News 3/28/25

Top News

HHS will eliminate 10,000 full-time positions and close half of its regional offices, with past and planned cuts expected to reduce its FTE count from 82,000 to 62,000.

The largest number of cuts will occur at FDA and CDC, which will lose 6,000 positions.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also announced plans to merge Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and other groups under the newly created Administration for a Healthy America. HHS will also merge the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to create the Office of Strategy.

HHS will also create a position of Assistant Secretary for Enforcement that will oversee the Departmental Appeals Board, the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals, and the Office for Civil Rights.

Reader Comments

From Cynical C-Suite: “Re: ASTP/ONC. Being gutted and maybe folded into CMS. Guess that makes it official that interoperability is now just a billing problem.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: April 15 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Navigating ACO Quality in 2025: Lessons Learned and Future Directions.” Sponsor: Healthmonix. Presenters: Michael Lewis, VP of customer success, Healthmonix; Steven Tyson, senior account executive, Healthmonix.  Accountable care organizations (ACOs) must stay ahead of evolving quality requirements and reporting changes. Join us for an in-depth discussion on lessons learned from past ACO implementation, key areas for improvement, and the impact of Medicare Clinical Quality Measures (CQMs).

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Solace, which connects Medicare patients with virtual support advocates, raises new funding at a $300 million valuation. The company pivoted from a cash-only model to serving Medicare beneficiaries last year, when the program began covering advocacy services. Advocates help with scheduling appointments, communicating with doctors, reviewing medical bills, managing insurance appeals, and researching treatment options. Co-founder and CEO Jeremy Gurewitz previously worked as a marketing VP for a kids book club company.

Investor Halle Tecco checks in on the 65 health tech-adjacent unicorns that were born during the 2020–2022 ZIRP frenzy. She predicts that companies have been forced to accept unlabeled or down rounds, have undertaken cost-cutting programs, and are trying to extend their runway to reach profitability.

• 89% are still operating.
• Two-thirds haven’t raised additional funding.
• One went public (SomaLogic), and another plans to (Hinge Health).
• Four were acquired or merged (CareBridge, Truepill, MindMaze, ClassPass).
• Two shut down (Forward, Olive AI).

Taxo, which offers a data extraction and workflow automation engine for healthcare administration, raises $5 million in seed funding.

Several former leaders of Glassdoor launch Marit Health, a salary transparency website for doctors and advanced practice providers. It offers anonymous, verified data on salaries, bonuses, benefits, and shifts. Investors in its $3.2 million seed funding round include the founders of several health tech companies.

People

Mount Sinai Health System promotes Robbie Freeman, DNP, MS to chief digital transformation officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre in Ontario, Canada integrates four local hospices into its Meditech Expanse EHR.

Akido Labs will provide fast, clinician-supervised medical care to New York ride-share drivers using its ScopeAI diagnostic and treatment tool. In addition to its AI technology, the company operates a network of primary care and specialty care providers in California and Rhode Island.

Truveta adds administrative data to its EHR-sourced database, including billing details, provider resource allocation, and patient movement information.

Penn Medicine’s elimination of 300 positions includes six employees of Center for Health Care Innovation at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, which includes an accelerator program and innovation lab. The center’s website lists eight employees.

Government and Politics

Politico reports that potential candidates to lead ASTP/ONC include Ryan Howells, MA (Leavitt Partners, The CARIN Alliance) and former ONC senior advisor Thomas Keane, MD, MBA. It also says that the White House is reportedly considering reducing the office’s staff from 180 to 30 and possibly merging it into CMS.

Privacy and Security

The UK government fines Advanced Computer Software Group $4 million after ransomware hackers breached its systems that lacked multifactor authentication.

Sponsor Updates

• CloudWave’s Managed Cloud Hosting solution again achieves the “Best Practice” rating following its completion of the Meditech Infrastructure and Supporting IT Process Assessment.
• Black Book Research probes the fate of healthcare technology in the NHS based on insights from Digital Health Rewired 2025.
• The Aga Khan University profiles its work with Meditech to roll out an EHR across Kenya.
• Five9 announces that Five9 AI Agents has been named a winner for Innovative AI Products in the 2025 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards, presented by the Business Intelligence Group.
• Inovalon will exhibit at AMCP Annual March 31-April 3 in Houston.
• Linus Health will present at AD/PD April 1-5 in Vienna, Austria.
• Mednition will exhibit at AONL 2025 March 31-April 1 in Boston.

Blog Posts

• Celebrating Excellence: RLDatix Awards Outstanding Achievements in Patient Safety and Innovation (RLDatix)
• Technology That Works for Caregivers, Not Against Them (Symplr)
• How healthcare practices can empower care partners to improve cognitive outcomes (Linus Health)
• New Executive Order Should Prioritize Drug Price Transparency (First Databank)
• Findhelp’s Integrations into Epic: Support Patient Care and Drive Health Outcomes (Findhelp)
• HFMA RCC 2025 Key Takeaways (FinThrive)
• Community Connect: Custom Epic Implementation with Strategic Leadership Support (Health Data Movers)
• Bridging the Gap: UKG & Workday Integration in Healthcare (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Securing a competitive edge in value-based care with AI: Key insights from industry leaders (Navina)

Contacts

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

News 3/26/25

Top News

California-based consumer genetic testing company 23andMe files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Co-founder Anne Wojcicki has stepped down as CEO, but remains on the board and plans to bid independently to buy the company.

Once valued at $6 billion, 23andMe’s market cap has plunged to $20 million.

California’s attorney general has issued a consumer alert reminding customers that they can delete their genetic data, prompting heavy traffic that repeatedly crashed the company’s website.

Reader Comments

From Bill Bonkers: “Re: health tech. When will innovation focus on care instead of coding?” When care quality drives more profit than tweaking bills.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor ReferWell. ReferWell is a digital healthcare company that is focused on helping health plans and provider organizations manage value by helping more people get on, and stay on, their healthcare journey. With a mission to transform access to care and improve patient engagement, the company’s innovative Care Access Scheduling platform and unique Care Access programs remove administrative burdens from health plans, providers, and patients to effortlessly connect patients with care to improve their experience and health outcomes. ReferWell, which is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, has grown to support plans and providers that are responsible for more than 10 million covered lives across the US. Thanks to ReferWell for supporting HIStalk.

Here’s a ReferWell explainer video that I found on YouTube.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “How to Improve Clinical Workflows with AI Chart Summaries and Risk Predictions.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Scott Cullen, MD, senior advisor, Health Data Analytics Institute; David Clain, chief product officer, Health Data Analytics Institute. Learn how the EHR-embedded HDAIAssist tool is transforming the ability of clinicians to pull insights out of the mountains of data that have accumulated in the EHR, quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. HDAlAssist, which is part of HealthVision, the intelligent health management system, combines AI chart summaries and granular risk predictions to quickly inform care planning decisions, especially for the most complex, high-risk patients.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

AI clinical insights company Navina raises $55 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to $100 million.

The Financial Times reports that majority-stake owners Temasek and Warburg Pincus are considering selling their stakes in supply chain management technology vendor Global Healthcare Exchange at a $5 billion valuation. Singapore-based Temasek acquired its stake in the company from Thoma Bravo in 2017, while Warburg Pincus became an investor in GHX in 2021.

RCM vendor VisiQuate acquires Rotera, which offers a digital assistant platform.

Sales

• University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics will expand its use of Abridge’s ambient documentation product to 300 more providers.

People

David Clickner (Beacon Healthcare Systems) joins Itiliti Health as SVP of sales.

Announcements and Implementations

Peterson Health Technology Institute looks at early adopters of ambient documentation systems:

• Solutions are offered by 60 companies, the fastest adoption of any recent healthcare technology in the absence of a regulatory requirement.
• Health systems are mostly using the technology in primary care settings.
• The systems deliver the most benefit to clinicians who often fall behind in documentation or spend more time talking to patients.
• Early adopters report reduced clinician burnout, enhanced productivity, and improved patient experiences.
• PHTI suggests that health system leaders define the outcomes that they seek and then measure the performance and financial impacts of ambient documentation systems against those goals.

Centralus Health (NY) hospitals Cayuga Health and Arnot Health go live on Epic.

The State of Ohio adds Bamboo Health’s overdose history alert tool to its Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System.

Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (FL) implements Epic. This LinkedIn clip offers a peek into its Super Mario-themed go live activities.

Other

The local paper reports on St. Luke’s University Health Network’s use of Engnite CardioCare, which analyzes EHR and ECG data to help diagnose heart conditions. Egnite President and CEO Joel Portice has health tech executive experience with Intermedix and Enclarity.

The US falls to #24 in the World Happiness Report 2025, continuing a slide that started in 2016 that has been led by declining social trust and growing inequality. The rankings are based on six factors:

• GDP per capita.
• Healthy life expectancy.
• Social support.
• Freedom to make life choices.
• Generosity, as measured by charitable acts.
• Perceptions of corruption.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research identifies market leaders in digital pathology.
• Philips Capsule will exhibit at the ANIA Annual Conference March 27-29 in New Orleans.
• Clinical Architecture publishes a new case study titled “Advance Real-time Insights with Data Quality Automation.”
• CloudWave will exhibit at the MUSE New England Community Peer Group event March 28 in Saratoga Springs, NY.
• CTG names Christina Kochan, RN (Oula) healthcare solution architect.

Blog Posts

• Navigating the Medical Coding Automation Journey: Roadmap to Maturity (AGS Health)
• The Future of Patient Safety: Innovation, Transparency and Collaboration (RLDatix)
• Tackling Healthcare’s Most Pressing Supply Chain Challenges (Symplr)
• A former health system leader shares her perspective on successfully navigating hospital mergers (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Understanding the Medical Billing Complexity of Prolonged Services (AdvancedMD)
• The journey ahead: Altera’s commitment to enabling clinicians with the right tool (Altera Digital Health)
• Four major hurdles to healthcare AI adoption (and how to overcome them) (Arcadia)
• Are You Ready for Quantum Day in Healthcare? (Clearwater)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/24/25

Top News

Google Chief Health Officer Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MSc announces six health AI updates at the company’s annual healthcare conference:

• Enhanced the AI overview capabilities of health searches, including “What People Suggest,” which can “organize different perspectives from online discussions” into themes.
• Provided API access to Health Connect, the company’s Android-based health and fitness data sharing platform.
• Rolled out loss of pulse detection, an FDA-cleared Pixel Watch 3 feature that automatically calls emergency services if the wearer’s heart stops.
• Released an AI co-scientist for Gemini 2.0 that can help design clinical studies by reviewing existing research and proposing testable hypotheses.
• Released open, Gemma-based models to enhance AI-powered drug discovery.
• Worked with a hospital in the Netherlands to support personalized pediatric cancer treatments by applying knowledge from medical publications to individual patients.

Reader Comments

From RM: “Re: NIMs. Nvidia Inference Microservices are now available on Microsoft Azure AI Foundry. These are essentially optimized containers for two dozen foundation models, allowing developers to deploy generative AI applications and agents quickly. Epic is planning to be an early adopter.” The Microsoft blog post quotes Epic VP Drew McCombs as saying that it will use Azure AI Foundry and is working with UW Health and UCSD Health to evaluate clinical summaries using advanced models. Epic gains several advantages from using a direct infrastructure pipeline for AI model deployment:

• Standard APIs make it easier to integrate models into workflows with contextual awareness.
• Customer deployment of models is easier.
• Health systems can fine-tune models locally.
• Epic gains competitive advantage in using advanced technology and applying it to key integration points such as Best Practice Advisories.

From Piazza: “Re: VA. How will they hire contractors to support ramped-up go lives when the federal government is cutting contracts? Who would take those jobs, especially if start and end dates are soft?” That will be one of the VA’s many challenges. It might have been easier had the VA followed the DoD’s lead in choosing a government-entrenched company like Leidos as the prime contractor with Cerner as the subcontractor rather than allowing Cerner to be its own prime.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Last call for provider-side IT leaders to join my Executive Watercooler panel, whose participants will get a monthly “what do you think about this” email and send me their brief thoughts.

Poll respondents list several ways they reduce their time spent in unproductive meetings.

New poll to your right or here: How has your employer’s support for work-life balance changed in the past two years?

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “How to Improve Clinical Workflows with AI Chart Summaries and Risk Predictions.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Scott Cullen, MD, senior advisor, Health Data Analytics Institute; David Clain, chief product officer, Health Data Analytics Institute. Learn how the EHR-embedded HDAIAssist tool is transforming the ability of clinicians to pull insights out the mountains of data that have accumulated in the EHR, quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. HDAlAssist, which is part of HealthVision, the intelligent health management system, combines AI chart summaries and granular risk predictions to quickly inform care planning decisions, especially for the most complex, high-risk patients.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Canada-based virtual healthcare kiosk manufacturer UniDoc Health acquires most of the assets of telemedicine hardware and software vendor AMD Telemedicine for $175,000. The Massachusetts-based AMD’s Agnes Connect software platform captures and shares real-time medical device data its live videoconferencing module.

