer Health launches with support from UPMC Enterprises and Redesign Health.

Olio Raises $11M Series B Funding to Expand Product Innovation and Market Reach

Care coordination company Olio announces $11 million in Series B funding, bringing its total raised to $26.5 million.

Aranscia Acquires Spesana

Diagnostics holding company Aranscia acquires oncology-focused clinical workflow and precision medicine software vendor Spesana.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 5/12/25

May 12, 2025 Dr. Jayne No Comments

image 

I had the privilege of spending Mother’s Day with some of the wisest women I know, including some who are in their 80s and 90s. As these events usually do, it included what I’ve heard jokingly referred to as “the organ recital,” when everyone tells everyone else about all of their recent health issues.

As a physician, they tend to expect me to have immediate knowledge of every condition that they discuss and every physician they see, despite the fact that we live in a major metropolitan area with literally thousands of physicians who are divided across a handful of highly competitive organizations. Even when I was in a traditional practice setting, I rarely got to know physicians who were outside of my referral networks. Still, they seem shocked when I say I don’t know one of their physicians.

One of my relatives had a recent hospitalization. Fortunately I had helped them set up their proxies in the patient portal prior to that event. Since I’m one of the people who have access to their data, it was good to be able to see the information myself when other relatives called to ask me what I thought about it. It was initially great to receive all the lab notifications, but as the hospital stay went on, it started to feel more disruptive.

I didn’t see any options in the patient portal to change those to more of a batch notification or to snooze them for a period of time, kind of like I can subscribe to an email digest with a daily update rather than receiving individual emails from some of the groups I’m in. Fortunately, the hospital stay was brief, but along with the appetizer course, I was treated to a tour of their patient portal with all their follow up items.

Having everyone together, we also used the opportunity to make sure that everyone around the table was set up for the two-factor authentication that will soon be required by the health system where most of them receive their care. It was a little tricky for the relative who didn’t have a cell phone, but we were able to figure something out.

Fortunately, they’ve all figured out that if I’m going to be their IT support person, they need to bring their devices when they see me, so we had a little bit of an assembly line going along with the after-dinner drinks. One of my relatives is thinking about upgrading to a smartphone that I think will be nothing but trouble for him, so I’m crossing my fingers that he sticks with what I’ve recommended and doesn’t drop more than $1,000 on something that’s just going to make him mad.

The only thing that threw a wrench in my plan for a lovely day was cooking a multi-course menu in a kitchen that wasn’t my own. I realized how dependent I had become on my trusty first-generation Alexa device to manage all my kitchen timers by voice alone. I immediately found out that asking one’s significant other to set a timer on their phone is definitely not the way to go if reliability is at stake. I couldn’t figure out the timer on the microwave and I know better than to punch any buttons on the high-tech oven other than the ones that control the temperature.

I was able to fall back on a pair of trusty “minute minder” analog timers, which helped a lot. Still, unlike with Alexa, I had to remember what the timers were for. At least I didn’t run the risk of someone turning them off without my knowing about it or accidentally setting the oven to convection when I didn’t want it.

I also had some time this weekend to hang out with some of my oldest and dearest healthcare IT friends. We started implementing EHRs together more than 20 years ago, and one could say that our friendships have been forged in the fire of adversity.

Bringing up systems in the early 2000s was very different than it is today. There was a lot more flying by the seats of our pants and a lot more scrambling at times, even with the best project plans in play.

One of my friends has a child who is now an EHR analyst at a large academic medical center, and watching the look on her face as we told some of our stories was priceless. Many of the things we did would never pass muster today, but honestly I think I’d be relieved if there were systems in place that kept us from doing some of the crazy things we did. It’s nice to have friends that you know are your “ride or die” friends, whether you need someone to help you dig up some revenue cycle benchmarking data or just to be a sanity check before you commit to a major project when you’re feeling a little uncertain.

Following that, I met up with a nurse who has been my friend for more than 20 years. She was regaling me with stories and pictures of the ridiculous things that her nursing friends received during the recent National Nurses Week observance. There were the predictable pizza parties and donut assortments, along with pet therapists and posters. Some of the nurse-themed cookies in her feed were amazing and I can’t imagine the hours that went into making them.

