I'll bite on the disagreement side. 25+ years in EHR implementation, sales, and support. First, regarding the decision effect. Sure,…
News 10/24/25
Top News
The private equity owners of revenue cycle management company Ensemble Health have reportedly hired investment bankers to conduct a company sale or IPO early next year, hoping for a $13 billion valuation.
Reader Comments
From PissedOffPhysician: “Re: HLTH. Really? A private jet to the HLTH party? What a tone deaf, entitled post featuring a group of ‘founders’ and ‘investors’ in healthcare. An anonymous donor provided it – perhaps it will show up in opensecrets.org in a few months/years.” The tagged physicians represent these companies: Offcall, Qualified Health, Clarity Pediatrics, Proto Intelligence, Signos, and MDCalc. In their defense, HLTH has little to do with human caring or science, it’s all about picking investor pockets (Helping Launch The Hype). Meanwhile, what wisdom did the HLTH expense account fat-cat crowd glean from aging brat-packer and underage sex tape innovator Rob Lowe? Do any of the “innovators” pause between blowout parties and swag scrums to worry about the unaffordable individual and collective cost of US healthcare? Is healthcare’s moral rot visible from behind the velvet ropes at the sponsored rooftop lounge?
From Titular: “Re: physicians turned tech people. Is it appropriate for them to call themselves ‘Dr.’ or to apply ‘MD’ after their name if they didn’t even complete a residency?” Yes, because MD and DO are earned degrees regardless of the ensuing career path. I’m not a fan of “Dr.” since it’s vague (doctorate in what?) and is often redundantly misused as “Dr. John Smith, MD.” I also don’t think it’s appropriate (and some of my former hospital employers agreed) for non-physicians to call themselves doctor out on the floors even if they earned clinical practice doctorates in nursing, optometry, pharmacy, podiatry, dentistry, audiology, or physical therapy since it’s asking a lot for patients to figure it all out. In a perfect world, nobody would use the unhelpful “Dr.” prefix, but egos make that unlikely. My zeal for HIStalk accuracy means that I list non-US conferred medical degrees (MBBS, MBChB, or BMBS) even when the holder or their employer calls it MD to avoid confusion. Slightly related, I don’t understand people who list “ABD” on LinkedIn, confusing failing to finish the hard part of a PhD with an a credential worth noting.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
The most entertaining thing I’ve seen this week is a graphic for the “Complete Guide of [sic] Healthcare IT,” which obviously used ChatGPT to hilariously misspell nearly all of the companies of which it claims and sells expertise (including now non-existent ones like Allscripts and Cerner). It’s an India-based company with “global headquarters” in this shared house in the technology hub of Selbyville, DE:
Sponsored Events and Resources
None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Quest Diagnostics references its use of Epic in this week’s earnings call:
During the quarter, we announced Epic Systems as our technology partner for Project Nova, our multi-year order-to-cash transformation. By deploying a suite of Epic Systems solutions, including Beaker, MyChart, and Care Everywhere, we will deliver deeper, more connected insights with easier, faster, and more efficient experiences … Today we have the application called MyQuest, which allows patients to make appointments, view your test results, pay your bills, and that application will be upgraded to what most people know as MyChart. In the Epic Systems world, that provides a lot of benefits, including patients will be able to see all of their information, regardless if it’s from Quest Diagnostics or a health system, on one MyChart site, if you will. It provides the integration of lab work with other medical records that they may be getting from their physicians, their health systems. We believe that really has tremendous benefits as well. As we’ve described in the past, it’s a five to seven year implementation timeline.
Epic will shut down its Workshop program, which co-develops software in partnership with third party companies such as Abridge and Nuance, Politico reports.
Social care technology company Findhelp acquires Uno Health, which offers a digital enrollment platform for government benefits.
Announcements and Implementations
AltaPointe Health (AL) will give the 50 most frequent 911 callers iPads that are loaded with MyCare behavioral health software in a pilot program that is aimed at reducing non-medical ambulance calls. The local fire chief says that first responders are strained by frequent callers who use 911 for non-emergency ED transport, noting that one resident calls about three times per week and 40 others have been taken to hospitals at least 10 times.
Patient experience orchestration technology vendor Praia Health launches an AI-powered personalization engine that supports health system patient acquisition, engagement, and retention efforts.