People

Jett Reidy, MBA (EnableComp) joins Collabrios Health as CTO.

Sponsor Updates

• Findhelp powers seamless closed-loop referrals and data exchange under CalAIM’s CLR and HRSN requirements.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health” podcast titled “Interview with Spencer Dorn, MD.”
• Surescripts releases a new episode of “The Dish on Health IT” podcast titled “What Challenges, Opportunities and Urgency Face Pharmacy Interoperability Today?”
• TeamBuilder will exhibit at the AMGA conference March 26-29 in Grapevine, TX.
• Tegria will present the The Beryl Institute’s Elevate PX conference April 1 in Las Vegas.
• WellSky will exhibit at the NHIA conference March 29-April 2 in National Harbor, MD.

Blog Posts

• The HIM Director’s Guide to Autonomous Medical Coding (Nym)
• Better Outcomes, Lower Costs and Reduced Downtime Through AWS’ Independent Recovery Environment for Epic (Prominence Advisors)
• Connected Healthcare Summit Day One: A Vision for the Future (RLDatix)
• HIMSS25 & ViVE 2025 Highlights: Key Innovations Transforming Healthcare (TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company)
• Reflecting on ViVE 2025: Healthcare’s Next Big Leap (Symplr)
• Medical librarians can help evaluate AI-enhanced decision support (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Where to Begin: Unlocking the Value of Automation in IT Service Desk Management (CereCore)
• Powerful AI: Examining results of Waystar AltitudeCreate in RCM (Waystar)

Contacts

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

News 3/21/25

Top News

The VA cancels contracts with at least six companies that support its Oracle Health project, according to Federal News Network.

The VA said on March 3 that it would end 585 contracts. Each would be reviewed by a VA subject matter expert who could override the cancellation if they determined that the action would negatively affect veterans.

The first of the DOGE-initiated cuts came one day after the VA proposed an accelerated rollout plan.

Reader Comments

From Loyd Bittle: “Re: NextGen Healthcare. Has closed the source code for Mirth Connect, impacting thousands of users globally, Bam! I am speechless, as are thousands of Mirth users.” NextGen’s license update moves licensing for Mirth Connect to an enterprise-only model, citing the need for funding to support product development and maintenance. Loyd is founder and CEO of Innovar Healthcare, which offers the free, open-source fork BridgeLink that may interest affected users. UPDATE: a NextGen Healthcare spokesperson asked if I could include this statement:

Open-source users can choose to remain on their current version, upgrade to the last published open-source version 4.5.2, or choose to become licensed Mirth Connect users and upgrade to Mirth Connect 4.6. All previously released open-source versions of Mirth Connect will continue to be available under their respective licenses (Mozilla 1.0 or 2.0). Release notes, upgrade notes, and source code for these versions will remain accessible on GitHub. For more information, read our full FAQ.

From YooToober: “Re: AI-generated content. I’ve seen some questionable material on other health tech websites and social media posts. Is this where we’re headed?” I think AI will be used to efficiently crank out web clutter that will interest no one, which is how it’s already being used generate social media junk. AI should replace me if it can filter out the 95% of time-wasting non-news, add perspective, and foster industry dialog. Allow me to preen a bit in repeating that 96% of poll respondents say that reading HIStalk helps them do their job better, which is a pretty high bar to reach by pushing the recycled digital thoughts of a glorified autocomplete.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Thanks to the CIOs, CMIOs, and others who have signed up for my Executive Watercooler. I’ll send them an easy-answer question once per month, then compile their de-identified answers into an HIStalk post that will provide a snapshot of executive thought and reaction. You can join them if you work for a provider organization as an IT leader, informaticist, or C-level executive. If you are retired, you are welcome as well — just list your previous job title and put “retired” with or without your previous employer’s name.

My weekly “This Week in Health Tech” carousels are drawing a few thousand impressions on LinkedIn, which reminds me that I should invite people to follow or connect with me or join Dann’s HIStalk fan club. I check all of these if I’m on the fence about a person or company that I don’t know, plus it lets me see job changes to announce.

Listening: Alison Krauss, which I checked out for the first time after reading a New York Times piece. I like bluegrass when I’m toe-tapping outdoors sitting in Walmart camp chair with a PBR in one hand and a smoked turkey leg in the other, but her music is actually remarkable, as evidenced by her 27 Grammys. I figured that her collaborations with Robert Plant pandered to both the bluegrass and rock genres with some annoying fiddle breaks inserted into Zeppelin covers, but it’s a lot better than I expected, with Plant being all-in with the elegant genre bending. Alison Krauss & Union Station will release their first studio album in 14 years next week. They start a huge tour in April, forcing me to ponder whether scratching my newfound itch is worth $150 per ticket.

Thursday was the first day of spring, in case you didn’t know. Or, the first day of autumn if you are reading from the Southern Hemisphere, where the chilly nights in Australia can drop to 70 degrees.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “How to Improve Clinical Workflows with AI Chart Summaries and Risk Predictions.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Scott Cullen, MD, senior advisor, Health Data Analytics Institute; David Clain, chief product officer, Health Data Analytics Institute. Learn how the EHR-embedded HDAIAssist tool is transforming the ability of clinicians to pull insights out the mountains of data that have accumulated in the EHR, quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. HDAlAssist, which is part of HealthVision, the intelligent health management system, combines AI chart summaries and granular risk predictions to quickly inform care planning decisions, especially for the most complex, high-risk patients.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Workflow solutions vendor Forcura and post-acute care analytics company Medalogix merge under majority owner Berkshire Partners. The deal reportedly values the new business at $1 billion.

From the Veradigm earnings call following release of its FY2022 financials:

• The financial impact of the internal control failures was $239 million in asset reduction and $46 million in fees.
• Revenue increased 4% in 2021, 3% in 2023 and was down 1% in 2024, with the latter falling short of estimates. The company expects 2025 revenue to be flat.
• The company doesn’t expect to get current on its financial reporting until 2026.
• Higher net attrition is affecting the core provider business, such as EHR and RCM, and net sales were lower in 2024. Life sciences was also soft outside of the company’s real-world evidence business.
• ScienceIO, which Veradigm bought February 2024 for $140 million, generated no revenue in 2024. Interim CEO Tom Langan spoke vaguely in the call that its AI expertise would be incorporated into its other business lines, but he offered no revenue-generating use cases. The company also used a lot of AI buzzwords and observed that the AI market is moving fast, which might suggest that competitors are moving faster.

Sales

• Huntsville Hospital Health system will expand its use of Oracle Health Foundation EHR and deploy Oracle Health Data Intelligence. The announcement didn’t explain the relationship between the EHR and Oracle Health Foundation, which is the former Cerner charity that supports child health. I haven’t seen its retooled EHR called that until now. UPDATE: an Oracle spokesperson clarifies that the existing EHR is now referred to as Oracle Health Foundation EHR, which isn’t affiliated with Oracle Health Foundation (the charity).

People

AdvancedMD promotes Amanda Sharp to CEO, as announced with the company’s acquisition by Francisco Partners in November 2024, and hires Bryan Hunt (Health Catalyst) as CFO.

Alan Weiss, MD, MBA (BayCare Health System) joins Banner Health as SVP of clinical advancement.

Cherodeep Goswami (University of Wisconsin Health System) joins Providence as chief information and digital officer.

Rod Nicholls (Knowtion Health) joins Loyal as chief growth officer.

Announcements and Implementations

John Snow Lab announces Medical LLM Reasoner, which it says is the first commercially available healthcare-specific reasoning LLM. It was trained using DeepSeek-like methods that give it “self-reflection capabilities through reinforcement learning.” It runs on the customer’s own infrastructure with no third-party API calls. It offers online demos of models for summarizing medical information, answering questions, and generating text.

Linus Health launches Anywhere for Health Systems, an FDA-listed, EHR-integrated AI cognitive assessment tool that PCPs can ask their patients and their care partners to administer. The remote assessment has been found to be more than 90% accurate in detecting mild cognitive impairment or early dementia.

The recently formed policy arm of venture capital firm General Catalyst — which now has its own health system in Summa Health – releases a buzzword-stuffed, Washington-targeted manifesto that anoints AI as the cure for all of America’s healthcare woes. Conveniently absent from the discussion: healthcare costs, insurance, and the entrenched dominance of for-profit corporations (who just might find it useful to mask their dollar-driven ulterior motives as “healthcare reform.”) The report places blind faith in private-sector innovation, which of course means General Catalyst’s own portfolio companies that have become forward-thinking AI pioneers overnight. Among its short-term recommendations:

• Launch regional innovation sandboxes.
• Establish a fast-track AI approval process.
• Create a patient-controlled health data infrastructure.
• Implement AI-powered fraud detection.
• Accelerate provider ability.

Government and Politics

Authorities in Hong Kong threaten to fine doctors up to $6,400 if they don’t upload patient data into its electronic medical record system.

Other

This is sure to raise Dr. Jayne’s ire. Function Health—backed by celebrity investors Matt Damon, Kevin Hart, and Zac Efron—offers a $500 annual subscription for access to 100 lab tests . The company, whose tagline is “100 healthy years,” promotes a user’s “health strategy,” their health support “stack,” and its own ambition of reaching a $2 billion valuation. Members are left to interpret their results on their own, potentially overreacting to out-of-range values —tests that regular doctors don’t order in bulk for good reason — only to end up consulting their PCP anyway.

Sponsor Updates

• Clearwater joins CancerX as the organization’s first member company and accelerator champion focused on advancing strong cybersecurity and data privacy practices in the fight against cancer.
• Surescripts co-sponsors the Sequoia Project’s new Pharmacy Workgroup.
• Five9 introduces Spotlight for AI Insights and expands its reporting and analytics suite.
• Impact Advisors releases a new episode of the “Impactful AI” podcast titled “Taming the AI Bias Hydra.”
• Med Tech Solutions achieves HITRUST r2 certification for the third consecutive time.
• Navina will present and exhibit at AMGA 2025 March 26-29 in Grapevine, TX.
• Meditech shares the ways in which Meditech as a Service continues to grow with new customers and enhanced services.

Blog Posts

• Medical Revenue Recovery Services: Turn Lost Dollars Into Financial Success (FinThrive)
• What AR in Medical Billing Means and How It Affects Cash Flow (Inovalon)
• Top benefits of Clinical Documentation Integrity (CDI) (Nordic)
• Healthcare interoperability: The key to seamless data, better care, and lower costs (Arcadia)
• 12 New Judi Features Innovating Pharmacy Benefit Administration (Capital Rx)
• People, Policy, & Technology: The 2025 Connect Summit (Findhelp)
• Inspect, Adjust, Excel: How Top Brands Use CX Analytics for Transformation (Five9)
• 7 HIPAA Compliance Tips for HIM Staff (HealthMark Group)
• Planning Epic Conversions: 8 Common Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• How Automation and AI Agents Are Transforming Prior Authorizations (Infinx)
• Empowering Healthcare with Reliable Data: KONZA’s Commitment to Quality (Konza National Network)
• Watch how Meditech customers are unleashing the power of data analytics with Meditech Expanse (Meditech)

Contacts

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

News 3/19/25

Top News

Veradigm files its long-overdue 2022 10-K, which also contains certain restated financial statements for periods in fiscal year 2022, 2021 and 2020.

Total revenue rose slightly in 2022, but EPS from continuing operations plunged from $0.92 to –$0.18, with an $86 million loss.

Nasdaq delisted MDRX in February after the company failed to file its 2022 report and multiple quarterly statements. Veradigm attributed the issue to a software error that overstated financials over six quarters.

MDRX shares, which now trade on the OTC market, have fallen 40% in the past year. The company hopes to regain Nasdaq listing status.

Veradigm spent eight months through January 2025 seeking a buyer, but received no offers from 30 interested parties.

HIStalk Executive Watercooler

I’m bringing back a simple way for health system technology executives to share their candid insights anonymously, effortlessly, and with influence. See this example of the result back when I called it the HIStalk Advisory Panel.

Once a month, I’ll email you one quick question. Just hit reply with your thoughts. I’ll compile responses (stripping out anything identifiable to maintain your anonymity) and write them up for HIStalk. You will be influencing industry conversations with minimal effort.

I’m looking for executives from health systems, ACOs, and hospital-owned medical practices; CMIOs, CNIOs, and clinical informaticists; health system IT leaders; and digital health executives. Provider-side only, please. Thank you for signing up to be part of the HIStalk Executive Watercooler.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 20 (Thursday) noon ET. “Enhancing Patient Experience: Digital Accessibility Legal Requirements in Healthcare.” Sponsor: TPGi. Presenters: Mark Miller, director of sales, TPGi; David Sloan, PhD, MSc, chief accessibility officer, TPGi; Kristina Launey, JD, labor and employment litigation and counseling partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP. For patients with disabilities, inaccessible technology can mean the difference between timely, effective care and unmet healthcare needs. This could include accessible patient portals, telehealth services, and payment platforms. Despite a new presidential administration, requirements for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not changed. While enforcement may unclear moving forward, healthcare organizations still have an obligation to their patients for digital accessibility. In our webinar session, TPGi’s accessibility experts and Seyfarth Shaw’s legal professionals will help you understand ACA Section 1557 requirements, its future under the Trump administration, and offer strategies to help you create inclusive experiences.

