RE the AI GLP1 company, Washington Post has an article today by someone who used one of those compounded products,…
Monday Morning Update 3/16/26
Top News
GuardDog Telehealth agrees to a judgment and injunction in Epic’s lawsuit against it. GuardDog says that its plans to build a chronic care management and remote patient monitoring business fizzled, so it pivoted to selling patient medical records to law firms.
GuardDog acknowledges that it told Carequality that it was requesting records through Health Gorilla for treatment purposes and says that Health Gorilla was aware of its business model.
If approved by the court, the agreement would bar GuardDog from accessing records through TEFCA and Carequality. The company’s website, social media accounts, and LinkedIn profile have been removed.
The judgment does not directly affect Epic’s lawsuit against Health Gorilla, but it strengthens Epic’s claim that some Health Gorilla customers requested patient records for law firms while representing the requests as treatment-related.
Reader Comments
From Secure Itty: “Re: Stryker. They should either have moved from their private Microsoft cloud to Azure or committed hundreds of millions of shareowner profits to match what Microsoft spends to thwart this kind of attack. IMO, it was inevitable and irresponsible.” The attack is interesting because the hackers apparently didn’t bother to install malware, they hacked into Stryker’s Microsoft Intune mobile device management software and security policy enforcement tool, then used system administrator privileges to reset 200,000 devices, including any personal or BYOD devices that were connected. According to analysis by Shieldworkz:
This is the detail that should be keeping every CISO awake right now: the attackers no longer need any custom tool or deploy a wiper. They just need to reach the administrative layer of a platform the potential victim is already paying for and trusting implicitly. Once they had that access, traditional endpoint detection was blind to it. A remote wipe command issued through Intune looks identical to a legitimate IT administration move. No malware signature, no anomalous process and no alert … Enterprises deploy MDM to secure their devices, then fail to secure the MDM itself. The tool designed to protect turns into the very a mechanism of destruction. In security, we call this a single point of catastrophic failure — and enterprises have been building them into their Microsoft environments for years without recognizing it.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Patients on both sides of the pond say that they are uneasy about giving Palantir and similar analytics companies access to their medical data. The debate is particularly heated in England, where the NHS hired Palantir to build a national health data sharing network. Poll respondent comments are worth a read.
New poll to your right or here: How will Amazon’s healthcare ambitions play out?
Pondering: if medical practices really care about patient health and access, why are their offices closed 75% of the time? Pharmacies, veterinarian clinics, therapy clinics, and dentists don’t just operate 8 until 5 on weekdays only. Is it adequate that patients can seek after-hours help from urgent care centers, hospital EDs, and telehealth providers?
Your Monday morning cheer-up comes from Ms. M in Missouri, who wanted to tell HIStalk readers about the impact of the STEM kits that her elementary school students are using, which were provided by reader donations and matching funds (thanks, Anonymous Vendor Executive) that funded her Donors Choose teacher grant request. She reports:
The new resources have transformed our classroom from a space of simple instruction into a space of hands-on exploration and discovery. We are currently using the materials during our STEM block for a unit on measurement and plant growth. Instead of just reading about how plants grow, students are actively measuring their plants using nonstandard and standard units, recording data, and creating graphs to track growth over time. One special moment that truly stood out was when a student noticed that her plant had grown two whole centimeters in just a few days. She excitedly called her classmates over and said, “It’s really working!” That spark of ownership and pride is exactly what authentic learning looks like.
Several students said it felt like we had turned our classroom into a “science lab.” The excitement was genuine and contagious. Even students who are typically hesitant to participate were eager to measure, observe, and share their findings. Because of your support, students are not just completing assignments, they are thinking like scientists and mathematicians. They are collaborating, problem-solving, and explaining their reasoning with confidence. Thank you for giving my students opportunities they will remember. Your generosity is not just providing materials, it is building confidence, curiosity, and a love of learning that will last far beyond our classroom walls.
Sponsored Events and Resources
None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Stryker says in an SEC filing that an Iran-linked cyberattack that the company disclosed last week continues to disrupt its systems, affecting order processing, manufacturing, and shipping. The company says that patient-related services and connected products such as Vocera and Care.ai were not affected.
CareCloud reports Q4 results: revenue up 22%, adjusted EPS $0.11 versus $0.23, beating expectations for revenue and matching those for earnings.
Sales
- In England, Somerset and Dorset NHS trusts choose Epic for a unified patient records system in a $294 million, 10-year contract.
Announcements and Implementations
A small study of ambulatory practice patients finds that conversational AI (Google AMIE) can successfully conduct pre-visit medical histories and generate accurate diagnoses and treatment plans, but is best used as a clinical assistant rather than as a standalone diagnostic tool.
Privacy and Security
Epic notifies UPMC that Health Gorilla and participants in its health network allegedly accessed medical records for non-treatment purposes, leading UPMC to notify affected patients.
Other
I didn’t spot an EHR screen in SNL’s MAHAspital sketch, but maybe you can.
