News 12/5/25

Top News

The Spokesman-Review and The Washington Post say that the VA remains on track to expand its Oracle Health EHR rollout to 13 more medical centers in 2026 despite the problems that clinicians reported at all six go-live sites.

• FDA disclosures indicate that the system was involved in 4,600 cases of patient harm, including six deaths.
• Former VA Secretary David Shulkin says that the VA’s implementation was botched after he left in 2018 by trying to implement the system top-down from Washington instead of involving users.
• Reported problems at the initial sites include disappearing notes, incorrect medication doses, and total system outages.
• Staff reported alert fatigue due to a steady stream of email alerts from VA technical support about system problems.
• Providers complain of increased burnout, reduced patient time, and fear of harming veterans due to system complexity and instability.
• An internal VA study showed that system go-live was associated with a 30-40% drop in primary care visit volume, and increased wait times have not resolved.
• The project’s $16 billion estimated cost is now at $33 billion, with one GAO official predicting that the final cost will be “hundreds of billions.”
• A VA spokesperson said in a statement, “Biden political appointees’ mismanagement of VA’s electronic health record modernization effort resulted in a program that was nearly dormant for almost two years. The Trump administration won’t repeat those same mistakes and is already moving quickly to accelerate deployment of the system and bring the project to completion as early as 2031.”
• The spokesperson says that staff satisfaction with the system is improving and that five of the original six sites report increased productivity compared to pre-implementation.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare AI agent developer Artera raises $65 million in growth investment.  

Sales

• Ob Hospitalist Group will implement Commure Autonomous Coding at 200 care sites.

People

AdvancedMD hires Nupura Kolwalkar-Rana, MS, MA (DNAnexus) as chief product and technology officer.

LiveData promotes Jeff Forbes, MBA to VP of commercial healthcare sales.

Announcements and Implementations

Medical kiosk maker OnMed will implement its CareStation clinic-in-a-box at 30 charter schools in a pilot project with 22Beacon, which provides real estate development, financing, and advisory services to charter schools. OnMed announced in October 2025 that it plans to go public via a SPAC merger.

Aetna lists the milestones it has achieved in its strategy to simplify healthcare experiences for providers and patients, which include combining prior authorizations for prescriptions and procedures into a single clinical review, introducing collaborative care models for Medicare Advantage members, and rolling out conversational AI solutions. 

A new KLAS and Arch Collaborative report on clinician turnover finds that problems with organizational leadership top the list of causes, often triggered by a bad EHR experience. One clinician says that IT leadership pay should be pegged to patient satisfaction just as theirs is, while another says that IT protects its fiefdom and shows little interest in clinician needs.

Privacy and Security

Kaiser Permanente’s health plan will pay $46 million to settle a class action lawsuit that involves its 2024 use of web tracking technology.

Other

I ran across the Substack of Helen Lu, RN, MSN, clinical director of informatics and analytics at Community Health System, who is also a family nurse practitioner, insightful health tech analyst, and AI fan. She questions on LinkedIn why she can stream Netflix in 4K, yet downloading a diagnostic quality image takes 30 minutes. She says that the technology exists, but hasn’t been adopted:

• Cloud-based imaging that is faster than on-premise servers.
• Smart pre-fetching that occurs before the chart is even opened.
• Progressive image loading that allows starting reading immediately instead of waiting for a full download.
• Vision-language AI models that can choose the most relevant views upfront.
• Networks that prioritize imaging over less-important traffic.

A BMJ article says that social media influencers shape public perception of medical guidance by promoting oversimplified or misleading advice that often conflicts with evidence-based recommendations. Influencers often lack expertise, are motivated by financial conflicts, and overgeneralize their personal beliefs. The authors add that official statements and fact-checking aren’t effective at countering misinformation because they lack the immediacy, appeal, and reach of influencers. They outline possible countermeasures, but say that no single approach is likely to work.

Sponsor Updates

• Agfa HealthCare shares its experience at RSNA 2025.
• Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in England enhance pediatric care by integrating digital growth charts within its Sunrise EHR from Altera Digital Health.
• The “What Fuels You” podcast features Arrive Health CEO Kyle Kaiser.
• Optimum Healthcare IT posts a new case study titled “NGHS Achieves Cloud First Vision With Epic on AWS.”
• Black Book Research offers its free “2026-2027 Boardroom Playbook for Hospital Health IT Approvals.”
• The US Department of Labor honors Clearwater with the 2025 Gold HIRE Vets Medallion Award.
• Findhelp welcomes new customers TimelyCare, Adventist Health, Pear Suite, and InCharge Education Foundation.
• HCTec offers a new case study titled “Scaling Excellence: How HCTec Became a Prominent Academic Health System’s Go-To Epic Go-Live Partner.”
• Healthmonix welcomes Georgia Cancer Specialists as a new customer.

Blog Posts

• Best Practices for Success with Agentic AI Implementation (AGS Health)
• The empowerment evolution: Three ways health IT is enhancing patient engagement (Altera Digital Health)
• Top 8 healthcare analytics tools and tips for selecting one (Arcadia)
• Patients Save over 88% with Real-Time Prescription Benefit (Arrive Health)
• Healthcare Cybersecurity in the Age of AI: Navigating the Opportunities and Challenges (CloudWave)
• Optimizing EHR Performance and End-User Adoption in the Era of AI (CTG)
• How to Evaluate Healthcare Analytics Platforms: What “Best” Really Means (Dimensional Insight)
• 5 Questions Every Health System Should Ask Before Choosing a Drug Database for Your EHR (First Databank)
• Five9 CX Summit 2025: A Community That Redefined What CX Can Be (Five9)
• When Cyber Threats Hit Rural Hospitals: Lessons from the Front Lines (Fortified Health Security)
• Strategic EHR Transitions: Unifying Healthcare Data (Health Data Movers)
• How do you offer payment plans for patients? A guide for medical practices (Inbox Health)

Contacts

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