Live Webinar: March 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “How to Improve Clinical Workflows with AI Chart Summaries and Risk Predictions.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Scott Cullen, MD, senior advisor, Health Data Analytics Institute; David Clain, chief product officer, Health Data Analytics Institute. Learn how the EHR-embedded HDAIAssist tool is transforming the ability of clinicians to pull insights out the mountains of data that have accumulated in the EHR, quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. HDAlAssist, which is part of HealthVision, the intelligent health management system, combines AI chart summaries and granular risk predictions to quickly inform care planning decisions, especially for the most complex, high-risk patients.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

AI-powered RCM vendor Infinx marks its second acquisition of the year with the purchase of Glidian, a prior authorization automation company based in California. It acquired pathology billing and RCM business MedReceivables Advisor earlier this year.

People

Nordic appoints Steve Eckert, MBA (Cook Children’s Health Care System) chief growth officer.

Siemens Healthineers names John Kowal president and head of the Americas. He was formerly president of the Americas at Varian Medical Systems, which Siemens acquired in 2021.

Loyal names Nanette Oddo (Truveris) CEO.

Jeff Evans (CAE Healthcare) joins Qventus as chief commercial officer.

J. Michael Kramer, MD, MBA (Health Value Leadership) joins Cone Health (NC) as CMIO.

Announcements and Implementations

EHR vendor Canvas Medical announces an open source AI copilot and ambient documentation system.

Government and Politics

NHS England informs 5,000 patients of an administrative error that blocked them from receiving routine screening reminders. The decades-long issue, initially identified on a small scale last year, stemmed from GP practices failing to fully complete patient registrations, preventing automatic transfer of data to screening reminder systems.

Sponsor Updates

• Altera Digital Health publishes a new client story titled “Psychology service digitised and integrated into trust-wide EPR at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital.”
• AvaSure will exhibit at AONL March 30-April 2 in Boston.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Building Judi, the Healthcare Infrastructure of the Future, with Liya Lomsadze.”
• Censinet releases a new case study titled “Enhancing Rural Healthcare Cybersecurity and Risk Management at Faith Regional.”
• Clearwater publishes a first-of-its-kind report examining the cybersecurity performance of private equity-backed portfolio companies in healthcare.
• DrFirst announces its products have earned HITRUST i1 certification for information security.
• CliniComp wins a Platinum Pinnacle Award for its role as a Trailblazer in Healthcare Technology.

Blog Posts

• High-Risk Medical Coding: Debridement Coding & Documentation (AGS Health)
• The Latest from Vital Signs: Healthcare Jobs on the Rise, Patient Portal Message Volumes, and Prior Authorization Challenges (AdvancedMD)
• Rethinking Revenue Management with AI–Efficiency, Security and Growth (FinThrive)
• Medical Billing Services for Small Practices: Solving Your Revenue Cycle Challenges (Inovalon)
• Building a healthier future together: Wolters Kluwer’s commitment to strategic collaborations (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Better care, lower costs: The advance care planning solution hospitals ignore (Nordic)
• RCM resource roundup: Activating AI for prior authorization + denial prevention (Waystar)
• What happened in Vegas: Top takeaways from HIMSS25 (Altera Digital Health)
• Healthcare dashboards: 8 impactful models + metrics to track (Arcadia)
• A Hierarchy of Healthcare Interoperability Needs (Clinical Architecture)
• A Health IT Leader’s Wish List for 2025: Tech Equity and Health Equity (Consensus Cloud Solutions)
• HIMSS25: Reflecting on a Successful Event (Dimensional Insight)
• How to Build a Diverse Workforce in Healthcare Through Human-Centered Recruiting (Direct Recruiters)
• Glimmers From HIMSS: Announcements, Recognition, and Collaboration Shine Bright in Glittery Las Vegas (DrFirst)
• Unveiled: You’ll Need to Know These Innovative Strategies Healthcare CIOs are Using (CereCore)

Contacts

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

HIStalk Reader Survey Results 2025

Thanks to everyone who completed my reader survey. My readers come from all corners of healthcare and bring a wide range of experience and expectations. I’ve learned that designing by committee usually leads to something that pleases no one in the quest to please everyone, so I pay attention to individual survey responses. I earn a passing grade if readers keep coming back.

I also try not to let my enthusiasm lead me to promise more than I can deliver. Everything on the site, except for Dr. Jayne’s pieces, is put there by two people who work here less than full time. I might agree with some reader suggestions but still pass due to the reach-versus-grasp resource situation.

Some major points from the survey:

• 94% of respondents have worked in the industry for more than 10 years.
• 42% work for a vendor, 25% for a hospital or health system.
• 29% have purchasing influence of greater than $10,000 for a provider organization, while 28% have that level of authority in a vendor organization.
• 91% have a higher appreciation for companies that we write about.
• 51% have a higher interest or appreciation for companies that sponsor HIStalk.
• 96% say that reading HIStalk helped them do their job better in the past year.
• 54% based a recent strategic business decision (purchase, partnership, RFP, contract renewal, executive hire, investment, etc.) on something they read on HIStalk.

I focus on results from the “helped you do your job better” question. I would hope that the 96% of readers who say that reading HIStalk helps them do their job better will keep coming back.

I extracted some respondent comments. Italicized comments are mine.

• I love HIStalk and literally visit this website every day. I always learn something new, interesting, and relevant to healthcare IT. You do incredible work! I love Dr. Jayne and all the contributors.
• While I like that you do interviews with various folks, I don’t read them that often. I come mostly for the news and rumors and your take on what is happening (you’ve got a great perspective).
• A (very) slight facelift to modernize the formatting would be welcome. I keep thinking about how to do this with minimal disruption. I could probably get someone to spiff up the font or make minor layout changes. Ideas?
• I miss the webinars. We’ve cut back on producing webinars because it didn’t feel like we were adding enough value. Companies got pretty good at doing their own during the pandemic and potential attendees were getting tired of looking at a Zoom screen all day, which limited attendance. Some people like our YouTube channel, so maybe we will archive company webinars there or something in addition to helping promote them.
• I always value any commentary on where the political and regulatory winds seem to be shifting. Especially in current uncertain climate that’s a more important topic than ever, so more content on that would be great.
• I would love to be able to hear more about the research, successes, and pitfalls that the industry is seeing with RPM tools. Along with this, I’m also very interested in learning more about how people are deploying patient engagement tools to actually change patient actions. Less about the ability to send texts, nudges, etc. and more how are these tools being used successfully to get patients to improve their health habits (exercise, diet, med adherence, etc.)
• More opinions from industry experts (including Mr. H). I see a lot of the press releases, announcements, etc. from other sources too, but hearing the opinion/reaction from people who have been in this space a long time helps add context that I don’t really get anywhere else. What I would really like is to get the opinions of expert readers. The challenge is that people are busy and maybe not comfortable throwing their two cents out there. The biggest lesson that I’ve learned over the years is that everybody likes to consume content, but not to create it, and to rely on reader interaction is a good way to fail fast (see: HIMSS Accelerate).
• Maybe in six months would be great to interview couple of CIO/CXOs on areas of clear value from AI vs. what’s still to-be-proven. I would be really happy to do this. It’s hard to get provider executives to be interviewed. I will flag my calendar to solicit volunteers in six months and will be surprised if I get any.
• I would appreciate more coverage around FHIR and other interoperability developments and trends. You do cover it a little but I am definitely interested in finding out as much as I can on the direction of the industry as a whole in this space. I really appreciate all your recent coverage on the trends of AI in healthcare.
• More opinions from Mr. HIStalk. He knows more than everyone else. Give us more editorialization. I don’t know more than everyone else. I know a little about a lot of topics and I enjoy learning as I go, which might provide the illusion of omniscience. I have hundreds or thousands of readers who know more about any given topic than I do, but the challenge is to get them to actively participate. I also don’t want to let my experience and opinions bleed over into objective coverage of straight news.
• I like not knowing what the topics will be, it’s often something I know little to nothing about and I get educated. That’s exactly how writing HIStalk makes me feel. The best way to learn is by teaching, or in my case, by writing.
• I believe we critique sometimes more than is fair. This is not to mean that we should lessen how much we critique, but rather we should honestly praise even the losers when they make progress. Not everyone can afford Epic. If we acknowledge that, it’s still fair to call a dog a dog and even when they improve, that gap typically gets even wider, but let’s at least occasionally toss a bone to the dog when they make something better. The challenge is that not all companies and providers actively announce their news. That includes Epic, which almost never announces anything. It’s logical to ask “why don’t you ever say something negative about Epic” or “why didn’t you list our new sale,” but I only know what someone tells me.
• Would love to see a job posting area made available to subscribers. I tried that once before and it flopped, the same as reader discussion areas and online meet-ups that require reader participation. I’ll leave job boards to others. 
• It would be really helpful to interview CIOs, CMIOs, etc. of a variety of healthcare organizations to see where other folks see their greatest needs and greatest successes. Agreed, but it’s hard to get those folks to participate. I’ve been interviewed in my health system job and it requires a bunch of approvals and sometimes final review of what is published. I still can’t decide if it’s reasonable that a long-ago health system executive told leadership that we needed his approval to be interviewed because “I’ve been burned by that before.”
• Love the summarized reader comments at top and your commentary. Reader comments are the best.
• I am particularly interested in patient use of technology and don’t see much of that on HIStalk. It’s a good topic, but not one that generates a lot of news to cover outside of phone or watch apps.
• Loving the AI only section; please continue and expand this section. Thanks for keeping HIStalk objective and avoiding the political fray. I started the AI section because, as in the case when I started doing COVID updates, it gave me a reason to keep learning.
• More comprehensive reporting on sales of health IT solutions to healthcare provider organizations. The current coverage seems to miss many sales by secondary vendors in particular. I would bet that those vendors don’t announce those sales or let me know since I include everything significant that I see. It’s not like I know about it but decide to keep it to myself.
• I don’t know what I’m missing bc HIStalk is the source of news and keeps me in the loop on a broad array. I’ve been in public health, quality improvement, ACO, and now research and HIStalk covers all of that. Dr Jayne is always a good read and
• akes me wish I could take my PCP out for dinner and get her take on all of it.
• I’ve noticed that while HIStalk covers a broad range of EHR-related topics with depth and analysis, there seems to be a notable absence of any coverage that could be construed as critical of Epic Systems. Given the scrutiny that other major EHR vendors receive in your coverage, the lack of similar critique towards Epic stands out. I’m curious – does this reflect an editorial stance, a lack of sources willing to speak critically, or something else? See above. I can only report what I know. Epic is tighter with information than any vendor I can recall and their customers and even employees on Reddit don’t say much. I challenge those readers who believe I’m underreporting some to show me where they saw it elsewhere. I have no moles to report dirt.
• More direct content on useful tools for Value Based Care. While as physician, I appreciate Dr. Jayne’s perspectives, it is singular physicians perspective and at times seems to veer toward subjectivity and tilts left.
• Adding the AI newsletter was a big plus for me. Speaking of AI, as companies announce the use of various models, I would love t know their thoughts on ROI of those investments.
• Right now the information you provide is valuable and influences my day-to-day and year-to-year career. You do a great job of trying new things, ending experiments to don’t pan out, and keeping everything fresh without seeming to shake things up just for the novelty.
• More content from actual health care providers ( rather than CEO’s of some healthcare tech company). I agree, but vendor CEOs volunteer to be interviewed a lot more often that health system C-level executives. It’s the same with Readers Write articles, which mostly originate with vendor PR people and rarely from provider-employed readers.
• This may seem counter-intuitive for a news site, but any chance of scaling back production? I have fond memories of twice/week updates from HISTalk. Now there’s at least 4x/week and in 2025 I think it’s closer to 5x/week. Please don’t make enjoying your outlet a chore (one which I will stop performing). I’m open to ideas for writing shorter news updates or posting on fewer days of the week if that’s what most readers want. Or I suppose I could create separate signup forms for just the news posts versus everything else. Or, insert a keyword so you could create a mail filter rule to see only the parts you like.
• I like it as is. I always learn interesting and thought provoking info. I tend to scroll quickly past the info on newly appointed people but, as a woman in medicine and tech, even that is informative in seeing the mix of people in different roles. I also value Dr. Jayne’s columns in terms of my CMIO responsibilities. Keep up the excellent work!!!
• Love it as it is. I am much better at what I do thanks to HIStalk, both as a CEO of a healthcare IT company and a physician.

Monday Morning Update 3/17/25

Top News

Several private equity firms have submitted bids to acquire revenue cycle management company AGS Health at a valuation of around $1 billion.

The company’s Sweden-based investment firm owner paid $320 million for the company in 2019.

The 14,000 employees of AGS work from offices in India, the Philippines, and the US.

