News 4/2/25

Top News

The VA names nine facilities that will go live on the department’s Oracle Health-based EHR next year.

Medical centers and associated clinics in Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio will join four locations in Michigan as part of the VA’s accelerated deployment plan.

The VA expects to complete full implementation at all VA facilities nationwide as early as 2031.

Reader Comments

From Tressa: “Re: Oracle. It seems strange for the cloud and the legacy databases to be compromised at the same time. Also, I hadn’t heard if our data was affected and texted our CMIO with the information you posted. He contacted our Cerner account executive, who claimed to know nothing about it. It seems bizarre for the account execs to not be made aware of something that has been publicly reported on.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: April 15 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Navigating ACO Quality in 2025: Lessons Learned and Future Directions.” Sponsor: Healthmonix. Presenters: Michael Lewis, VP of customer success, Healthmonix; Steven Tyson, senior account executive, Healthmonix.  Accountable care organizations (ACOs) must stay ahead of evolving quality requirements and reporting changes. Join us for an in-depth discussion on lessons learned from past ACO implementation, key areas for improvement, and the impact of Medicare Clinical Quality Measures (CQMs).

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Virtual care company AvaSure acquires Nurse Disrupted, which offers virtual nursing services for hospital and home-based care. Nurse Disrupted founder and CEO Bre Loughlin, MS, RN will join AvaSure as executive director of virtual care innovation.

Well Health Technologies will take control of Healwell AI as Healwell acquires New Zealand’s Orion Health. Well Health, which invested in Toronto-based Healwell and bought its clinical assets in 2023, saw its shares drop 30% Monday after it disclosed a US federal investigation into billing practices at its subsidiary Circle Medical Technologies that will delay its fiscal year reporting. WELL.TO shares rose 19% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $1 billion.

Automated chart review startup Layer Health raises $21 million in a Series A funding round.

ATA Action, the advocacy group of the American Telemedicine Association, acquires the Digital Therapeutics Alliance and creates Advancing Digital Health Coalition.

Sales

• Ballad Health (TN) selects specialty pharmacy analytics software from Loopback Analytics.
• Providence Swedish (WA) implements remote patient monitoring software and services from Starlight Health as part of a new post-discharge pilot program at its First Hill hospital.
• Columbus Public Health will implement Epic through an arrangement with Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

People

ReferWell names Kevin Healy (Chicago Pacific Founders) CEO.

Dale Sanders joins Unite Us as chief product and technology officer.

Hippocratic AI names Hollie Vugrinovich (Notable) chief growth officer and Brij Aswani, MBA (MD Clarity) VP of sales.

California health data network Manifest Medex hires three executive directors: Eva Williams, PhD (Centene), Southern Inland region; Ednann Naz, MD, MPH, MBA (ProNexus Advisory), Central and Northern region; and Erin Henke (Engaging Solutions), Bay region.

Risant Health hires Jessica Bartell, MD, MS, MBA (UnitedHealthcare) as CMIO. 

Announcements and Implementations

Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children opens a staffed virtual urgent care kiosk in a shopping mall to ease ED wait times. Families can connect with the ED team, print documents, or be referred to a nearby hospital. The site, which is open daily, includes a private room for virtual consults and live interpreter access. It targets low-income areas to address gaps in technology and privacy.

Vaco Holdings, whose brands include MorganFranklin Consulting, Pivot Point Consulting, Focus Search Partners, and Built, renames itself Highspring, with the talent solutions platform taking the name Vaco by Highspring. The company has 10,000 employees who work from 45 global offices and seven delivery centers.

Government and Politics

A federal judge in Florida sentences Colton Neal to two and a half years in prison for stealing a physician’s professional and digital health credentials that he used to issue 144 controlled substances prescriptions. He advertised on the dark web, used an EHR and telehealth service to issue the prescriptions, and collected payments via cryptocurrency.

Other

Epic’s April 1 announcements include an Epic Aerospace rocket launch, a telehealth bloopers TV series titled “America’s Funniest Video Visits”, a short-form video function for clinician notes called TikDoc, and a MyChart enhancement for lung training and hearing assessment named Care-oke.

Sponsor Updates

• AGS Health will exhibit at Healthcon 2025 April 6-9 in Orlando.
• Black Book Research survey-takers rank InteliChart as the top end-to-end patient engagement solution vendor.
• Healthmonix will exhibit at the NAACOS Spring 2025 Conference April 22-24 in Baltimore.
• CereCore releases a new podcast episode titled “CNO Day in the Life: Leading through Change.”
• Barwon Health in Australia will implement Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging Platform.
• The “HealthTech with Purpose” podcast features Arrive Health COO Christie Callahan.
• Capital Rx will exhibit at the AMCP Annual Meeting through April 3 in Houston.
• Censinet will sponsor the 2025 Health-ISAC Spring Americas Summit May 19-23 in Naples, FL.
• Clinical Architecture partners with Velox Health Metadata to help health plans navigate clinical data management.
• The “Health Innovation Matters” podcast features DrFirst CMO Colin Banas, MD, MHA.

Blog Posts

• Harnessing AI in Healthcare to Simplify Evidence Analysis (Symplr)
• Improving care management data analytics for whole-person health (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• The challenge of disparate systems in healthcare, and a promising solution (Altera Digital Health)
• Potential Oracle Cloud Breach (Clearwater)
• 5 Keys to Epic EHR Activation Success: A Practical Guide (CTG)

Contacts

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