Monday Morning Update 7/21/25

Top News

Humana integrates its health plan information with Epic, which allows patients to track deductibles and access health plan resources from their provider’s MyChart.

Reader Comments

From Guillermo: “Re: pharma telehealth. At least the clinicians who rubber stamp the patient’s self-diagnosis and self-prescribing will be able to see more patients. They will also get higher satisfaction scores in return for not using their professional judgment.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents would prefer that the federal government stay out of patient records in the absence of patient complaints, quality reviews, or illegal activities.

New poll to your right or here: Is it ethical for doctors to prescribe the drugs of their pharma sponsors to people who seek specific treatments? Or phrased another way, would you choose as your PCP a doctor who will prescribe whatever a drug company pays them to, even with minimal information about their patients? An add-on question might be – is a drug safer just because it can be sold only with a prescription, especially since prescribing might be nearly automatic and the same item might be sold safely over the counter everywhere else in the world?

I was thinking as I set up the new poll. Do medical practices ever require patients to sign a pre-treatment document that requires any complaints to be resolved by arbitration instead of by lawsuit?

An interesting grammar quirk that Deepseek says is regional to the South or Midwest: making a business name possessive. I’m shopping at Target’s. I reckon I might go have lunch at Weinerschnitzel’s. Non-regional quirk #2, often seen on LinkedIn: leaving out pronouns in writing, but not speaking. Example: “Humbled to get the award. Appreciate the recognition. ”

Sponsored Events and Resources

July 22 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” Sponsor: Praia Health. Presenters: Ryan Howells, principal, Leavitt Partners and program manager, The CARIN Alliance; David LaBine, VP of software engineering, Providence Digital Innovation Group; Robin Monks, CTO, Praia Health; Kristen Valdes, CEO, b.well. As healthcare faces rising consumer expectations and tighter regulations, the high cost of maintaining fragmented, proprietary systems is no longer sustainable. While patient data access has improved, the lack of open standards continues to hinder innovation, drive up integration costs, and limit the potential of digital health beyond the EHR. This webinar will discuss how open standards like OIDC,  HL7 FHIR, and open technology requirements are essential for reducing integration burdens, accelerating development, and lowering maintenance costs. Panelists will describe how every closed integration represents a lost opportunity and will offer practical strategies for leveraging open technology as a competitive advantage that improves efficiency, ensures compliance, and strengthens patient trust.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Bankrupt Steward Health Care System sues its former executives for $1.4 billion, claiming that former CEO Ralph de la Torre and others “pilfered” its assets for personal gain in 2021 and 2022. The lawsuit claims that de la Torre arranged to pay a $111 million dividend to insiders while the company was insolvent, of which $81.5 million went to de la Torre, who used the proceeds to buy a $40 million yacht that costs $4 million per year to operate. His other yacht is worth $15 million.

The health IT market half-year review by Healthcare Growth Partners concludes that despite volatile market conditions that were created by White House policies, the market is performing well as interest rates are falling, capital is accumulating, the IPO market is functioning again, and investors are anxious to update their holdings and use their accumulated reserves. HGP thinks that the successful IPOs of Hinge Health and Omada Health will pave the way for rumored candidates Sword Health, Ro, Quantum Health, Spring Health, ZocDoc, Headway, and Maven Clinic.

Sales

• Peterson Health (TX) will implement Medaptus Charge Pro.

People

Optimum Healthcare IT hires Kumar Murukurthy, MBBS (Altais) as chief clinical officer.

Announcements and Implementations

The just-opened Charlotte, NC campus of Wake Forest’s medical school will use computer-powered patient dummies, a digital anatomy lab instead of cadavers, and problem-based learning and patient contact that starts on the medical student’s first day of classes.

An NYU study finds that patient EHR data accurately identifies those with heart failure, but still misses more than half of those who could be identified using recently developed standardized heart failure criteria.