Reader Comments

From Borat: “Re: Epic Research. Who needs the CDC now, Elon? Kidding, but only sort of. You can’t beat the recency of the data versus the 3-4 year delay in CDC reports.” Epic Research enables the rapid sharing of vetted insights that are drawn from Epic’s Cosmos database of the de-identified patient data from customers. As the organization puts it, unlike traditional research and publication as a journal article, “It is designed to make good data available sooner rather than perfect data available too late.” This approach bypasses the lengthy process required for peer-reviewed journal. The CDC has turned to Epic Research for help with urgent public health and pandemic-related issues that couldn’t afford delays. Also, while I’m not sure how the CDC selects its research priorities, their focus likely leans less toward publishing findings that are immediately actionable for health systems. Add in the uncertainty surrounding which CDC projects will be defunded and how many experts it may lose and Epic Research becomes even more appealing. Meanwhile, Larry Ellison has stated that Oracle Health intends to pursue similar real-world evidence research, so it will be interesting to see what they produce. Regardless, the ability to quickly analyze and apply real-world data is an increasingly valuable asset.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents aren’t confident about the 2025 prospects of their employers, with commenters citing federal government dysfunction, potential cuts in Medicaid and Medicare, and the threat of a recession.

New poll to your right or here: What ways have you recently used to reduce the time you spend on unproductive meetings? I didn’t ask how you recognize that a meeting is going to be a waste of time, but here are some signs from years of reading the hospital conference room:

• Nobody seems to know who’s running the meeting, what results are expected, or whether the group has any actual authority.
• The convener starts the meeting late to accommodate tardy invitees, fails to create an agenda with goals, and allows the meeting to end without creating assignments and minutes.
• The attendee count keeps growing because everyone who is affected mistakenly believes that their input is both invaluable and urgently needed.
• Status updates that could have been managed via email become a competitive verbal sport of sounding busy.
• Knowledgeable but quiet attendees let the loud but less-informed attendees dominate.
• Attendees ramble endlessly to make sure that they clock the same amount of suck-up airtime as peers.
• People talk about their feelings or concerns.
• A high-ranking attendee – who may be known for missing meetings, coming in late, or not paying attention – mistakes their trite anecdotes and gut feelings for keen insight that makes it logical for them to override group decisions.
• No actual decisions are made because in hospitals, nobody has the power to say yes, but everyone has the power to say no.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 20 (Thursday) noon ET. “Enhancing Patient Experience: Digital Accessibility Legal Requirements in Healthcare.” Sponsor: TPGi. Presenters: Mark Miller, director of sales, TPGi; David Sloan, PhD, MSc, chief accessibility officer, TPGi; Kristina Launey, JD, labor and employment litigation and counseling partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP. For patients with disabilities, inaccessible technology can mean the difference between timely, effective care and unmet healthcare needs. This could include accessible patient portals, telehealth services, and payment platforms. Despite a new presidential administration, requirements for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not changed. While enforcement may unclear moving forward, healthcare organizations still have an obligation to their patients for digital accessibility. In our webinar session, TPGi’s accessibility experts and Seyfarth Shaw’s legal professionals will help you understand ACA Section 1557 requirements, its future under the Trump administration, and offer strategies to help you create inclusive experiences.

Live Webinar: March 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “How to Improve Clinical Workflows with AI Chart Summaries and Risk Predictions.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Scott Cullen, MD, senior advisor, Health Data Analytics Institute; David Clain, chief product officer, Health Data Analytics Institute. Learn how the EHR-embedded HDAIAssist tool is transforming the ability of clinicians to pull insights out the mountains of data that have accumulated in the EHR, quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. HDAlAssist, which is part of HealthVision, the intelligent health management system, combines AI chart summaries and granular risk predictions to quickly inform care planning decisions, especially for the most complex, high-risk patients.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Informa’s annual financial report reveals that it paid $110 million for its July 2023 acquisition of the HIMSS conference. The last pre-COVID HIMSS tax filing from 2019 reported $43 million in conference revenue against $16 million in expenses, suggesting that Informa paid about four times earnings. That would represent about 24% of the total revenue of HIMSS.

People

CTG hires Dan Stoke (Nordic Global) as VP of its US healthcare business. He replaces Christine Blanchard, who is retiring.

Government and Politics

In England, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announces plans to dissolve NHS England, which was established in 2013 to oversee NHS funding, policies, and major initiatives like digital health transformation. Its functions will be absorbed by the Department of Health and Social Care, a move the government estimates will save $130 million by eliminating duplicate costs. Of NHS England’s 15,000 employees, 9,000 are expected to lose their jobs as part of the transition.

Government insiders say that White House-mandated HHS cost cutting could reduce ASTP’s headcount from 180 to 30.

Sponsor Updates

• A Black Book Research survey of global health IT buyers and decision-makers outside of the US reveals a growing preference for non-US electronic patient health record providers.
• Optimum Healthcare IT releases a new case study titled “Closing the Workday Skills Gap at OU Health.”
• PerfectServe launches the 2025 Nurses of Note Awards Program with new categories.
• Praia Health publishes a new case study featuring Providence titled “Praia Health delivers standard of digital engagement ROI health systems.”
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere company, will exhibit at the East Coast CORE Spring Meeting March 19-21 in Tampa, FL.
• TeamBuilder will present at The Millennium Alliance’s Transformation Assembly March 19-20 in Austin, TX.
• WellSky releases a new case study titled “UF Health St. Johns Care Connect: Uniting a community to address social determinants of health.”
• AGS Health, FinThrive, Inovalon, MRO, Nym, SmarterDx, TruBridge, VisiQuate, and Waystar will exhibit at the HFMA Revenue Cycle Conference March 19-21 in San Antonio.

Blog Posts

• How Data Analytics is Transforming A/R Optimization in Healthcare (FinThrive)
• Choosing the Right Medical Billing Software: A Guide for Healthcare Providers (Inovalon)
• A new era in healthcare innovation highlighted at HIMSS 2025 (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Optimizing today, innovating for tomorrow: how dual transformation can enhance Canadian healthcare (Nordic)
• How Do You Find the Budget for Experience Orchestration? (Praia Health)
• Don’t Leave Person Data to Change: Use AI (Rhapsody)
• 5 Guidelines for Researching & Developing Privileging Content (Symplr)
• Reimbursement roundup: Telemedicine, Medicare + reimbursement rate changes in 2025 (Waystar)

Contacts

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

News 3/14/25

Top News

A federal court upholds an injunction that prohibits senior care EHR vendor PointClickCare (PCC) from blocking Real Time Medical Systems (RTMS) from its systems.

The injunction, which was granted in July 2024, found that PCC violated the 21st Century Cures Act by using an unsolvable CAPTCHA to block RTMS’s web-scraping bots that collect skilled nursing data for analytics.

RTMS alleges that PCC took the action after ending discussions to acquire RTMS and instead developed a competing product.

Circuit Court judges agreed that PCC’s actions were anticompetitive and were not justified by its stated cybersecurity concerns.

Reader Comments

From Skeeter: “Re: VA. Is the GAO just beating a dead horse at this point? Yet another report highlights the VA’s failure to follow up on GAO’s previous recommendations related to EHR modernization, which include clarifying the project’s total cost, master schedule, or performance targets.” Meet the new report, same as the old report. Its recommendations are clear and necessary for project completion, even as the VA dodges discussions of cost, timelines, and performance targets that it is unlikely to meet. Oracle Health isn’t going anywhere, thanks to (a) a lack of viable alternatives; and (b) its no-bid selection under Jared Kushner in the first Trump administration, which likely shields it from budget cuts. Oracle has also ingratiated itself with the federal government in ways Cerner never could have, such as making former CMS Administrator Seema Verma the EVP/GM of Oracle Health. Plenty of verbal vaporware has been dispersed from all sides, none of which has scared VA leadership enough to force real commitments or change. Congressional frustration at spending up to $50 billion with little to show for it so far is palpable, most of it aimed at the VA and not Oracle Health, which the DoD implemented just fine.

From AnInteropGuy: “Re: Veradigm. Has performed a RIF, effective Friday. Not sure how many, but the Payer and Life Sciences units have been affected.” Unverified, but entirely likely.

From Barn Burner: “Re: Mark Cuban. Says companies who are buying insurance should hire a healthcare CEO to make benefits decisions rather than allowing an HR leader or insurance broker to run the program.” Cuban observes that healthcare is the only industry where a employer company’s CEO and CFO are blocked from accessing their expense data (such as prescription claims) to help make benefits decisions. Contracts bar executives from discussing pricing or supply with drug manufacturers, who themselves can’t see claims data. He also faults pharmacy benefit managers for not pressuring manufacturers and payers, advocating instead for a pass-through PBM that charges fixed administrative fees rather than profiting from hidden rebates and discounts.

From Slinky: “Re: Epic ERP. I interviewed with Neal Patterson for a position at Cerner in the 1990s. I asked why the company’s plans for Health Network Architecture didn’t include a patient accounting systems. His response was, ‘Why would I want to go spend millions of dollars on a me-too product and think that I can be successful starting with zero percent market share?” That was probably a sound short-term decision as CEO of a publicly traded company, but not so good for future-proofing since patient accounting shortcomings cost Cerner a lot of customers.

From Doggedly: “Re: CHIME. They are taking the HIMSS direction and creating a vendor-friendly media company.” CHIME is looking for a sales pro “with a hunter mentality” to “drive engagement with healthcare technology vendors.” It states HIMSS-like aspirations to “position CHIME as the premier media and research partner for healthcare technology vendors.” I don’t find this objectionable since it’s targeting salespeople. However, it’s a reminder that member organizations love revenue and largely generate it by charging supplier members for access to potential buyer members in publications and conferences, which usually makes “news” synonymous with “PR fluff.” I started HIStalk because HIMSS Media was where seldom was heard a discouraging word about vendors, i.e. the target audience for selling ads and conference booths.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Spare a minute to fill out my reader survey and you’ll be helping me make HIStalk better (or maybe prevent me from making it worse).

Thanks to Dan for letting me know that my “subscribe to updates” option wasn’t working. Fixing the issue changed the link, so click here to get email updates.

I’ve hit a weekly rhythm with these LinkedIn carousels. Let me know if you have ideas for other uses of this fun format.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Infinx. Founded in 2012, Infinx provides scalable, AI-driven solutions to optimize the financial lifecycle of healthcare providers across all functions of patient access and revenue cycle management. Our cloud-based software, powered by AI and automation, is leveraged by experienced consultants and billing specialists across the US, India, and the Philippines. We help 172,000 healthcare professionals across 4,000 facilities capture more revenue, stay ahead of changing regulations and payer guidelines, and focus on patient care. Thanks to Infinx for supporting HIStalk.

Here’s a good Infinx explainer video that I found on YouTube.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 20 (Thursday) noon ET. “Enhancing Patient Experience: Digital Accessibility Legal Requirements in Healthcare.” Sponsor: TPGi. Presenters: Mark Miller, director of sales, TPGi; David Sloan, PhD, MSc, chief accessibility officer, TPGi; Kristina Launey, JD, labor and employment litigation and counseling partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP. For patients with disabilities, inaccessible technology can mean the difference between timely, effective care and unmet healthcare needs. This could include accessible patient portals, telehealth services, and payment platforms. Despite a new presidential administration, requirements for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not changed. While enforcement may unclear moving forward, healthcare organizations still have an obligation to their patients for digital accessibility. In our webinar session, TPGi’s accessibility experts and Seyfarth Shaw’s legal professionals will help you understand ACA Section 1557 requirements, its future under the Trump administration, and offer strategies to help you create inclusive experiences.

Live Webinar: March 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “How to Improve Clinical Workflows with AI Chart Summaries and Risk Predictions.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Scott Cullen, MD, senior advisor, Health Data Analytics Institute; David Clain, chief product officer, Health Data Analytics Institute. Learn how the EHR-embedded HDAIAssist tool is transforming the ability of clinicians to pull insights out the mountains of data that have accumulated in the EHR, quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. HDAlAssist, which is part of HealthVision, the intelligent health management system, combines AI chart summaries and granular risk predictions to quickly inform care planning decisions, especially for the most complex, high-risk patients.

EBook: “7 Performance Benchmarks Every Medical Practice Must Know.” Sponsor: UnisLink. This free EBook lists seven critical KPIs for revenue cycle efficiency, how to calculate each one, steps to improve, and benchmarking data.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

TruBridge announces Q4 results: revenue up 2%, EPS –$0.38 versus –$2.92. TBRG shares have gained 206% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $415 million.

Scotland-based Craneware reports record results, which it attributes to US hospitals refocusing on efficiency following the presidential election.

Sales

• New Mexico Health Care Authority chooses Findhelp to power a statewide closed-loop referral system.
• Citizens Memorial Hospital will implement the closed-loop referral system of Unite Us, which it will integrate with Meditech Expanse.

