News 11/14/25

Top News

RCM vendor R1 sells Tonic Health to patient access, engagement, and intake technology vendor Luma Health.

Tonic Health offers a mobile patient intake, survey, and payments platform.

Reader Comments

From Gaucho Marx: “Re: Adventist Health Portland. After investing $20 million to convert from Cerner to OHSU’s instance of Epic, it will join the enterprise instance in September 2026. This is surprising, since there is a good deal of benefit to AH Portland to remain a part of OHSU Health’s large patient network, such as more negotiating power with payers and the ease of transferring and referring patients. Adventist Health will bring all hospitals except AH Portland live on September 1, 2026 in a $500 million project. Portland was out of scope because of their business agreement involving tens of millions of dollars in loans from OHSU, which has had a tough time with financial losses and layoffs.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Trivia: I asked ChatGPT to name the 10 best US cities to live in, which it calculated from multiple, evidence-based sources. Which was the only state to have two cities on the list? Which city was #1?

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Oracle’s reorganization under co-CEOs has left 64,000 of the company’s employees, or 40% of its workforce, reporting up to CTO, co-founder, and chairman Larry Ellison. Co-CEO Mike Sicilia oversees the largest headcount at 84,000 workers, which includes Oracle Health.

Sales

• Cigna Healthcare will offer Headspace’s meditation and sleep app at no cost to seven million people who receive behavioral health services through their employer.
• Smart infant monitoring technology vendor Owlet chooses Rhapsody for EHR integration of its pulse oximeter.

People

Marc Probst, MBA (MF Probst Strategic Advisory) rejoins Ellkay as CIO advisor.

MRO hires Lidia Bernik, MHS, MBA (Flatiron Health) as president of Curation Solutions.

Announcements and Implementations

A PerfectServe survey of 350 clinicians finds that three-fourths spend time dealing with manual aspects of scheduling, more than half say that waiting for calls takes time away from patient care (it was the #1 time-sapping task), and 60% say that existing systems aren’t much help in prioritizing urgency.

KLAS names its 2025 Consistent High Performers.

Government and Politics

The deal to end the federal government shutdown will extend Medicare’s coverage of telehealth through January 30 and will pay providers retroactively for virtual services that they provided since October 1. The Senate package also  provides $3.4 billion to the VA for its Oracle Health rollout work in FY2026, contingent on it providing Congress with a revised timeline and cost estimate. 

The VA awards Accenture Federal Services a six-month, $7.7 million contract to support its Oracle Health implementation, including program management, support, and data integration services, with options to extend the work for four additional one-year periods and one six-month period.

Other

The family of a two-year-old sues University of Florida Health, alleging that a physician’s decimal error caused a fatal tenfold overdose of electrolyte replacement. The lawsuit claims that pharmacists did not catch the error even though their computer system generated a Red Flag dose warning.

Caring Brands either just pulled off the biggest capital raise in human history or it needs to hire a more careful headline writer.

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart will integrate ScribePT’s documentation system with its TheraOffice PT and rehab EHR/PM.
• CTG’s parent company Cegeka earns Microsoft Partner of the Year award for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain.
• Arrive Health names Alison Bechtel senior director of marketing.
• AvaSure announces that its Virtual Care Platform has achieved designation in Epic’s Toolbox for the Inpatient Virtual Care category.
• Findhelp welcomes new customers Hospital in Your Home, Allied Behavioral Health Solutions, and the Tennessee Department of Veterans Services.
• HCTec offers a new case study titled “HCTec Technical Managed Services Elevate the End-User Experience.”

Blog Posts

• Why Buy Beats Build in Health Tech ROI (Medicomp Systems)
• Transforming cancer care: The benefits of a cloud-based chemotherapy prescribing solution (Altera Digital Health)
• Unify clinician and patient journeys with AI and shared evidence (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Meet the Innovators Powering the New CX (Five9)
• CISO Brief: October 2025 Cybersecurity Threat Recap & Insight (Fortified Health Security)
• From MIPS to MVPs to ASM: How CMS is redefining quality measurement in the 2026 final rule (Healthmonix)
• Breaking the Chains of Legacy: Embracing Agile Solutions for EHRs (LiveData)
• Creating the Confidence Standard: AI-Powered Quality Control in Health Information Management (MRO)

Contacts

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