Podimetrics introduces SmartMat+, which tracks daily foot temperature, balance, and weight to support early intervention in heart failure, diabetes, and fall risk.
InterSystems integrates HealthShare with Google Cloud, allowing healthcare organizations to create a FHIR-ready data foundation, deploy advanced AI and agents from Gemini models, and improve interoperability and security.
AdvancedMD launches a cloud-based EHR/PM for small mental health practices.
Other
The cost of job-based health insurance has risen 6% this year to an average of $27,000 per year for family coverage even as deductibles continue to climb.
An interesting LinkedIn post from associate CHIO, informaticist, and psychologist Stephon Procter, PhD, MBMI from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia describes their pilot of Epic’s phenotyping AI tool. It summarizes patient note histories into Human Phenotype Ontology terms (symptoms and traits) to support genetic diagnosis and precision medicine.
Sponsor Updates
- Optimum Healthcare IT posts the final episode of Season 1 of the “Visionary Voices” podcast, featuring Chris Longhurst, MD, MS.
- The “PharmaPhorum” podcast features Medicomp Systems CMO Jay Anders, MD in an episode titled “Improving ROI on AI investments and data quality.”
- InterSystems and Google Cloud integrate InterSystems HealthShare with Google Cloud’s healthcare API.
- Judi Health releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “2025 Flu Season Update, with Libbi Green, PharmD.”
- Rhapsody introduces its API Guardian API management solution.
- Praia Health adds its new Praia Intelligence AI-powered digital personalization engine to its platform.
- Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “Quick HITs” podcast titled “From Bedside to Boardroom: Leading Clinical Systems at Boys Town, with Amber Schuetz.”
- LiveData will exhibit at the 2025 OR Manager Conference October 28-30 in Anaheim, CA.
- Mednition announces a partnership with Shannon Medical Center (TX).
- Navina will present at the Athenahealth Thrive Summit November 4 in Nashville.
- Black Book Research announces the winners of its 2026 Health Information Management Top Vendors Awards, which include HIStalk Sponsors AGS Health (outsourced CDI/ mid-RCM services), Inovalon (provider data management platforms (payer-side), Waystar (revenue integrity solutions), and Netsmart (behavioral health and post-acute HIM/coding solutions).
Blog Posts
- Praia Health, Providence, and Labcorp Collaborate to Transform Patient Engagement and Lab Order Adherence (Praia Health)
- Observation Status Management: Why Utilization Review Must Lead the Way (AGS Health)
- Driving AI adoption in APAC: A top-down and bottom-up approach (Altera Digital Health)
- Five9 Recognized with Two Major Honors at Sandler Summit 2025 (Five9)
- Lessons from the Front Lines: Learning from the SolarWinds Attack (Fortified Health Security)
- What is a billing cycle? Understanding the process and how automation improves it (Inbox Health)
- From Policy to People: Connecting Rural America to the Right Care (Kyruus Health)
- How to Manage, Run, & Promote Your Clinical Data Registry for Long-Term Success (MRO)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Is it true, you only list company announcements that pay you?
Not true. I include every item that I think is truly newsworthy. Sponsors get a slightly lower bar, so I might give their borderline interesting press release a brief mention if it has some news value that I think would interest readers. But I will never omit a news item that is important, and you can easily check previous news posts to verify that. I also don’t do secretive pay-for-play like most sites, where big chunks of the content are paid placements from the featured companies that may or may not have been disclosed.
What is hardest to explain is that a company’s announcement usually seems monumentally important to them, but is in my judgment not worth the attention of anyone but their own customers, who will get those updates directly from the company anyway. That includes most partnership announcements, advisory board additions, press releases that aren’t based on an actual event, results from poorly done surveys, and stories from companies I’ve never heard of.
To validate my own beliefs, I reviewed the 100+ most recent news items I ran that name a company. Of those, 80% involved non-sponsors, 20% sponsors, and many or most of the sponsor items would have been newsworthy regardless (acquisitions or name changes, for example.)
Fred — you clearly only pay attention to HISTalk when you want something from them or you would know how very wrong it is to claim that HISTalk is a paid srill. HISTalk is literally the ONLY non-shill in this space. Not to say there are not other good sources for information. Yet most are pretty focused on their vendors with little non-sponsored engagement.