People

Symplr hires Mike Valli (Optum) as chief commercial officer and Scott Sbihli, MBA (Inovalon) as chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

A new KLAS report on physician message burden notes that 59% of patients are using technology to communicate with their provider’s office before and after visits, which has driven message volume up and EHR satisfaction down. Recommend solutions:

• Have staff triage and manage messages that don’t involve clinical decision-making.
• Provide dedicated time for clinicians to manage charting and messages.
• Limit message length and the number of messages a patient can send in a given time period.
• Don’t let patients send messages if they haven’t had an appointment in more than one year.
• Auto-delete old messages.
• Use a single platform for all message types and improve remote access to charts.
• Provide message search and filter functions.
• Use automated messages to let the patient know their message was received and when they can expect a response.

Government and Politics

Two US representatives reintroduce the Patient Matching and Transparency in Certified Health IT Act of 2025, directing the HHS secretary to convene stakeholders to establish patient matching standards and track match rates. The bill also requires ASTP to develop a minimum data set for patient matching as part of EHR certification.

Sponsor Updates

• CMS approves UnisLink as a Qualified Clinical Data Registry for the 2025 MIPS reporting program.
• Black Book Research’s latest analysis features the top six customer-rated virtual care platforms in 2025.
• Wolters Kluwer Health announces that it is integrating its UpToDate clinical decision support solution with the healthcare agent service in Microsoft Copilot Studio.
• Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “Quick HITs” podcast titled “Optimizing Medical Technology: Cost Savings, AI, and the Future of Healthcare with Ramana Sastry.”
• Healthmonix names Emily Krysa-Hobson sales development representative.
• Linus Health announces that its leaders, staff, and affiliates have authored 72 peer-reviewed publications and presented at 75 conferences since 2019.

Blog Posts

• Reflections on HIMSS 2025: Insights, Innovations and the Path Forward (FinThrive)
• Oracle Health EHR Slow? Not So Fast (Goliath Technologies)
• Transforming Stroke Care (Impact Advisors)
• Preventing Harm to Achieve Harmony: How Patient Safety Software Transforms Care (Inovalon)

Contacts

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

News 3/12/25

Top News

Digital physical therapy provider Hinge Health files IPO paperwork.

The company’s most recent funding round in October 2021 raised $600 million, valuing it at $6 billion.

Hinge sells its services to employers and payers. It estimates the direct and indirect costs of back and joint pain at $1.3 trillion per year.

Reader Comments

From Pomme: “Re: Epic ERP. Judy Faulkner used to tell the story of ‘Atalanta and the Golden Apples’’ to represent opportunities that Epic must ignore to stay on mission. It describes how Hippomenes won a race against Atalanta by dropping golden apples that Atalanta stopped to pick up, which slowed her down just enough to allow Hippomenes to win. ERP sounds like a bushel of golden apples. I hope she is just messing with Oracle.”

From Bill Spooner: “Re: Epic ERP.  Developing a full ERP system is not a quick and easy task. Epic needs to decide if this is right for them. It’s hard to imagine it replacing Workday or Oracle, yet it could be a smart play for smaller institutions.”

From  Brendan Keeler: “Re: Epic ERP.  The announcement is not surprising in the slightest. It is concretely related to their Health Grid strategy —  build network effects products to new verticals as a wedge / beachhead and offer a related system of record (CAPS, CTMS, ERP, LIS, pharmacy information system) that natively performs between with those network effects products. Along the same lines, they also announced a clinical trials management system. I predicted this last month.”

From Slow Green: “Re: Greenway Health. The profiles of CEO Pratap Sarker and Chief of Staff Frank Pirantino have been removed from the company’s leadership page.” Verified. The page now lists industry veteran Richard Atkin, who served as CEO from 2018 to 2022, as CEO once again. Atkin is a principal with Vista Equity Partners, which owns Greenway and tried to sell it, apparently unsuccessfully, a year ago.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Drop your knowledge bombs in my reader survey, which you can complete in a minute or two. I haven’t done one since 2021, so it needs a refresh.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 20 (Thursday) noon ET. “Enhancing Patient Experience: Digital Accessibility Legal Requirements in Healthcare.” Sponsor: TPGi. Presenters: Mark Miller, director of sales, TPGi; David Sloan, PhD, MSc, chief accessibility officer, TPGi; Kristina Launey, JD, labor and employment litigation and counseling partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP. For patients with disabilities, inaccessible technology can mean the difference between timely, effective care and unmet healthcare needs. This could include accessible patient portals, telehealth services, and payment platforms. Despite a new presidential administration, requirements for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not changed. While enforcement may unclear moving forward, healthcare organizations still have an obligation to their patients for digital accessibility. In our webinar session, TPGi’s accessibility experts and Seyfarth Shaw’s legal professionals will help you understand ACA Section 1557 requirements, its future under the Trump administration, and offer strategies to help you create inclusive experiences.

Live Webinar: March 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “How to Improve Clinical Workflows with AI Chart Summaries and Risk Predictions.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Scott Cullen, MD, senior advisor, Health Data Analytics Institute; David Clain, chief product officer, Health Data Analytics Institute. Learn how the EHR-embedded HDAIAssist tool is transforming the ability of clinicians to pull insights out the mountains of data that have accumulated in the EHR, quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. HDAlAssist, which is part of HealthVision, the intelligent health management system, combines AI chart summaries and granular risk predictions to quickly inform care planning decisions, especially for the most complex, high-risk patients.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Oracle reports Q3 results: revenue up 6%, EPS $1.02 versus $0.85, missing Wall Street expectations for both. The only healthcare-related mention was in Larry Ellison’s response to a question about AI agents. He sounded pretty stoked about it, with these snips from his lengthy answer:

• Oracle’s key differentiator in healthcare is the quality of its AI agents, which include ambient documentation and a pre-visit provider summary.
• The company is also developing an AI-powered prior authorization tool, which Ellison expects to drive healthcare sales by  reducing costs.
• He says, “We’re selling more and more healthcare systems because we have a lot of AI agents embedded in them.”

RLDatix, which offers healthcare governance, risk, compliance, and workforce management solutions, acquires downtime continuity and Meditech-focused professional services company IPeople Healthcare.

Digital health and remote patient monitoring company CoachCare acquires virtual care vendor VitalTech, its eighth acquisition in the last two years.

Virtual orthopedic care provider Vori Health raises $53 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total raised to $103 million.

People

SmarterDx names Jacob Schiftan (Viz.ai) VP of product and Tom Dougherty, MBA (Care Continuity) head of sales.

Agfa HealthCare appoints Omar Sunna, MBA (Microsoft) chief customer officer for North America.

Trent Green, MBA, MHA (One Medical) joins NRC Health as CEO.

Emids names Abhishek Shankar, MBA (Tech Mahindra) CEO.

OptimizeRx promotes Steve Silvestro, MLA to CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Zoom pilots its new AI-enhanced Workplace for Clinicians technology, which was developed for in-person and virtual appointments.

ECRI lists its most significant threats to patient safety for 2025:

• Dismissing the concerns of patients, family members, and caregivers.
• Lack of governance of artificial intelligence.
• The spread of medical misinformation.
• Cybersecurity breaches.
• Caring for veterans in non-military health settings.
• Substandard and falsified drugs.
• Diagnostic error in cancers, vascular events, and infections.
• Healthcare-associated infections in long-term care facilities.
• Inadequate coordination during patient discharge.

Government and Politics

In England, former health secretary Steve Barclay says that NHS “spends too much on foreign IT systems” and should prioritize British companies instead.

The US Navy will offer sailors and their dependents free access to digital services from Talkspace as part of a new mental healthcare program that is being piloted at six bases.

Privacy and Security

Therapists at the VA’s clinical resource hubs are protesting being forced to conduct virtual mental health sessions from open cubicles. The therapists, who worked remotely until ordered to return to the office, are housed in facilities that lack private offices. VA leadership reportedly stated that “screen protectors, a white noise machine, and a headset is [sic] sufficient to ensure patient privacy in a large bullpen of cubicles.”

Business Insider reports that some states are requiring Bamboo Health to track the prescribing of abortion pills in their prescription monitoring programs that were designed for opioid tracking. Louisiana has reclassified misoprostol and mifepristone as controlled substances, which requires clinicians to log them into Bamboo’s system. Texas, Indiana, and Idaho are considering similar measures. Bamboo says that it is legally obligated to monitor the drugs in states that require it. Doctors are raising concerns about data access, as the information isn’t protected by HIPAA and can be viewed by state health departments, medical examiners, and law enforcement under certain conditions.

Other

HIMSS26 will be held March 9-12 in Las Vegas next year, according to parent company Informa Connect. ViVE, meanwhile, will take place February 22-25, this time in Los Angeles.

Consultants discover that Health New Zealand, whose annual budget is $18 billion, manages its finances using a single Microsoft Excel worksheet. The health minister recently highlighted HNZ’s fragmented digital infrastructure, which includes 6,000 apps and 100 digital networks.

Sponsor Updates

• AGS Health publishes a new white paper, “The RCM Maturity Framework: A 4-Stage Journey to Digital Transformation and Operational Excellence.”
• Wolters Kluwer Health announces that Phrase Health will integrate its UpToDate clinical decision support solution with Phrase Health’s EHR workflow optimization software.
• A new Waystar report identifies the top six RCM trends of 2025.
• CereCore releases a new podcast titled “From AI to EHR: How to Approach Healthcare Innovation Today.”
• Black Book Research shares highlights from its recent survey of AMIA members on AI-driven healthcare innovations and interoperability advancements.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “How First-Movers are Taking Control of their Health Plans in 2025, with Jeff Hogan.”
• The “Thriving Practice” podcast features Arrive Health CEO Kyle Kiser in an episode titled “From Hours to Minutes: Transforming Prior Authorizations with Arrive Health.”
• Artera exhibits at AAOS through March 14 in San Diego.
• Censinet releases a new report titled “Choosing the Right Healthcare TPRM and ERM Solution.”
• Clearwater announces new innovations in its Security Operations Center Portal and IRM|Analysis software.
• NHS Ayrshire & Arran in Scotland implements TrakCare as a Service from InterSystems.
• Symplr releases the results of its “2025 State of Healthcare Supply Chain Survey” in a new e-book.
• MRO introduces automated HEDIS data retrieval.

Blog Posts

• People-First Tech Strategy Demands More from EHR and Gen AI (CereCore)
• Digital Health Rewired 2025: A supported, connected and flexible approach from Altera Digital Health (Altera Digital Health)
• Cybersecurity Essentials for Rural and Critical Access Hospitals (CloudWave)
• Glimmers From HIMSS: Announcements, Recognition, and Collaboration Shine Bright in Glittery Las Vegas (DrFirst)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/10/25

Top News

The VA will expand its 2026 Oracle Health rollout from four sites to 13.

The VA has faced recent criticism from both Congress and Oracle Health for its slow go-live pace, which it acknowledges will prevent full implementation by the contract’s expiration in May 2028. The EHR won’t be completely deployed until 2031 even with the accelerated schedule.

The announcement’s timing was not optimal as the VA was just coming off a nationwide Oracle Health outage. They are also determining how to lay off 80,000 employees per White House orders.

The VA’s most recent go-live, other than at jointly operated Lovell FHCC, was in June 2022. Further go-lives were paused as the VA addressed system and operational issues that impacted patient safety and staff productivity.

Reader Comments

From Omnibusboy: “Re: Oracle Health. I think Madison VAMC is one of the sites the VA added to its accelerated deployment schedule. Right in Ms. Faulkner’s back yard. It used to be a very well-run hospital, but with few patients. We’d joke the secretaries were MBAs because of all the educated people in Madison competing for jobs. It’s a pretty aggressive move by VA leadership and a huge risk to accelerate deployment with a system so disliked by VA docs, not to mention pushback from a RIF-rattled workforce.” I haven’t seen an announcement of which nine VA sites are being added for 2026 go-lives. I wouldn’t expect Madison VAMC’s location to intersect with anything specific to Epic, but a lot of clinicians there use Epic almost entirely.

From Rucksack: “Re: HIMSS25. Attendance was down again, even after it was sold to Informa. Is it in a long decline?” HIMSS25 drew 28,000 attendees, down from 30,000 in 2024, 35,000 in 2023, and 43,000 pre-COVID in 2019. As Spinal Tap’s manager might optimistically say, “Their appeal is becoming more selective.” Some of the decline likely stems from the HIMSS20 refund fiasco and the infamous no-carpet exhibit hall of 2023, but I would bet that the bigger culprits are ViVE’s steady presence (they’re stingy with numbers, but attendance seemed flat from 2024 to 2025), tighter provider budgets, lackluster keynotes, Las Vegas fatigue, and the lack of federal participation this year. The AI boom probably softened the blow. HIMSS initially reacted to ViVE’s competition by copying its strengths (hosted buyer program, expanded networking), but it probably realized that differentiation is the smarter strategy, especially being the bigger and more broadly focused player that is attached to a membership non-profit. HIMSS has a stronger international presence, deeper coverage and participation of interoperability and health system IT management, and a history of drawing attendees who have buying authority.