As for her hospital, it really classed it up by giving the nurses reusable utensil sets that fit into a toothbrush holder-like container. Although I appreciate their nod to sustainability, it doesn’t sound like the nurses thought it was that great, especially since the hospital recently announced that they were ending food service in the cafeteria during the night shift. Nothing says “Hey, pack your dinner at home and bring it with you, since there’s nothing for you here” like hospital-logoed flatware. Perhaps they could have also considered a lunchbox-sized cooler or a gift card to the local supermarket.

How did your organization celebrate Nurses Week? If you’re a nurse, what’s the most ridiculous work-related gift you’ve received, and what kind of recognition or gift would really make your day? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Executive Watercooler Bonus Question: Contrarian Beliefs

May 12, 2025 Advisory Panel 1 Comment

The HIStalk Executive Watercooler is a group of hospital CIOs, hospital CMIOs, practicing physicians, and a few vendor executives who have volunteered to provide their thoughts on topical industry issues. I’ll seek their input every month or so on an important news developments and also ask the non-vendor members about their recent experience with vendors. You are welcome to suggest an issue for their consideration.

If you work for a hospital or practice, you are welcome to join the panel. I am grateful for the help of members 

This question this time: What’s a commonly accepted belief in health IT that you think will turn out to be wrong?


The idea that having an EHR will improve care, enhance safety, and facilitate a “learning health system” has been widely promulgated. Although some improvements have occurred (primarily in legibility of notes and ability to access historical notes and notes from offsite), other results of this magical belief in EHRs include increased documentation requirements, bloated notes, deterioration of clinical decision making, and electronic data that is often inaccurate.

Burnout and clinical inefficiency is common because of the EHR and the bureaucratic requirements that it has facilitated. Staff don’t read much of what is documented. And “learning” from inaccurate data does not create valid conclusions. Requirements for different quality metrics are often conflicting. For example, our institution now has three different delirium screening tools in use because different certification programs require use of different tools.

In sum, we can’t go back, but the benefits of EHRs have been oversold. 


The  hope that AI chatbots will improve patient satisfaction and save the health system money. The “support” chatbots at airlines, e-commerce sites, etc. are uniformly dreadful and annoying. On many sites it’s almost impossible to get through to a live human to resolve a problem now.


  • Phishing drills are an effective way to educate the workforce to be diligent and cautious in opening/responding to emails.
  • Planned system outages are positive in the sense they force users to remember how to practice without support of technology.
  • Longer/more complex passwords result in greater system security.
  • Cloud-based solutions will be big wins for health care enterprises.

That IT serves the business. While that’s partially true, IT really should be actively involved in transforming the business with the use of technology. We all know that IT should have a seat at the table for overall strategy and capital projects, but IT needs to be integrated/embedded across the organization and should be active/proactive, not passive/responsive for ongoing business operations.


In my years in the business (just celebrated 20 years as a CMIO) I have come across many IT leaders that see their role is to meet the customer needs. They see IT as a support department meeting operations and business needs. Its about how we achieve that is where I disagree. One way to do it is deliver whatever the customer is asking for. If they ask for a bicycle, get them one. If they ask for a motorcycle, get them one without thinking through what the true problem that they are trying to solve and whether a car might be the better solution.

Early on in my career before we created out Informatics team, the same problem might have been solved in a few different ways depending on who the customer spoke to. If they ask a documentation analyst, they got a new form. If they asked the order set analyst, they got a new order set. The rules analyst, they got a rule or a report, etc. We still do this today in rev cycle and other operational areas that haven’t invested in an informatics-like infrastructure.


I’m generally skeptical of any AI claims. I do think we are reaching a tipping point with AI where applications of it will really jump start improvements, but there are so many AI experts on LinkedIn that they can’t all be right.

HIStalk Interviews Anthony Lucatuorto, CEO, Sphere

May 12, 2025 Interviews No Comments

Anthony Lucatuorto, MBA is CEO of Sphere.

image

Tell me about yourself and the company.

I’ve enjoyed a 25-year plus career in the fintech space, with leadership experience in embedded payments, digital engagement, and high-growth partnerships. I began my career working at Mastercard and American Express in the early 1990s and held executive roles at First Data, TransFirst, and TSYS before arriving here at Sphere, Powered by TrustCommerce in 2018.

TrustCommerce is a financial technology company that provides secure, integrated healthcare payment solutions to some of the largest health systems in the US. We’ve been doing this for over 25 years. More recently, we are proud to have launched our next-generation card present payment solution, called Cloud Payments, that advances our EHR integrations and continues to help make the patient payment experience more seamless, flexible, and secure.

