News 3/11/26

Top News

Universal Health Services will acquire online therapy company Talkspace for $835 million.

Talkspace went public in June 2021 via a SPAC merger. TALK shares have lost 44% since. The company’s valuation dipped to below $100 million in late 2022.

Shares in UHS have gained 8% in the past 12 months, valuing the hospital operator at $11.4 billion.

Reader Comments

From The Jig Is Up: “Re: Leapfrog Safety Ratings. This is a reminder to not trust companies that make their money selling ‘awards’ to hospitals and data to marketers.” A federal judge rules that The Leapfrog Group misled the public by assigning its lowest safety grade to hospitals that declined to participate in its survey. The judge notes that Leapfrog also sells related services that include benchmarking tools, consulting, and the right for hospitals to use its A-grade logo in marketing. Plaintiff Palm Beach Health Network did not seek damages, asking only that Leapfrog stop publishing scores that are influenced by non-participation.

From Old Schooler: “Re: AI in healthcare. It’s being used for three things: documentation, coding, and marketing. Two of those generate revenue.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS26 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Oracle reports Q3 results: revenue up 18%, EPS $1.27 versus $1.02, beating analyst expectations for both.

Siemens Healthineers unit ECG Management Consultants acquires value-based care consulting firm Lumina Health Partners. ECG will retain Lumina co-founders Daniel Marino and Lucy Zielinski as principals.

Elsevier will acquire video-based patient engagement and education company Mytonomy and incorporate it into its Clinical Solutions business.

Sales

• The Atlanta VA Medical Center and the Central Alabama VA Medical Center select patient safety technology from CareView Communications, with assistance from Decisive Point Consulting Group.

People

InterSystems names Tim Ferris, MD, MPH (Red Cell Partners) VP of its healthcare practice.

Access Healthcare promotes Sid Mehta, MBA to president and chief growth officer.

Experity promotes Bobby Ghoshal, MBA to CEO.

Cotiviti hires Ric Sinclair, MBA (Waystar) as CEO. He replaces Emad Rizk, MD, who will transition to board advisor.

Announcements and Implementations

Blue Cross Blue Shield says that hospitals may be using AI coding tools to identify more billable diagnoses, which could increase inpatient spending by $663 million. A company study found that diagnoses of postpartum anemia rose sharply at some hospitals without a corresponding rise in treatments such as blood transfusions, suggesting that coding intensity rather than patient severity increased. Experts say that the evidence is inconclusive and could reflect improved documentation or historical undercoding rather than AI-driven overbilling. However, some hospitals have said publicly that they would use AI to boost appropriate billing for specific services, among them postpartum anemia.

Clearsense will incorporate AI throughout its legacy data decommissioning and archiving services to help healthcare organizations more efficiently surface insights.

Meditech announces expanded AI capabilities, including the addition of ambient intelligence in its Expanse Now app for physicians and Expanse Point of Care app for nurses.

Greenway Health launches Novare, an ambulatory-focused platform built around agentic AI that integrates clinical documentation, revenue cycle, and patient engagement tools.

Epic announces its AI roadmap at HIMSS26, which includes:

• Conversational AI that allows clinicians to ask questions about the patient’s chart data using its Art clinician AI.
• Creation of collaborative visit agendas that include questions from both clinician and patient.
• An AI agent factory.
• A tool to help clinicians with differential diagnosis.
• A new family of AI models called Curiosity that can help predict the next steps in the patient’s journey.

Privacy and Security

An anonymous Reddit poster complains that they saw a drugstore’s pharmacy technician wearing Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses at the counter, which they say is a HIPAA violation.

Other

The Delaware Department of Health and Social Services works with consulting firm Healthe Insights to develop DTRN360, a care coordination platform for behavioral health providers statewide. Its technology incorporates referral and care coordination capabilities from Bamboo Health and Findhelp.

Sponsor Updates

• Medicomp Systems customer IJN becomes Malaysia’s first hospital to achieve HIMSS EMRAM Stage 7.
• Concord Technologies begins offering Concord Direct Message, a Direct Secure Messaging service, within its Concord Connect platform.
• Nordic launches a refreshed brand identity.
• Black Book urges HIMSS26 attendees to make time for over 70 top client-rated vendors recognized for exceptional user satisfaction by healthcare clients so far in 2026.
• DrFirst releases the next version of RxInform, its real-time prescription engagement platform.

Blog Posts

• 10 Ways Hybrid Intelligence is Revolutionizing Autonomous Coding (AGS Health)
• Practical Front-End Revenue Cycle Management Tips for Federally Qualified Health Centers (Med Tech Solutions)
• Rural Hospitals Are Not Too Small for Cyber Threats (CereCore)
• What We Learned Going Through SOC 2 as a Healthcare Infrastructure Company (VectorCare)
• From outages to autonomy: The future of system reliability with AI-powered auto-healing (Altera Digital Health)
• Healthcare data aggregation: A Q&A guide to unified data (Arcadia)
• MCP for Healthcare: 4 Hard-Won Lessons from the Trenches (Artera)
• Strategies for improving clinical productivity (Philips Capsule)
• NIST CSF 2.0 in Healthcare: From Compliance to Governance (Clearwater)

Contacts

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