From Bebop: “Re: Epic. Deep in its HIMSS press release was a note that they are developing an ERP system, with full integration as a talking point. What do health system readers think of this?” I invite readers to tell me. Building an industry-specific ERP system must be a huge project that, if successful, would expand Epic’s orbit. It would also create new competition with Oracle.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Attention over 35ers – your best option to enhance your health tech career is to earn a master’s degree if you don’t already have one. So say poll respondents, who also credited earning vendor-specific and general certifications for supporting their success. 

New poll to your right or here: How are your employer’s 2025 business prospects looking compared to 2024? You earn bonus karma for leaving a poll comment that explains further.

Please join my democracy of dysfunction by spending maybe two minutes on my reader survey. Your anonymous wisdom helps me understand who’s out there. Nearly every improvement I’ve made over the years came from a good citizen who took the time to weigh in. You won’t get an “I Voted” sticker, but you will have earned my appreciation and the right to complain later.

Reminder: “EST” is hibernating until November – it’s “EDT” because we have all agreed to fool ourselves into thinking that clock tampering creates more hours of daylight. Folks in Arizona and Hawaii saw through the nonsense and will continue to enjoy their sunny days on standard time. Spring officially kicks in the morning of March 20, although meteorologists make it easy by proclaiming that March, April, and May are spring months because of weather rather than astronomy. Meanwhile, those who are south of the equator are about to officially hit autumn.

Readers funded the DonorsChoose teach grant request of Mr. P in Brooklyn, who asked for help with a project for his Brooklyn, NY high school physics and robotics classes. He said when he received the materials in November, “It’s hard to put into words how grateful I am for your donation to my project. I am committed to providing students with a relevant STEM curriculum that develops lifelong skills, and it is inspiring to see so many others that share my vision for education. The tools that you have funded will enable students to engage in engineering process and see their CAD designs come to life. Students are incredibly excited to begin the project.“ Which they did, as the above note from a student reports.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Mednition. KATE is an EHR-integrated AI solution that provides 24/7 real-time clinical risk guidance, starting at triage in the emergency room. KATE significantly improves capacity, which reduces wait times, saves lives, and supports a strong 10x ROI, while empowering emergency nurses to optimize patient flow from the point of entry without adding to their workload. KATE Triage serves as a second set of eyes at triage by automatically identifying, prioritizing, and notifying on high-risk patients, with zero workflow changes. KATE Sepsis identifies more patients with sepsis at your front door (up to 2x greater than current standards and before ordering labs), making an immediate and meaningful impact on patient outcomes. Clinical Data Engine provides real-time analytics and research platform for clinicians to search millions of EHR records in seconds, including dynamic free text search. Thanks to Mednition for supporting HIStalk.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 20 (Thursday) noon ET. “Enhancing Patient Experience: Digital Accessibility Legal Requirements in Healthcare.” Sponsor: TPGi. Presenters: Mark Miller, director of sales, TPGi; David Sloan, PhD, MSc, chief accessibility officer, TPGi; Kristina Launey, JD, labor and employment litigation and counseling partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP. For patients with disabilities, inaccessible technology can mean the difference between timely, effective care and unmet healthcare needs. This could include accessible patient portals, telehealth services, and payment platforms. Despite a new presidential administration, requirements for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not changed. While enforcement may unclear moving forward, healthcare organizations still have an obligation to their patients for digital accessibility. In our webinar session, TPGi’s accessibility experts and Seyfarth Shaw’s legal professionals will help you understand ACA Section 1557 requirements, its future under the Trump administration, and offer strategies to help you create inclusive experiences.

Live Webinar: March 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “How to Improve Clinical Workflows with AI Chart Summaries and Risk Predictions.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Scott Cullen, MD, senior advisor, Health Data Analytics Institute; David Clain, chief product officer, Health Data Analytics Institute. Learn how the EHR-embedded HDAIAssist tool is transforming the ability of clinicians to pull insights out the mountains of data that have accumulated in the EHR, quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. HDAlAssist, which is part of HealthVision, the intelligent health management system, combines AI chart summaries and granular risk predictions to quickly inform care planning decisions, especially for the most complex, high-risk patients.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Axios investigates last December’s sale of patient navigation company Memora Health to Commure. It concludes that Memora unloaded at a $30 million fire sale price versus a claimed $430 million valuation, likely because CEO Manav Sevak reportedly had inflated annual revenue of less than $2 million to $20 million. He started the company in 2018 at 21 years old, so he’s still in his late 20s. 

Announcements and Implementations

Researchers warn that large language models will readily generate clinical decision support that resembles the output of a medical device even though they don’t have FDA approval. They also found that the output was clinically appropriate. Click the graphic for FDA’s guidance on when clinical decision support software is functioning as a medical device that requires FDA review.

Government and Politics

Oregon Health & Science University will pay a $200,000 HHS OCR penalty for taking 16 months to fulfill a patient’s medical records request. OHSU was previously non-compliant with an OCR “technical assistance” warning and tried to blame a business associate, Diversified Business Services, Inc.

Sponsor Updates

• Elsevier Health launches the HESI Clinical Practice Readiness Assessment, the first standardized, objective, and reliable assessment for faculty to assess the clinical judgment and practice readiness of nursing students.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Stefanie Simmons, MD.
• Nym publishes a new case study, “Health System Reduces Costs, Improves Revenue Capture, and Stabilizes DNFB with Autonomous Coding.”
• Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the Backdoor” podcast titled “A Hacker’s Welcome – Benefiting from the Bug Bounty.”
• RLDatix will present at the ACHE Congress March 25 in Houston.

Blog Posts

• The Challenges of Strategy Development and Execution (Impact Advisors)
• The State of Healthcare: How Automation, AI, and Digital Tools Are Shaping Patient Sentiment (Vyne Medical)
• Why AI documentation has the potential to humanize healthcare (Nordic)
• Enhancing Healthcare Quality Insights with Snowflake – A Recap from HIMSS (Prominence Advisors)
• A Clinically Integrated Supply Chain & Value Analysis Maturity Model (Symplr)
• Beyond Technology: Change Management as a Business Imperative in Healthcare (Tegria)
• New telehealth regulations for behavioral health: 3 opportunities for providers in 2025 (WellSky)

Contacts

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

News 3/7/25

Top News

Walgreens reaches an agreement to sell itself to private equity firm Sycamore Partners for $10 billion.

Sycamore is expected to keep the core US retail business and then either spin off or sell segments such as the British drugstore chain Boots and its VillageMD primary care business.

The market value of the 120-year-old Walgreens peaked in 2015 at $100 billion.

Reader Comments

From MrCernerPizzaDriver: “Re: Oracle Health. Appears to be having a nationwide outage today [Wednesday] of the OCI Cloud starting around 2:30 PST. Clients are unable to utilize system functionality that converted to the cloud, including scheduling appointments. Cloud is still down as of 4:45 PST.” The downtime was apparently regional rather than national and systems were restored shortly after. The VA says that all six of its medical centers and 26 community clinics that are live on Oracle Health were affected. Online chatter suggests that the problem was related to the installation of a security certificate. Techies, did Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Autonomous Database save the day here by limiting the impact?

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Conduce Health. Conduce leverages the power of AI and advanced data science to provide the tools that health systems and risk-bearing entities need to deliver value-based specialty care. Conduce’s platform uses a proprietary patient cohorting model to predict and identify patient needs and match patients with the right specialty care intervention or specialist at the right time. Conduce also helps its partners build high-performant and aligned specialty networks, or optimize their existing networks with enhanced access to top-performing specialists. Working with accountable care organizations, value-based primary care, health plans, and health systems, Conduce’s novel approach incentivizes value-based alignment, facilitates care coordination, and ensures timely access to high-quality personalized, and affordable specialty care. Thanks to Conduce Health for supporting HIStalk.

Please complete my quick reader survey, from which I always get ideas for making HIStalk more useful. I’ll post a summary of the results and comments afterward, as I did in the snippet above from a long-ago wrap-up.

Today I learned about the Dead Internet Theory, which claims that most online content is AI-generated, bot-driven, or corporate-controlled to manipulate perception and maximize ad revenue. I would thus propose the Dead Conference Theory, where nobody learns anything at educational conferences because they’re too busy thrusting microphones and cameras at each other, trolling for party invitations, and buffing personal brand.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 20 (Thursday) noon ET. “Enhancing Patient Experience: Digital Accessibility Legal Requirements in Healthcare.” Sponsor: TPGi. Presenters: Mark Miller, director of sales, TPGi; David Sloan, PhD, MSc, chief accessibility officer, TPGi; Kristina Launey, JD, labor and employment litigation and counseling partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP. For patients with disabilities, inaccessible technology can mean the difference between timely, effective care and unmet healthcare needs. This could include accessible patient portals, telehealth services, and payment platforms. Despite a new presidential administration, requirements for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not changed. While enforcement may unclear moving forward, healthcare organizations still have an obligation to their patients for digital accessibility. In our webinar session, TPGi’s accessibility experts and Seyfarth Shaw’s legal professionals will help you understand ACA Section 1557 requirements, its future under the Trump administration, and offer strategies to help you create inclusive experiences.

Live Webinar: March 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “How to Improve Clinical Workflows with AI Chart Summaries and Risk Predictions.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Scott Cullen, MD, senior advisor, Health Data Analytics Institute; David Clain, chief product officer, Health Data Analytics Institute. Learn how the EHR-embedded HDAIAssist tool is transforming the ability of clinicians to pull insights out the mountains of data that have accumulated in the EHR, quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. HDAlAssist, which is part of HealthVision, the intelligent health management system, combines AI chart summaries and granular risk predictions to quickly inform care planning decisions, especially for the most complex, high-risk patients.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Freed raises $30 million in a Series A funding round. Individual licenses for its ambulatory scribing and documentation solution cost $99 per month and the company offers a live online demo and free trial.

Investment firm General Catalyst loses three managing directors as it expands beyond traditional venture capital and considers an IPO. The company manages $32 billion in assets and is moving into non-venture activities such as acquiring the non-profit health system Summa Health for $485 million. 

Sales

• Honor Health chooses Five9 as the cloud contact center provider for the patient access center’s move from its legacy on-premise solution.

People

Columbus Regional Health (IN) promotes Steve Baker, MBA to president and CEO. He joined the health system as chief technology and information officer in 2016 after holding IT leadership roles at other hospitals, including serving as VP/CIO of East Jefferson General Hospital.

Healthlink Advisors promotes Amber Olsen to VP of Epic services.

Announcements and Implementations

Altera Digital Health announces new solutions at HIMSS25 that include ambient documentation for Sunrise, Paragon Denali, and TouchWorks EHR; the Sunrise CarePath patient portal; and Sunrise Health Record HIM solution for integrating unstructured content.

A Vyne Medical survey of 1,000 US adults finds that 29% of experienced prescription delays due to prior authorization, 33% prefer to sign documents that are sent via email or text instead of in person, and 79% have some concerns about using AI to automate healthcare tasks.

Baxter International-owned Voalte announces a voice-activated badge for care teams.

Government and Politics

Florida’s insurance regulator demands that pharmacy benefit managers submit detailed prescription data, including patient names, birth dates, and doctors visited. The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation requested the information in January to verify PBM compliance with a state drug pricing law. However, privacy experts question whether it really needs fully identifiable patient data and why it wants data about prescriptions that were paid for by federal programs such as Medicare.

The VA is planning a reorganization that could cut 80,000 jobs in a White House mandate to return headcount its 2019 level.

Other

The post-HIMSS25 comments on LinkedIn of Innsena CEO Leslie Kirk that she titled “Is HIMSS Back?” resonated with me:

• Everyone has picked a side between ViVE and HIMSS in a rivalry that few care about.
• Hosted buyer programs, where attendees get in free by agreeing to exhibitor sales pitches, add little value since “none of these people are going to buy, and faking a warm lead is dumb.”’
• New executive attendees at HIMSS25 enjoyed the parties but found the conference overwhelming and too time-consuming to prepare for, with most planning to opt for smaller events instead.
• The exhibit hall layout, divided by a sky bridge, likely hurt booth traffic for companies positioned on the far side.

Meanwhile, HIMSS25 attendees, send me your thoughts – best part, worst part, trends that changed since HIMSS24, the impact of not having federal employees involved, and the good rumors or scandalous gossip that your heard.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders staff work with United Way of Southern Maine to prepare food for distribution through school pantry programs.
• Altera Digital Health publishes a new client story, “Phoenix Children’s Hospital extends its reach of care with Altera Digital Health.”
• FinThrive publishes a new case study, “How a Large Massachusetts Health System Streamlined EHR Consolidation and Claims Management.”
• Health Data Movers names Aimee Steel (Nordic) recruiter and Abbi Haering (TEKsystems) account manager.
• Healthcare Growth Partners advises Compliatric on its sale to Ntracts.