How are providers supporting newer payment methods and technologies?

Collectively, the industry is on the right track. We need to implement it with what I always preach to my team, which is a quicker speed of play. The act of paying for healthcare is just different than in retail. We need to continue to ensure price transparency, educate patients on their responsibility prior to treatment, and provide patient billing plans. We need to capture cards on file, along with an account updater tool that helps keep our tokenized card information current.

Over 50% of private employees in the US who participate in medical care plans are enrolled in high-deductible plans, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These deductibles keep getting higher year after year. Embracing technology like digital wallets capabilities and recurring payment tools are great examples of ways that providers could help collect more of the growing patient responsibility.

How does healthcare compare to other industries in that regard?

If you or I have a retail-like experience, we take for granted that it comes with speed, convenience, transparency, and trust. The healthcare industry is catching up to this. The industry is a little bit behind, but is now providing more advanced omni-channel payment options, more payment methodologies such as Venmo and PayPal, and more digital wallet products like Apple Pay and Google Pay. These are great examples of ways to get closer to what the patient experience needs to be, which is what they are experiencing on that retail side.

Are providers generally accepting patient payments from Venmo and digital wallets? Is use of those methods skewed to a particular demographic?

It’s funny that you say that. I’m Gen X and I don’t know how many baby boomers are using these, but my generation certainly has embraced it. Millennials and Gen Zs are certainly embracing Apple Pay, Google Pay, and all of the digital wallet products very well. They are after speed, convenience, transparency, and trust.

From the provider side, you have to do that in all of the omni-channel payment options. Whether it’s at the point of sale, in front of your doctor’s office at a kiosk about to check in, or you go online, all of these omni-channel payment methodologies need to accept these forms of payments. More and more, they are.

How are virtual credit card numbers and tokenization being used?

More and more of our clients are capturing tokens. In fact, in our experience, over 70% of healthcare organizations offer patients the ability to store a payment method, and that’s super important. Providing an account updater tool is important, so as a card expires or gets lost, you’re constantly updating the information. Keeping that tokenized card on file helps the provider collect payments today for the future, post-treatment billing down the road, and recurring billing options.

There’s a wealth of opportunities for them. It’s a growing tool and product and providers are certainly starting to embrace it.

For that virtual card question, we’re discussing this a little bit more than we used to. It’s more on the insurance side at this point, where insurance companies send a virtual card to providers. It allows the provider to collect quicker and maybe with more enhanced data for their reconciliation. However, it comes with a cost, because now you’re introducing card brand fees and acquiring fees, which the providers wouldn’t have had with just an insurance payment. Providers absolutely have to weigh the cost benefit of these virtual cards.

What do pre-arrival financial activities look like?

We don’t see payments as a standalone event that always happens at a certain time. The payment needs to be woven in throughout the patient’s journey, complemented by all the tools that are available to help the patient know what they owe, why they owe it, and who they owe it to. Then, to set them up for the best chance of being able to pay their bills. Patients don’t know or care that the appointment reminder system might be a different company than the scheduling system or the patient billing system.

Providers that are being successful in this area are the ones that step back and think about the entire patient experience from beginning to end, giving the patients the right information at the right time to take the right action. That’s really the key.

How does EHR integration work?

We focus on helping our providers collect payments. We are super proud of the fact that we’ve been integrated into Epic, as a great example, for more than 15 years. We’ve done so in all of their native workflows. 

From a provider standpoint, we are embedded in all of the workflows of the EHR, Epic as a great example. They see that as a great experience and greater opportunity to collect payments. It becomes more streamlined workflows for the provider’s patients. It allows centralized reporting for analytics across locations. On the patient side, they have greater information, which is greater cost transparency, and simpler flexible payment options. It’s all within the native workflows, which helps make reconciliation seamless.

How are providers implementing propensity to pay and payment plans?

Most of all of those tools exist in the EHRs, so from my vantage point, I’m making sure that my solutions are embedded into all of those collection points. When they get that that pre-estimate, if they want to make a payment, I’m providing the tool and the access for that provider to collect that. If they want to wait until after service, I’m providing the tool in that omni-channel environment to make that payment. I’m making sure that all payment methodologies are captured, whether it’s Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo, PayPal, or ACH.

How will AI impact your business?