Sponsor Updates
- Netsmart hosts educators from a local school district in Kansas to discuss the AI and technology skills that students will need to work in healthcare technology.
- Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “Quick HITs” podcast titled “Bryan Dechairo on Genomics, Rare Disease Diagnosis, and the Future of Precision Care.”
- VisiQuate pairs its intelligence suite, including its AI-driven authorization prediction model, data engine, analytic insights, robotic process automation and revenue cycle workflows; with Ethermed’s automated prior authorization engine.
- Nominations are now open for PerfectServe’s sixth annual Nurses of Note Awards Program.
- ReferWell will exhibit at the California Primary Care Association’s Quality & Technology Conference March 17-18 in Orange County.
- The Utah Business Daily names Waystar CEO Matt Hawkins as its CEO of the year.
- Visage Imaging renews contracts with MedStar Health and Zwanger Pesiri (NY).
- Zen Healthcare IT achieves its third full HITRUST r2 certification.
- AGS Health, FinThrive, Infinx, Nym, TruBridge, VisiQuate, and Waystar will exhibit at the HFMA Revenue Cycle Conference March 18–20 in Arlington, TX.
Blog Posts
- 9 Leading chronic care management software picks of 2026 (Arcadia)
- Why trust is the foundation of national health data exchange — and why we need to protect it (Meditech)
- How Service Desk Analytics Improve Health IT ROI (Med Tech Solutions)
- Why Utilization Management Is Critical to Value-Based Care and Revenue Performance in Human Services (Netsmart)
- The Invisible Majority: Using AI to Detect Lung Cancer Early in Non-Smokers (Qure.ai)
- Rapid Deployment: How SlicedHealth Onboards Hospitals with Minimal IT Investment (SlicedHealth)
- Break the Bottleneck on Medication Prior Authorization (Surescripts)
- Prostatectomy Coding: Understanding ICD-10-PCS Changes and CPT® Differences for 2026 (TruBridge)
- Elevating patient education and collaboration in the AI era (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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“ Pondering: if medical practices really care about patient health and access, why are their offices closed 75% of the time?”
Offices that are equipped to handle certain really urgent emergencies will bring you in after hours. My retina specialist certainly does that for detachments, but he’s all set up with better equipment than the hospital has. For most types of practices that’s nowhere close to true, and if you need stat lab work, imaging or an urgent procedure the office is a waste of your time and the doctor’s.
While that’s true for many urgent issues, there are plenty of simple (but still urgent) issues a primary care doctor could address. Somehow, defying all odds, my children always manage to get ear infections or strep throat on Friday nights, and I’m stuck going to urgent care for an antibiotic because there’s no way we’re waiting until Monday for the pediatrician’s office to open. And my husband is a CRNA who can rarely get to an appointment before 4pm, and certainly can’t guarantee it. Many offices take their last appointments at 3:30! You mention retinal detachment – he had a retinal tear and throughout the repair process, he needed to take two days off work solely for follow-up visits because his retinologist didn’t offer late afternoon appointments. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for people less fortunate than us, who might need to work two jobs or juggle public transportation schedules.
The question of “after-hours” care stirs up thoughts about surge capacity in health care generally. If we want to resource for needs beyond the usual, how do we pay for it when it goes unused? Empty beds, empty time–it has costs.
At scale, low frequency after-hours events can be funneled into a setting that is set up to manage that volume efficiently. ERs are supposed to work that way generally. Urgent care is an extension of that.
Large practices can aggregate those needs over a population and provide evening and weekend clinic hours. They can also provide phone coverage by nurses and the physician staff without burning people out. Arguably, patients get better care, but as that scales, it loses the advantage of personal touch. Small practices are all about personal touch, but don’t stand a chance at deploying people 24-7-365, humanly or financially.
When I read Mr. HISTalk’s pondering, my thought process went more towards availbiltiy for non-urgent appointments than urgent / 24-7 care. While there are a variety of work schedules, our society has aligned around a M-F 8-5 schedule.
Why is it uncommon to have appointments for a physical or a specialty consult on a Saturday or after 5pm? The current construct of when routine, non-urgent healthcare is available means that so that people are forced to decide between using sick / vacation / unpaid time or rearranging work schedule / commitments and their health because the services are less likely to be available when they are. To Mr. HISTalk’s point, my vet’s office offered appointments until 8pm several days a week, so we only had to take time during the workday for an urgent issue.
It would be an interesting experiment to flip the urgent / non-urgent care hours and see the impact on health outcomes and follow-up care. I don’t think it’s about offering 24-7-365, but having more scheduling options that don’t create a conflict and a choice between work / school and health. As mentioned above with my vet example, this doesn’t even have to be every day – could be something like 3x/week, the clinic is open from 12-8pm and 1 Saturday/month a full clinic schedule is available. Maybe there are some practices / healthcare organizations that offer this already?
This SNL skit was so good. I think the whole episode had great skits, but this one had me guffawing!