Blog Posts

• Tackling Clinician Burnout (Medicomp Systems)
• Integrated Social Care Data: The Key to Unlocking Community Health (Findhelp)
• Looking for a Healthcare RCM Automation Vendor? Start Your Search with These Top Questions. (FinThrive)
• The State of IT Staffing in Healthcare: Trends for 2025 (HCTec)
• The Future of Healthcare Security: Understanding the Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) that Would Make Significant Changes to HIPAA (Impact Advisors)
• How Meditech is making AI work in healthcare: Practical applications and key lessons (Meditech)
• Could IT Co-Management Solve Your “Great Resignation” Woes? (Med Tech Solutions)
• Risk Adjustment: How to ensure fair compensation for payers and providers (Navina)

Contacts

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

News 3/5/25

Top News

Clearlake Capital acquires a majority stake in specialty-focused health IT vendor ModMed from Warburg Pincus in a deal that values the company at $5.3 billion.

Warburg Pincus first invested in ModMed eight years ago and considered selling its stake in 2022, the same year in which the vendor paid $45 million to settle a 2017 whistleblower lawsuit.

Reader Comments

From Joyful Noise: “Re: HIMSS25. Hal Wolf reports 28,600 in attendance, 11,000 of them non-vendors.”

From Dr. Anton Phibes: “Re: health stations. Here we go again. Is anybody making money off these or improve patient access or care?” Predictmedix AI launches Smart Health AI Stations for the US market, hiring an outside marketing firm to sell devices that don’t yet exist while hoping to generate interest in demos of the 10 units it apparently hasn’t yet built (thus no photos, even a mock-up). The company seems too busy to post product details — or even its own press release — on its website. Its marketing partner, best known for car fleet management, has also dabbled in COVID-19 disinfection tech and pharmacogenomic testing for seniors. The market has repeatedly expressed its lack of interest in these health telephone booths, even when sold by companies with far better odds than this one.

From No HIMSS For Me: “Re: HIMSS25. The federal government has cancelled all travel, and by extension, participation in HIMSS. This follows the abrupt ‘retirement’ of the DHA director that was announced the same day.” Army Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, MD, MPH, MS, the top official in the Defense Health Agency, retired (reportedly not voluntarily) after 32 years in Army Medicine. She oversaw the MHS Genesis rollout.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Please take a couple of minutes to fill out my anonymous HIStalk Reader Survey. It’s the only way I can understand my audience, plus I always get good content ideas from the ideas of respondents.

Get in touch: become a sponsor, receive email updates, or contact Mr. H.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 20 (Thursday) noon ET. “Enhancing Patient Experience: Digital Accessibility Legal Requirements in Healthcare.” Sponsor: TPGi. Presenters: Mark Miller, director of sales, TPGi; David Sloan, PhD, MSc, chief accessibility officer, TPGi; Kristina Launey, JD, labor and employment litigation and counseling partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP. For patients with disabilities, inaccessible technology can mean the difference between timely, effective care and unmet healthcare needs. This could include accessible patient portals, telehealth services, and payment platforms. Despite a new presidential administration, requirements for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not changed. While enforcement may unclear moving forward, healthcare organizations still have an obligation to their patients for digital accessibility. In our webinar session, TPGi’s accessibility experts and Seyfarth Shaw’s legal professionals will help you understand ACA Section 1557 requirements, its future under the Trump administration, and offer strategies to help you create inclusive experiences.

Live Webinar: March 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “How to Improve Clinical Workflows with AI Chart Summaries and Risk Predictions.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenter Scott Cullen, MD, senior advisor, Health Data Analytics Institute. Learn how the EHR-embedded HDAIAssist tool is transforming the ability of clinicians to pull insights out the mountains of data that have accumulated in the EHR, quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. HDAlAssist, which is part of HealthVision, the intelligent health management system, combines AI chart summaries and granular risk predictions to quickly inform care planning decisions, especially for the most complex, high-risk patients.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The board of 23andMe rejects the take-private proposal of CEO Anne Wojcicki, who had reduced her proposed price from last month by 84%. Shares dropped hard on the news,taking the company’s market cap down to $37 million.

CareCloud acquires Mesa Billing as it restarts its acquisition strategy for aggressive expansion.

Sales

• Summa Health (OH) will adopt Clearsense’s 1Clearsense data-enablement platform.
• League will add longitudinal patient data from Arcadia to its healthcare consumer experience platform.
• Signature Healthcare (MA) selects Health Catalyst’s Ignite data and analytics software.
• LucidHealth (OH) will replace its legacy PACS system with Visage Imaging’s Visage 7 Enterprise Imaging Platform.
• Suki will incorporate Wolters Kluwer Health’s UpToDate clinical decision support capabilities into its ambient clinical documentation assistant.
• Emory Healthcare chooses Atropos Health to generate evidence from real-world data.

People

Ellkay promotes President Ajay Kapare, MBA to the additional role of CEO.

Volpara Health Chief Customer and Financial Officer Craig Hadfield will become CEO April 1.

Dan Zamansky, MBA (Amazon) joins Amwell as chief product and technology officer.

EHealth Technologies names Ken Wolf as chief commercial officer.

DirectTrust names Lisa Nelson, MS, MBA (ADVault) chief technical officer.

Inovalon names Adam Kansler, JD (S&P Global) CEO.

HHS/ASTP appoints Steven Posnack, MS, MHS as acting head of ASTP/ONC.

Augusta Health (VA) promotes Leigh Williams, MHIIM to VP/CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Beginning next week, NYU Langone Health patients will be able to verify their identity upon check-in using Amazon One palm-scanning technology integrated with the hospital’s Epic software. The health system is the first healthcare organization to deploy the technology. It plans to implement the feature across its facilities by the end of the year.

Harmony Healthcare IT announces GA of ClearWay, an AI-based solution that automates the abstraction and submission of clinical registry data.

Microsoft launches Microsoft Dragon Copilot, a clinical workflow assistant that combines the capabilities of Dragon Medical One and DAX Copilot. Capabilities include ambient note creation, AI-powered medical information searches, and automation of tasks such as referral letters and after-visit summaries.

Stryker announces a badge communication device for care team members. The company acquired Vocera for $3 billion in early 2022.

Emory Healthcare (GA) pilots Atropos Health’s evidence-generation platform as part of a new clinical decision-making tool.

AvaSure launches Virtual Care Assistant, which receives and routes inpatient requests for assistance.

Cisco will integrate Webex Contact Center with Epic.

InterSystems launches IntelliCare, which brings AI capabilities to its TrakCare EHR that is sold outside the US.

Government and Politics

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health (ARPA-H) selects Planned Systems International to support the design of a new electric vehicle-based care delivery platform that incorporate networked medical devices and virtual care capabilities to improve healthcare access for rural patients.

Sponsor Updates

• Waystar launches Auth Accelerate to automate the authorization submission process.
• CliniComp wins a Platinum Pinnacle Award in the trailblazer in healthcare technology category.
• Meditech introduces new intelligent workflows to its Traverse Exchange interoperability network.
• A new FinThrive survey highlights the top three actions that healthcare organizations are taking in light of an escalation in industry cyberattacks.
• Symplr launches its SymplrAI Evidence Analysis chatbot as a part of its new Operations Platform.
• Frost & Sullivan honors DrFirst with its Enabling Technology Leadership Award.
• Meditech collaborates with Google Cloud to bring the latest advancements in multimodal AI to its Expanse EHR.
• Surescripts publishes its “2024 Annual Impact Report,” noting that it exchanged patient clinical and benefit information 27.2 billion times, a 14.2% increase over the prior year.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Medicare Star Ratings: Updates, How Judi Helps, and More, with Angela Kalantarova, PharmD.”
• Philips Capsule Surveillance wins a User Experience Design – IF Design Award.
• Clearwater will sponsor McDermott Will & Emery’s HPE Miami 2025 March 5-6.
• CloudWave announces it is using Google Security Operations to enhance its managed Cybersecurity as a Service and Medical Device Security offerings.
• Elsevier announces enhancements to ClinicalKey AI clinical decision support solution, including new integrations with Epic and DrFirst’s IPrescribe software.

Blog Posts

• Why Integrated Reporting Is a Game-Changer for Small Hospitals and Rural Providers (Tegria)
• Meditech Expanse Oncology: How to Enable Personalized Care (CereCore)
• Agfa HealthCare Achieves Triple KLAS Wins and Excels in PACS Radiology & Cardiology Ratings in USA! (Agfa HealthCare)
• Embracing the Future State of AI and Automation in Revenue Cycle Management (AGS Health)
• Digital systems underpinning NHS transformation: The role of electronic patient records (Altera Digital Health)
• Effective Patient Scheduling: Techniques to Improve Engagement and Prevent Readmissions (Artera)
• What We’re Looking Forward to at HIMSS25 (Dimensional Insight)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/3/25

Top News

Ireland’s Health Service Executive launches a health app that allows patients maintain a medical list, store health-related ID cards, access vaccination records, and search for HSE services.

Planned enhancements for this year include appointment scheduling and checking referrals and wait times.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The majority of poll respondents say that prescribers, regardless of the terms under which they earn a telehealth paycheck, are most to blame for irresponsible prescribing. I’m finishing the Pulitzer-winning novel “Demon Copperhead” and its depiction of opioid overprescribing and harm in Appalachia – not to mention that of the foster care system – supports the “people suck” argument.

New poll to your right or here: Which of the following items did you earn after age 35 that has been most valuable in your career? It’s perfectly fine to choose the “N/A” option if you didn’t earn one of the listed choices. I’ll run a variation next week titled, “Which of your credentials has provided the least career benefit relative to the time and effort required?”

It’s HIMSS25 week, where the official tagline of “where visionaries unite to revolutionize healthcare” translates to “I would stay home if it wasn’t for the parties and personal networking that my employer pays for;” AI will once again fix everything; and meaningful improvements in cost and outcomes are, like “free beer tomorrow,” always a year away. Attendees, half of whom will be hosting or guesting in a podcast or video, will see highs in the low 60s, lows in the mid-40s, and zero rain (because, desert). Peruse my guide for HIStalk sponsor presentations, parties, and private meeting options. Last year’s event pulled in 26,800 registrants and 971 exhibitors, and my rough exhibitor count for HIMSS25 is 940. I wish you safe travels and achievement of whatever HIMSS25 goals you are pursuing.

Expect a minimal dribble of news items Monday (and now, in fact) as vendors sit on their announcements until the HIMSS exhibit hall opens on Tuesday.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 4 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Securing a competitive edge in value-based care with AI: Data-driven strategies for enhancing returns across MA, ACO and Commercial programs.” Sponsors: Navina, AMGA. Presenters: Dana McCalley, MBA, VP of value-based care, Navina; Ron Rockwood, executive director of value-based care, Jefferson City Medical Group; Jonathan Meyers, CEO, Seldon Health Advisors. As value-based care models evolve, healthcare organizations must leverage AI to stay competitive and drive better financial and clinical outcomes. This webinar offers data-driven strategies for improving risk adjustment accuracy, optimizing risk stratification, and streamlining clinical and administrative workflows. You’ll walk away with proven techniques for measuring and quantifying the impact of your value-based care initiatives across your organization

Live Webinar: March 20 (Thursday) noon ET. “Enhancing Patient Experience: Digital Accessibility Legal Requirements in Healthcare.” Sponsor: TPGi. Presenters: Mark Miller, director of sales, TPGi; David Sloan, PhD, MSc, chief accessibility officer, TPGi; Kristina Launey, JD, labor and employment litigation and counseling partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP. For patients with disabilities, inaccessible technology can mean the difference between timely, effective care and unmet healthcare needs. This could include accessible patient portals, telehealth services, and payment platforms. Despite a new presidential administration, requirements for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not changed. While enforcement may unclear moving forward, healthcare organizations still have an obligation to their patients for digital accessibility. In our webinar session, TPGi’s accessibility experts and Seyfarth Shaw’s legal professionals will help you understand ACA Section 1557 requirements, its future under the Trump administration, and offer strategies to help you create inclusive experiences.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Microsoft will retire Skype in May. Skype users can log in to Microsoft Teams for free using their Skype login, which will import their Skype chats and contacts. Skype usage peaked in 2016 with 300 million users, but 90% of those have since moved on. Hopefully the Teams switchover will be smooth for any remaining providers who have been using Skype to deliver virtual visits.

Sales

• AdventHealth will implement Hellocare.ai for in-room virtual care.
• Alaska Behavioral Health chooses Netsmart CareFabric and will adopt its Bells AI ambient documentation solution.

People

Jackson Hospital and Clinic (AL), which filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, names Maureen Gaffney , DHSc, MS, RN (Gaffney Consulting Group) as CIO.

SureTest promotes Phillip Furukawa to chief revenue officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Epic will hold a one-day Open@Epic conference on its Verona campus on September 25. Anyone who wants to connect an app or service to Epic is invited. Sessions will cover FHIR, standards, and an overview of Epic’s interoperability programs and roadmap.

HIMSS recognizes Mednition’s KATE AI’s nurse-empowering patient flow solution as “Best in Show” in its hospital capacity innovation challenge.

Preventive health and diagnostics clinic Biograph launches, offering a range of diagnostic and longevity-focused tests. Core members pay $7,500 annually for lipid testing, body composition analysis, hereditary screenings, and neurocognitive assessments. The $15,000 Black membership adds dementia risk assessment, sleep apnea screening, coronary angiography, and personalized exercise and nutrition coaching.