It’s growing exponentially. I expect it to play a larger part, exponentially, quite honestly. We’ll see it in the service side. We’ll see it in our development side. It is exciting and we’re absolutely diving into it and analyzing everything we can.

What will be important to the company over the next two or three years?

We are going to continue to advance our products so that they remain on the cutting edge of being seamless and secure. It always starts with security. We’re going to make sure that we know where the puck is going as it relates to whatever is the next form of card payment. What’s the next Venmo or Apple Pay that’s coming around the corner that the next generation of payers want to use? We’ll make sure that we invest in that technology.

We see healthcare providers heading in the right direction. We’re happy to be a part of it. To summarize the ways that they could continue to help build a path to better collections of patient payments, continue to think of the journey from beginning to end of the whole patient experience. Provide those cost estimates upfront, support the flexible payment methods, provide those omni-channel payment options, ensure that the secure payment storage for future treatments and recurring billing, and continue to communicate early and often. That’s the best thing we can do.

Readers Write: Healthcare Cyber Resilience in 2025: Why “Good” Isn’t Good Enough

May 12, 2025 Readers Write No Comments

Healthcare Cyber Resilience in 2025: Why “Good” Isn’t Good Enough
By Chad Alessi

Chad Alessi, MS, MBA is managing director of cybersecurity at CTG.

image

Ninety-two percent of healthcare organizations have experienced at least one cyberattack in the past year. More than half saw disruptions to patient care, and nearly a third reported increased mortality rates as a result. These aren’t just statistics, they’re a wake-up call for the entire industry. The healthcare sector is under siege, and the stakes are nothing less than patient safety, operational continuity, and public trust.

Yet despite the relentless barrage of ransomware, phishing, and supply chain attacks, many healthcare leaders still describe their organizations’ cyber resilience as merely “good” or “average.” An April 2025 CHIME Executive Member Survey, representing 42 healthcare organizations across the US, reveals a sector that is investing more and learning fast. But they are still struggling to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated adversaries who continuously adapt and exploit new vulnerabilities.

While healthcare organizations are dedicating more resources to cybersecurity than ever before, increased spending does not always translate to greater protection. The data shows a sector that is reactive, not proactive, with stronger confidence in threat detection than vital capabilities in response and recovery.

Key findings from the CHIME survey include:

  • Most organizations consider their cyber resilience as “good,” but few report achieving excellence. A significant minority still self-identify as average or below average, especially in recovery capabilities.
  • Confidence is highest in IT teams’ 24×7 threat detection but drops sharply for non-IT staff and business leaders. This gap is critical when rapid, cross-functional response is needed.
  • Investment priorities are clear — AI-driven threat detection, incident response playbooks, modern Security Operations Centers (SOCs), employee training, and supply chain risk management.

Technology alone is not enough to secure healthcare’s digital front lines. The survey highlights how internal barriers, most notably persistent budget constraints, continue to hinder progress, even as the cost of cyber incidents rises.

Executive support and understanding of cybersecurity are often lacking, making it difficult to establish the governance and strategic direction that are needed for resilience. Many organizations also face a shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals, and legacy IT infrastructure further complicates efforts to modernize defenses.

The complexity of healthcare systems and associated data adds another layer of difficulty, as organizations try to keep up with a rapidly evolving threat landscape. Ultimately, these human and organizational factors can be just as critical as any technical vulnerability.

The future impact of these human vulnerabilities is impossible to assess as bad actors continue to evolve their attacks and new technologies create new opportunities for disruption. This uncertainty was top-of-mind for survey respondents who pointed to a new breed of threats that are rapidly gaining ground.

AI-powered cyberattacks — including deepfakes, generative phishing, and sophisticated social engineering — have emerged as top concerns, as attackers use artificial intelligence to automate and personalize their tactics. Supply chain vulnerabilities are also front and center, with organizations increasingly dependent on third-party vendors that may not have robust security measures in place.

Ransomware continues to be a major concern, especially as attackers shift to encryption-less tactics that threaten to expose sensitive data rather than simply lock it down. Meanwhile, advanced phishing attacks that are capable of bypassing even multi-factor authentication are making it harder than ever to protect critical systems and patient information.

