Monday Morning Update 2/16/26
Top News
HHS’s DOGE team posts a freely downloadable database of aggregated provider-level Medicaid claims data.
Reader Comments
From GLance: “Re: Script Corner. Web mentions of this major initiative from Surescripts and GoodRx have been scrubbed. Why?” I’ve emailed the Surescripts media contact. Script Corner sends patients a text message when a new prescription is received that includes a link to pricing details for local pharmacies and GoodRx. The companies announced a launch in Illinois and Texas in late January. UPDATE: A Surescripts spokesperson provides this response:
Surescripts is committed to working across the healthcare industry to create a more transparent and empowering patient care experience. We have received enough concerning feedback that we have decided to stop our patient price transparency pilot and refrain from taking further steps to bring the product to market. We are continuing to focus on delivering high integrity, clinically aligned solutions that inform and accelerate decisions to help keep patient care on track. We believe that technology can help address cost concerns, boost adherence and improve patient satisfaction.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Most poll respondents assume that an employee’s transition to independent consultant is transitory, voluntarily or otherwise.
New poll to your right or here: Has an employer ever demoted you? In my health system experience, demotions are often a well-intentioned acknowledgment that someone may have Peter Principled up one level too far, such as from technical lead to management, or from director to C-level. The demoted employee immediately feels insulted and begins looking elsewhere, but often stays after their resentment cools and the job search drags on. The optimal outcome, at least for the unmotivated among us, is a demotion that doesn’t involve a pay cut.
Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor KeyCare. KeyCare is an Epic-based virtual care partner designed to improve access and quality by expanding virtual care options for patients. KeyCare enables health systems to easily augment care teams and widen their digital front doors by offering access to an independent, nationwide network of primary care, urgent care, and behavioral health providers. This provides coordinated and seamless virtual care to patients without health systems having to buy and install additional software or hire more clinicians. KeyCare offers always-on acute care access with 24/7 on-demand video visits and E-visits, primary care extension and preventative services including overflow and bridge care in addition to preventative and wellness visits, chronic care management for high-risk patient programs, and payer and employer programs. Thanks to KeyCare for supporting HIStalk.
Thanks to these companies that recently supported HIStalk. Click a logo to learn more about them.
Sponsored Events and Resources
Live Webinar: February 18 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “From Blind Spots to Insights: Gaining Real-Time Visibility into Healthcare Risk.” Sponsor: CloudWave. Presenters: Jacob Wheeler, MBA, director of sales engineering, CloudWave; Mike Donahue, chief operating officer, CloudWave. Resilience starts with the ability to see clearly, across every endpoint, cloud workload, user, and clinical system. Join CloudWave’s cybersecurity leaders for an in-depth session on how real-time visibility transforms your ability to detect threats early, respond decisively, and strengthen resilience across the care ecosystem. Attendees will learn the practical steps that hospitals can take to move from reactive defense to resilient action.
Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2026 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.
Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Healthcare Triangle conducts a 1-for-60 reverse stock split to remain listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market. HCTI shares have lost 99.9% of their value in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $1.5 million.
Solace Health receives $130 million in Series C funding, valuing the digital healthcare navigation and advocacy company at over $1 billion.
Sales
- Ireland’s three-hospital Blackrock Health will implement RLDatix’s offline and downtime system for Meditech.
- Sutter Health will implement OpenEvidence to allow clinicians to retrieve clinical evidence and guidelines with Epic integration.
People
Loma Linda Medical Center CIO Mark Zirkelbach died last month. He was 68.
Announcements and Implementations
Wolters Kluwer Health announces Medi-Span Expert AI, a Model Context Protocol server that will allow AI application and agent developers to connect to Medi-Span’s medication data.
Medical University of South Carolina will establish an AI Center for Health Innovation and Informatics, which will lead MUSC’s AI strategy, governance, innovation incubation, and workforce development.
Government and Politics
Oura is spending $1 million per year on lobbyists who hope to convince the FDA to relax regulation of non-diagnostic wellness devices. A TechRadar report notes that the Finland-based company’s largest customer is the Department of War and that it has a contract with Palantir to provide monitoring of military personnel.
Sponsor Updates
- NBC4 Washington partners with Findhelp as part of its Working for You initiative.
- Impact Advisors celebrates its 19th anniversary.
- Praia Health wins “Best in Show” at the HIMSS26 Emerge Pitch Competition, winning in the Health Systems – Address Hospital Capacity Crisis category.
- Rhapsody releases its “State of Interoperability” report.
- Switchboard Health wins the AI Lab Challenge at the American Hospital Association Rural Health Leadership Conference.
Blog Posts
- Beyond burnout scores: The hidden risk in clinician engagement surveys (Nordic)
- Building a People-First Approach to Autonomous Medical Coding (Nym)
- TrustCommerce + Qure4u: AI-Enabled Patient Payments That Drive Faster, Easier Collections (TrustCommerce, a Sphere company)
- Navigating the Medication Adherence Whiteout (Surescripts)
- Don’t Report HCPCS “C” Codes for Professional Services in 2026 (TruBridge)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Re: DODGE releasing Medicaid information. Going to be a lot of amateur sleuths and people wanting social media notoriety digging over data they have no context for being able to understand. I give it one week before we see reports of providers and clinics getting ‘caught’ and attacked over this in another attempt to identify and vilify the ‘other’. Given the types of populations these providers see, it’s hard to imagine this is in good faith.
I know I’m a jaded, cynical ex-CIO, but to me the whole point of the DOGE exercise was to let Musk and other cronies get access to federal data, across the spectrum. And they accomplished that. I expect that every bit of federal data they could get their hands on ended up in Grok.
So, your contention is that no Medicaid fraud is occurring and nothing should be looked into in that regard? Is that a reasonable assumption? “Amateur sleuths” have done a pretty good job of uncovering billions in fraud these past few months. If someone is overzealous or uninformed about someone who is not doing anything untoward, then it should not be an issue in correcting the record. You seem to be approaching under the assumption that, 1.) Crowdsourcing analysis should not be done, and 2.) They are not going to find anything, so should not be looking? The chances that this approach will uncover fraud is substantially greater than zero, and anyone who is even aware of the medical system in the US knows this to be true. These are my/your tax dollars. Why do you not want an accounting for where they go, and that it is done in the most efficient way possible. Seems you might just not like what this would reveal from a political standpoint. How is not knowing where money goes and how/if it is being abused helping anyone…..other than those who are doing the defrauding?
So your contention is that DOGE was a good-faith administrative effort? LOL!
Parachuting in unqualified outsiders ought to be a red flag. Somehow it isn’t. Laying off large numbers of IGs ought to be a red flag. Somehow it isn’t. Contempt for Protected Health Information and the handling thereof ought to be a red flag. Somehow it isn’t.
Of course there is some criminal Medicaid activity. It’s a massive program and involves millions of people and billions of dollars. Yet getting the police and forensic accountants involved was mysteriously… never done. You know, actual professionals, with codes of ethics and oversight?
And the apologists for this suggest that “politics” is the motivation for anyone who calls B.S. on DOGE’s activities. DOGE’s stated reason to exist is a fraud. There you sit, defending amateurs, vigilantism, and people who are on the record as partisan citizens with an axe to grind.
This latest move by DOGE is just another in their ongoing cover story to conceal their true intent. What could that intent be?
The harvesting of vast amounts of data for fun & profit.
I think you meant to type this on the Reddit boards?