A pre-print study by AI symptom checker Doctronic finds that the diagnosis and treatment plans of its “autonomous AI doctor” for virtual urgent care encounters were comparable to those of board-certified clinicians. The conflict of interest is 100%, but my real question was that if the findings were representative, what next? Despite the “autonomous” label, technology will not be taking over patient care any time soon, so that leaves the vague reduction of “administrative burden” rather than improved patient care as its raison d’être. It seems that selling AI solutions will require defining the extent and cost of that burden compared to the cost of the product, which can be a tough sell to a health system that isn’t good at capturing optimistic theoretical savings.

Government and Politics

HHS gives the Department of Homeland Security’s ICE agents access to the names and addresses of 79 million Medicaid recipients that will be used to track down those who are living in the US illegally. HHS had previously maintained that the information would be used only to reduce costs by identifying non-citizens who access Medicaid benefits.

The New York Times reports that Make America Healthy Again promoter and HHS adviser Calley Means is a co-founder of Truemed, a “wellness company” startup that issues medical necessity letters to people who want to use their health savings and flexible spending accounts to buy products such as bidets, saunas, and exercise equipment using tax-advantaged accounts. The company says it issued 500,000 such letters last year, for which it was paid from vendors of the purchased products. Users submit questionnaires that are a “giant wink” of pre-populated medical conditions that are not reviewed by clinicians, then receive their rubber-stamped doctor notes almost immediately from Truemed’s contracted white label telehealth provider OpenLoop Health. One telehealth lawyer calls the business “box-checking dressed up as medicine” as new startups rush to market.

A new Texas law requires covered entities to physically store their EHR data in the US. Also in the law:

• Providers may not store patient credit scores or voter registration status in the EHR.
• Clinicians may use AI provided they review its recommendations.
• Parents of minors must be granted access to the EHR records of their children.
• The EHR must support entry of biological sex as either male or female only.
• The EHR must restrict providers from changing a patient’s biological sex data except to correct a clerical error or from a documented disorder.
• Civil penalties up to $250,000 per violation for non-compliance can be assessed.

Other

A man dies after entering the MRI room where his wife was undergoing a procedure and was pulled into the machine when the magnet attracted his 20-pound metallic exercise necklace.

Sponsor Updates

• FinThrive will sponsor the HFMA Southern California Chapter’s Women’s Disruptive Leadership Summit July 24 in Long Beach, CA.
• Black Book Research’s latest survey results reveal major advances in EHR usability and clinician satisfaction.
• DrFirst promotes Erin Hall to director of event strategy and experience.
• Clearsense appoints recently retired AdventHealth president and CEO Terry Shaw to its Board of Directors.
• Nym names Daniel Masvidal EVP of customer operations and hires Nir Cohen as medical data analyst, Nadav Poran as backend developer, Grace Hejnal as medical coding and compliance auditor, Dimple Patel as director of strategic accounts, and Ben Shmueli as software engineer.
• Symplr achieves HITRUST certification and re-certification for several solutions.

Blog Posts

• How Health First Improved DKA Care With Pharmacy Surveillance Software (Inovalon)
• Actionable Strategies for Generative Experience Optimization (GEO) in Local Patient Search (Kyruus Health)
• Balancing data privacy in healthcare with the need for care personalization (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Whole-Person Care in Action: How Integrated Platforms Are Transforming Addiction Recovery (Netsmart)
• Tech doesn’t work: Implementation does (Nordic)
• Why Health System Apps Haven’t Delivered (and What Needs to Change) (Praia Health)
• Redox Now Supports CDS Hooks: Smarter Decision Support, Seamlessly Delivered (Redox)
• Where Interoperability Strategy Falls Short—And How to Fix It (Rhapsody)
• Healthcare Data and the Longest Movie Ever Made (Surescripts)
• Fueling Financial Performance: A Step-by-Step KPI Guide (Tegria)
• The CEO Signal: The DNA of a Company Begins with its Founders (VitalChat)
• Learnings from the front lines: AI and home health care (WellSky)
• If You’re Connected to Carequality, September is Going to Affect You: What You Need to Know About Delegation of Authority (Zen Healthcare IT)

Contacts

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