News 3/7/25

Top News

Walgreens reaches an agreement to sell itself to private equity firm Sycamore Partners for $10 billion.

Sycamore is expected to keep the core US retail business and then either spin off or sell segments such as the British drugstore chain Boots and its VillageMD primary care business.

The market value of the 120-year-old Walgreens peaked in 2015 at $100 billion.

Reader Comments

From MrCernerPizzaDriver: “Re: Oracle Health. Appears to be having a nationwide outage today [Wednesday] of the OCI Cloud starting around 2:30 PST. Clients are unable to utilize system functionality that converted to the cloud, including scheduling appointments. Cloud is still down as of 4:45 PST.” The downtime was apparently regional rather than national and systems were restored shortly after. The VA says that all six of its medical centers and 26 community clinics that are live on Oracle Health were affected. Online chatter suggests that the problem was related to the installation of a security certificate. Techies, did Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Autonomous Database save the day here by limiting the impact?

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Conduce Health. Conduce leverages the power of AI and advanced data science to provide the tools that health systems and risk-bearing entities need to deliver value-based specialty care. Conduce’s platform uses a proprietary patient cohorting model to predict and identify patient needs and match patients with the right specialty care intervention or specialist at the right time. Conduce also helps its partners build high-performant and aligned specialty networks, or optimize their existing networks with enhanced access to top-performing specialists. Working with accountable care organizations, value-based primary care, health plans, and health systems, Conduce’s novel approach incentivizes value-based alignment, facilitates care coordination, and ensures timely access to high-quality personalized, and affordable specialty care. Thanks to Conduce Health for supporting HIStalk.

Please complete my quick reader survey, from which I always get ideas for making HIStalk more useful. I’ll post a summary of the results and comments afterward, as I did in the snippet above from a long-ago wrap-up.

Today I learned about the Dead Internet Theory, which claims that most online content is AI-generated, bot-driven, or corporate-controlled to manipulate perception and maximize ad revenue. I would thus propose the Dead Conference Theory, where nobody learns anything at educational conferences because they’re too busy thrusting microphones and cameras at each other, trolling for party invitations, and buffing personal brand.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 20 (Thursday) noon ET. “Enhancing Patient Experience: Digital Accessibility Legal Requirements in Healthcare.” Sponsor: TPGi. Presenters: Mark Miller, director of sales, TPGi; David Sloan, PhD, MSc, chief accessibility officer, TPGi; Kristina Launey, JD, labor and employment litigation and counseling partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP. For patients with disabilities, inaccessible technology can mean the difference between timely, effective care and unmet healthcare needs. This could include accessible patient portals, telehealth services, and payment platforms. Despite a new presidential administration, requirements for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not changed. While enforcement may unclear moving forward, healthcare organizations still have an obligation to their patients for digital accessibility. In our webinar session, TPGi’s accessibility experts and Seyfarth Shaw’s legal professionals will help you understand ACA Section 1557 requirements, its future under the Trump administration, and offer strategies to help you create inclusive experiences.

Live Webinar: March 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “How to Improve Clinical Workflows with AI Chart Summaries and Risk Predictions.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Scott Cullen, MD, senior advisor, Health Data Analytics Institute; David Clain, chief product officer, Health Data Analytics Institute. Learn how the EHR-embedded HDAIAssist tool is transforming the ability of clinicians to pull insights out the mountains of data that have accumulated in the EHR, quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. HDAlAssist, which is part of HealthVision, the intelligent health management system, combines AI chart summaries and granular risk predictions to quickly inform care planning decisions, especially for the most complex, high-risk patients.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Freed raises $30 million in a Series A funding round. Individual licenses for its ambulatory scribing and documentation solution cost $99 per month and the company offers a live online demo and free trial.

Investment firm General Catalyst loses three managing directors as it expands beyond traditional venture capital and considers an IPO. The company manages $32 billion in assets and is moving into non-venture activities such as acquiring the non-profit health system Summa Health for $485 million. 

Sales

• Honor Health chooses Five9 as the cloud contact center provider for the patient access center’s move from its legacy on-premise solution.

People

Columbus Regional Health (IN) promotes Steve Baker, MBA to president and CEO. He joined the health system as chief technology and information officer in 2016 after holding IT leadership roles at other hospitals, including serving as VP/CIO of East Jefferson General Hospital.

Healthlink Advisors promotes Amber Olsen to VP of Epic services.

Announcements and Implementations

Altera Digital Health announces new solutions at HIMSS25 that include ambient documentation for Sunrise, Paragon Denali, and TouchWorks EHR; the Sunrise CarePath patient portal; and Sunrise Health Record HIM solution for integrating unstructured content.

A Vyne Medical survey of 1,000 US adults finds that 29% of experienced prescription delays due to prior authorization, 33% prefer to sign documents that are sent via email or text instead of in person, and 79% have some concerns about using AI to automate healthcare tasks.

Baxter International-owned Voalte announces a voice-activated badge for care teams.

Government and Politics

Florida’s insurance regulator demands that pharmacy benefit managers submit detailed prescription data, including patient names, birth dates, and doctors visited. The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation requested the information in January to verify PBM compliance with a state drug pricing law. However, privacy experts question whether it really needs fully identifiable patient data and why it wants data about prescriptions that were paid for by federal programs such as Medicare.

The VA is planning a reorganization that could cut 80,000 jobs in a White House mandate to return headcount its 2019 level.

Other

The post-HIMSS25 comments on LinkedIn of Innsena CEO Leslie Kirk that she titled “Is HIMSS Back?” resonated with me:

• Everyone has picked a side between ViVE and HIMSS in a rivalry that few care about.
• Hosted buyer programs, where attendees get in free by agreeing to exhibitor sales pitches, add little value since “none of these people are going to buy, and faking a warm lead is dumb.”’
• New executive attendees at HIMSS25 enjoyed the parties but found the conference overwhelming and too time-consuming to prepare for, with most planning to opt for smaller events instead.
• The exhibit hall layout, divided by a sky bridge, likely hurt booth traffic for companies positioned on the far side.

Meanwhile, HIMSS25 attendees, send me your thoughts – best part, worst part, trends that changed since HIMSS24, the impact of not having federal employees involved, and the good rumors or scandalous gossip that your heard.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders staff work with United Way of Southern Maine to prepare food for distribution through school pantry programs.
• Altera Digital Health publishes a new client story, “Phoenix Children’s Hospital extends its reach of care with Altera Digital Health.”
• FinThrive publishes a new case study, “How a Large Massachusetts Health System Streamlined EHR Consolidation and Claims Management.”
• Health Data Movers names Aimee Steel (Nordic) recruiter and Abbi Haering (TEKsystems) account manager.
• Healthcare Growth Partners advises Compliatric on its sale to Ntracts.

Blog Posts

• Tackling Clinician Burnout (Medicomp Systems)
• Integrated Social Care Data: The Key to Unlocking Community Health (Findhelp)
• Looking for a Healthcare RCM Automation Vendor? Start Your Search with These Top Questions. (FinThrive)
• The State of IT Staffing in Healthcare: Trends for 2025 (HCTec)
• The Future of Healthcare Security: Understanding the Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) that Would Make Significant Changes to HIPAA (Impact Advisors)
• How Meditech is making AI work in healthcare: Practical applications and key lessons (Meditech)
• Could IT Co-Management Solve Your “Great Resignation” Woes? (Med Tech Solutions)
• Risk Adjustment: How to ensure fair compensation for payers and providers (Navina)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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