The consequences of these attacks are not confined to the IT department. When hospital systems go down, the effects ripple through every aspect of care delivery. Delays in procedures and tests become common, and critical patient information can become inaccessible at the worst possible moment. The survey and supporting research show just how serious these impacts can be:

  • 69% of affect organizations reported disruption to patient care.
  • More than 50% saw delays in procedures and tests, while 25% linked attacks to increased patient mortality.
  • Supply chain attacks were most likely to disrupt care, with 82% of those affected reporting direct patient impact.

These results underscore the dire need for healthcare organizations to conduct more training to prepare all staff, not just IT, in the event of a disruption. While many organizations deliver basic training or tabletop exercises, few extend these programs beyond IT staff. This is a missed opportunity, as rapid, coordinated response across all departments is essential for minimizing the impact of attacks on patient care.

The survey also found ample opportunity to improve communications during disruptions, which also has a direct impact on restoring patient care. Confidence in incident response communications, both for staff and patients, is mixed, with many organizations expressing uncertainty about whether their plans are up to date, comprehensive, tested, and validated under real-world conditions.

What should healthcare leaders prioritize when it comes to addressing the potential impact of cyber disruptions on patient care?

  • Elevate cyber resilience to a board-level priority. Executive leaders must drive strategy, governance, and response readiness across the organization.
  • Invest in both technology and talent. AI-driven defenses and modern SOCs are critical, but so are skilled personnel and a culture of cyber awareness.
  • Expand training and incident response exercises to all staff, not just IT. Everyone has a role to play in defending patient safety.

Healthcare’s cyber battle will continue to escalate. While the sector is making progress, “good” is no longer good enough. To safeguard patients, protect data, and ensure operational continuity, organizations must adopt a proactive mindset and prioritize both technical innovation and human expertise to create truly resilient operations.

Morning Headlines 5/12/25

May 11, 2025 Headlines No Comments

Virtual chronic care company Omada Health files for IPO

Virtual care provider Omada Health files for an IPO, reporting a $44 million loss on $170 million in 2024 revenue.

FDA Approves Teal Health’s Teal Wand –The First and Only At-Home Self-Collection Device for Cervical Cancer Screening, Introducing a Comfortable Alternative to In-Person Screening

The FDA approves the Teal Wand, a prescription device that lets average-risk women collect a cervical cancer screening sample at home, mail it in, and review results via telehealth.

CompuGroup Medical and CVC plan delisting – public delisting offer announced by CVC

Global health IT company CompuGroup Medical will move forward with delisting from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange as part of investor CVC Capital’s take-private acquisition deal first announced last December.

Navy’s Military Sealift Command Upgrades IT to Ensure Health Care Continuity

The US Navy’s Military Sealift Command is in the process of upgrading its IT infrastructure, including linking the US Naval Ship Mercy to the federal MHS Genesis EHR.

Monday Morning Update 5/12/25

May 11, 2025 News 3 Comments

Top News

image

Virtual care provider Omada Health files for an IPO, reporting a $44 million loss on $170 million in 2024 revenue.

The company posted strong revenue growth and a narrower net loss compared to 2023.

Co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy has led Omada since 2011, following stints as a Medgadget blog contributor and developer of Excel training tools. He dropped out of Harvard’s medical and business schools in 2010.


Reader Comments

From Not Pratap Sarker: “Re: Oak Street Health. Moving away from Greenway’s EHR and RCM services. This is Greenway’s largest customer. Their EHR Canopy currently sits on top of GW.” Unverified. I’ve emailed Greenway’s media contact. UPDATE: Oak Street is moving to Epic. Thanks to Brendan Keeler for sending a link to details. Oak Street is also listed on Epic’s UserWeb.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

image

The top responses from last week’s poll suggest that the best sales and marketing activity is to let your product and support do the talking.

New poll to your right or here: For those over 50, what is the #1 thing you wish you had done differently? I’ve run this question a couple of times over the years, hopefully giving the under-50 folks time to replot their course if needed. I’m sure they would also benefit from an explanatory poll comment if you are so inclined.


Thanks to the volunteers who contributed to the first of my revived Executive Watercooler frontlines report. If you’re in a decision-making role at a health system, ACO, or hospital-owned medical group; serve as a CMIO, CNIO, or clinical informaticist; lead a health system IT organization; or work as a digital health executive, you’re welcome to join them. You’ll get a monthly question by email to which you just click “reply” with your answer.

image

Alabama teacher Ms. H sent some photos from her elementary school class, for which reader donations funded STEM-based centers.


Sponsored Events and Resources

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

image

The FDA approves the Teal Wand, a prescription device that lets average-risk women collect a cervical cancer screening sample at home, mail it in, and review results via telehealth. Shipping begins in June and the company is seeking coverage from insurers.

Kouper Health, which offers AI-powered tools to manage post-discharge care transitions and reduce readmissions, raises $10 million in funding. Co-founder and CEO Salman Ali, MBA, previously co-founded the at-home sleep apnea testing company GetSnooze.

Nordic-owned Healthtech opens Canadian offices in Halifax, Montreal, and Vancouver.

Definitive Healthcare reports Q1 results: revenue down 7%, EPS $0.05 versus $0.08, beating estimates for both. DH shares rose 31% on the news, valuing the company at $398 million. They’re down 29% in the past 12 months.

image

Former Theranos CEO and current federal inmate Elizabeth Holmes is reportedly advising her partner Billy Evans – a hotel heir and father of their two children — on his new medical testing AI startup. The company is raising funds to develop what it calls “the future of diagnostics” and “a radically new approach to health testing” for “human health optimization.” A recent patent claims that the technology can analyze sweat, urine, saliva, and small blood samples. That’s the happy couple above in pre-incarceration days with their husky Balto, which Holmes insisted was a wolf and whose eventual disappearance she blamed on a mountain lion that carried him off.


Sales

  • University of Iowa Health Care will implement Visage Imaging’s Visage 7 in a $13 million contract.

People

image

The FDA hires Jeremy Walsh (Booz Allen Hamilton) as its first chief AI officer.

image image

Intermountain Health promotes Tamara Moores Todd, MD to chief health informatics officer and Jason McClellan, RN, MBA to chief clinical informatics officer.

image

Tiffany Hodgins, MSHI (Health Catalyst) joins Sacvalley Medshare as chief technology and quality officer.

image

Jay Scholes (Veradigm) joins Advantmed as VP of sales.


Announcements and Implementations

Black Book Research overhauls its healthcare IT research model, adding AI-driven real-time sentiment analysis, redesigned KPIs, continuous survey pilots, and broader access to reports that are neither paywalled nor vendor-sponsored.

A year-long independent study finds that use of an AI assistant – Navina’s AI Copilot in this analysis – reduced clinical review time for complex visits by 40%, decreased physician burnout by 32%, and improved value-based performance as measured by Risk Adjustment Factor and Star quality ratings.

Nova Scotia Health delays the go-live of its Oracle Cerner Canada system until December, following its 10-year, $260 million agreement that was signed in February 2023. No reason was provided.


Sponsor Updates

  • Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a new case study titled “Northeast Georgia Health System’s Cloud-First Transformation Journey.”
  • PerfectServe announces the winners of its 2025 Nurses of Note Awards Program.
  • RLDatix signs a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi to develop a patient safety system using its technology.
  • Sonifi Health will exhibit at the Texas Regional HIMSS Conference May 12-14 in Grapevine.
  • TeamBuilder will present at The Millenium Alliance Transformation Assembly May 13-14 in Dallas.
  • A new Wolters Kluwer Health survey finds that nursing schools will more than double their use of generative AI over the next two to three years.

The 2025 MedTech Breakthrough Award winners include the following HIStalk sponsors:

  • Capital Rx’s Judi Health (best insurtech solution).
  • CliniComp (EHR innovation award).
  • Timely by DrFirst (best overall patient engagement platform).
  • Elsevier ClinicalKey AI (AI innovation award).
  • Inovalon’s Social Drivers of Health Market Insights (best data visualization solution).
  • Navina (best use of AI in healthcare).
  • SmarterDx (best overall healthcare operations solution).
  • Symplr (best healthcare big data platform).
  • TrustCommerce, a Sphere company (healthcare payments innovation award),
  • Waystar (best overall healthcare payments solution provider).
  • WellSky (best home healthcare solution).

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Text Ads


RECENT COMMENTS

  1. I just checked the notes from last month's annual wellness visit. I'm healthy, so it was pretty perfunctory and I…

  2. As a 60+ person, I would manage my stress better. I was busy building a career in my 30s, and…

  3. I really appreciate the poll. As someone under 50, thank you to those >50 who respond. Already seeing health and…

Founding Sponsors


 

Platinum Sponsors


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gold Sponsors


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RSS Webinars

  • An error has occurred, which probably means the feed is down. Try again later.