Salesforce announces pre-built healthcare AI agents that include provider search and scheduling, care coordination, benefits verification, and customer service.

Privacy and Security

Canada’s Island Health is investigating an hour-long outage of its Oracle Health-hosted EHR on Tuesday. Oracle Health was recently named in a leaked chat log of a Russian ransomware hacker group.

Other

Hospital ED doctors tell a San Francisco man who had been in a biking accident that he needs to be checked out by a trauma center, which requires a six-mile ambulance ride. Trauma doctors found no need for further treatment and sent him home. He was billed $13,000 for the out-of-network ride from AMR, which is owned by a private equity-backed parent company that runs ambulance, fire, and air transport services. Complaints and media attention led to his share of the cost being waived, but the article notes that the federal No Surprises Act excludes ground ambulances.

Sponsor Updates

• Inovalon announces that its Patient Payment Management and Patient Statement Management solutions are now available on the PointClickCare Marketplace.
• Nym becomes a sponsor of the Tennessee Health Information Management Association.
• Optimum Healthcare IT expands its CareerPath program into Canada.
• Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the Back Door” podcast titled “The final logoff: Streamlining secure departures.”
• Rhapsody secures HITRUST e1 certification.
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company, offers a new e-book, “Why Tokenization is Essential for Protecting Patient Payment Information.”
• Waystar will exhibit at Experity Urgent Care Connect March 3-6 in Louisville.

Blog Posts

• What the Trump Administration will mean for health policy (Altera Digital Health)
• Why strong clinical governance is essential for successful digital health transformation (Nordic)
• Clinical Perspectives Part Two: Centralized Scheduling Enhances Care Team Coordination (QGenda)
• HIMSS 2025 preview: How Redox + Microsoft are powering AI solutions with real-time streaming (Redox)
• Nurses’ Corner: 6 ways to improve staff adoption (Sonifi Health)
• AI in Healthcare: Streamlining Operations & Reducing Costs (Symplr)
• Key Takeaways From ViVE 2025 (Tegria)

Contacts

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

News 2/28/25

Top News

A White House executive order requires hospitals to publish their actual prices for 300 shoppable services online. A similar order that was issued by the Trump administration in 2019 has been largely ignored.

The Secretaries of Treasury, Labor, and HHS are tasked with enforcing compliance.

The White House projects up to $80 billion in healthcare savings and cites a report that suggests that price transparency could lower employer costs by 27% for 500 common healthcare services.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Please support HIStalk’s sponsors at HIMSS25 by exploring their activities and connecting with them if you’re interested.

I might be the only person who finds it grating when someone writes “Vegas” instead of the city’s actual name. Maybe they’re from Diego or Angeles. 

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 4 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Securing a competitive edge in value-based care with AI: Data-driven strategies for enhancing returns across MA, ACO and Commercial programs.” Sponsors: Navina, AMGA. Presenters: Dana McCalley, MBA, VP of value-based care, Navina; Ron Rockwood, executive director of value-based care, Jefferson City Medical Group; Jonathan Meyers, CEO, Seldon Health Advisors. As value-based care models evolve, healthcare organizations must leverage AI to stay competitive and drive better financial and clinical outcomes. This webinar offers data-driven strategies for improving risk adjustment accuracy, optimizing risk stratification, and streamlining clinical and administrative workflows. You’ll walk away with proven techniques for measuring and quantifying the impact of your value-based care initiatives across your organization

Live Webinar: March 20 (Thursday) noon ET. “Enhancing Patient Experience: Digital Accessibility Legal Requirements in Healthcare.” Sponsor: TPGi. Presenters: Mark Miller, director of sales, TPGi; David Sloan, PhD, MSc, chief accessibility officer, TPGi; Kristina Launey, JD, labor and employment litigation and counseling partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP. For patients with disabilities, inaccessible technology can mean the difference between timely, effective care and unmet healthcare needs. This could include accessible patient portals, telehealth services, and payment platforms. Despite a new presidential administration, requirements for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not changed. While enforcement may unclear moving forward, healthcare organizations still have an obligation to their patients for digital accessibility. In our webinar session, TPGi’s accessibility experts and Seyfarth Shaw’s legal professionals will help you understand ACA Section 1557 requirements, its future under the Trump administration, and offer strategies to help you create inclusive experiences.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Teladoc Health reports Q4 results: revenue down 1%, EPS -$0.28 vs. -$0.17, meeting revenue expectations but missing on earnings. BetterHelp segment revenue dropped 10% year-over-year. Shares plunged Wednesday and Thursday on the results and lowered revenue guidance. TDOC shares are down 38% over the past 12 months, valuing the company at $1.6 billion. From the earnings call:

• The company added 4 million members and increased visit volumes by 6% in 2024.
• It will launch technology that will enable external partners to integrate with its data to support longitudinal care.
• BetterHelp stabilized its number of paying users, but revenue per user declined due to lower international pricing.
• Health plan sales have slowed due to the upcoming end of Affordable Care Act subsidies, uncertainty about Medicaid expansion, and inflation.
• Weight management remains a growth driver, but employers are still defining their GLP-1 strategies and working to capture the rebates that typically go to pharmacy benefit managers.
• BetterHelp is a variable margin business, so revenue growth is key to maintaining economy of scale.

SimCare AI, which creates AI patients for clinician training, raises $2 million in seed funding. Use cases include residency training, practicing social work interventions, and testing job applicants.

Bias Capital cancels its $25 million Series A investment in EHR vendor Parker Health after its due diligence raises concerns of fraud. The investment was announced in July 2023.

A study finds that cancer care quality declined after HCA acquired Mission Health in Asheville, NC. Under HCA, the hospital has faced staffing shortages, inadequate resources, and poor management, leading to service cutbacks. All of its oncologists resigned, the oncology pharmacy closed, and a local oncology group stopped using the hospital for inpatient therapy due to understaffing, lab delays, and a lack of chemotherapy-trained pharmacists. The lead author states, “In the view of many observers, HCA aims to maximize profits while maintaining quality just high enough to avoid legal and regulatory issues and retain business.”

Sales

• New Mexico Health Care Authority chooses Findhelp for its rollout of a statewide social care closed loop referral system
• Inova Health selects Abridge for ambient documentation.
• Sacramento County Department of Health Services will launch Sacramento Health Connect, powered by Innovaccer’s GHAAP.

People

Wolters Kluwer Health CEO Stacey Caywood, MBA will succeed Wolters Kluwer CEO Nancy McKinstry when she retires in February 2026. The health division provides software and information solutions as part of its $6 billion parent.

Medlogix hires Alan Horton as chief growth officer.

Connexall names interim CEO Sandy Saggar to the permanent position.

Karen Thomas-Smith (Parata Systems) joins Arcadia as chief marketing officer.

Announcements and Implementations

CliniComp introduces Intrinsic AI, which adds clinician-centric workflow tools to its cloud-based New Era EHR solution suite.

Meditech announces the Expanse Outreach Portal, which enables hospitals to connect with nursing homes, urgent care centers, and medical practices that use the hospital’s lab service.

MassHealth launches a statewide solution to expedite psychiatric inpatient admissions using PointClickCare’s platform.

Inbox Health launches a support service that it says resolves 90% of patient billing inquiries with a 95% satisfaction rate.

China-based Ping An Good Doctor will provide 24×7 health consultations using an AI-driven digital avatars. Its Renowned Doctor AI Medical Assistant was trained on the company’s own medical databases, with additional resources and tuning provided by the doctor that the avatar represents. The company says that the tool improves family doctor efficiency by 30%.

Government and Politics

Stat confirms an HIStalk reader’s previous report that federal officials won’t be attending HIMSS25 due to a travel freeze.

The US military successfully tests treating deployed sailors through video virtual visits, although network latency remains a challenge.

The FDA reinstates an unspecified number of employees who oversee medical device safety and AI software just days after their termination under the White House’s DOGE program. Lawmakers and trade groups had warned that the layoffs could create a backlog of medical device reviews and disrupt the medical supply chain. Many of the affected employees were funded by manufacturer fees rather than taxpayer dollars.

Former VA Secretary David Shulkin, MD calls for a relaunch of the VA’s Oracle Health implementation with these principles:

• Use the updated software instance.
• Set clear goals and timelines at each site.
• Accelerate deployment, as only six of 164 sites are live.
• Limit change orders, given the 1,800 requests filed in the current instance, as noted in a GAO report.
• Update the project budget and hold leaders accountable to it.
• Thoroughly test pharmacy, referral, and behavioral health modules to ensure veteran safety.

In England, a 30-year-old NHS supply chain system that was originally provided by ISoft (now CSC) is found to have caused shipping delays in 2024 due to 35 high-priority computer alerts.

In Canada, Alberta’s health minister is challenged for firing Penny Rae, the CIO of Alberta Health Services amidst a provincial government healthcare restructuring.

Other

A Nebraska father struggles to get authorities to correct the birth record name of his daughter, to whom a hospital assigned a temporary name of Unakite Thirteen Hotel that was never updated. He learned that he was the father of an abandoned two-year-old girl, gained custody, and named her Caroline. Then he found that her birth record was wrong, she hadn’t been issued a Social Security number, and her birth certificate is unusable because it was stamped “for government use only.”

Sponsor Updates

• Frederick Health launches precision medicine integration between Meditech’s Expanse Genomics and GenomOncology’s Precision Oncology, which will provide clinicians with enhanced decision support. 
• Arcadia, Inovalon, InterSystems, Ellkay, Linus Health, MRO, and Navina will exhibit at RISE National 2025 March 11-14 in San Antonio.
• Black Book Research releases its 2025 rankings of top-rated vendors in population health and value-based care solutions, giving top marks to Elsevier (patient education) and Inovalon (population health reporting, analytics and benchmarking for payers and employers).
• WellSky drives momentum with new innovations and breakthrough growth in 2024.
• ServiceNow recognizes Optimum Healthcare IT as its partner of the year.
• Impact Advisors releases a new episode of the “Impactful AI” podcast, titled “Escaping Pilot Purgatory.”
• The Medicomp Systems “Tell Me Where It Hurts” podcast features Altera Digital Health VP of Policy and Public Affairs Leigh Burchell.

Blog Posts

• Karen Dierker Ranks Among the Top 50 Women Leaders in Healthcare Technology (Capital Rx)
• HIMSS25: Our thoughts before the global conference (Altera Digital Health)
• 5 Lessons Learned from the 2024 Healthcare Cyberattack, One Year Later (Availity)
• Enhancing clinical excellence at Midland Health (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Transfer DRGs 101 (FinThrive)
• Workday Accounting Center: What Every Healthcare CFO Needs to Know (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Boost patient collections, improve patient relations with an early out billing cycle (Inbox Health)
• Cracking the Code to Patient Safety Structural Measures: A Strategic Approach to Compliance (Inovalon)
• How healthcare practices can empower care partners to improve cognitive outcomes (Linus Health)

Contacts

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

News 2/26/25

Top News

Lawmakers warn the VA of their concerns about its Oracle Health implementation in a House hearing:

• An independent analysis predicted a total project cost of $50 billion, but that was before program changes and delays that warrant producing a new estimate.
• Recent staffing cuts that were mandated by the White House included the firing of eight probationary employees of the EHR modernization project and the resignation of another 16 under the deferred resignation program.
• The Oracle Health contract expires in May 2028, but its system is live in just six VA facilities with 164 to go, and go-lives won’t be started until mid-2026. The VA acknowledges that it won’t be finished by the contract’s end.
• Oracle Health EVP/GM Seema Verma stressed that “The totality of updates, enhancements, investments, and innovations to the EHR show that this is a dramatically improved system from what was originally deployed in Spokane in 2020.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Thanks to long-time HIStalk sponsor AGS Health and CEO Patrice Wolfe for stepping up as a Founding Sponsor. Those coveted Founding slots, which are limited to two, have become available only 2-3 times over many years, and only when one of those sponsors was acquired. Here’s a refresher on what the company does:

AGS Health is more than a revenue cycle management company — we’re a strategic partner for growth. Our distinctive methodology blends intelligent automation with award-winning RCM services and high-touch customer support to deliver peak end-to-end revenue cycle performance and an empowering patient financial experience. We employ a team of 13,000 highly trained and college-educated RCM experts who directly support more than 150 customers spanning a variety of care settings and specialties, including nearly 50% of the 20 most prominent U.S. hospitals and 40% of the nation’s 10 largest health systems. Our thoughtfully crafted RCM solutions deliver measurable revenue growth and retention, enabling customers to achieve the revenue to realize their vision.

We’ve been longtime Costco members, but I kept hearing about Sam’s Club’s superior technology and its stress-free, line-free shopping, and unlike Costco, an app and website that allow checking prices and inventory levels. In my first Sam’s trip this week, I used Scan and Go to ring myself up, paid instantly, and then bypassed checkout entirely and just sauntered out the door as AI-powered cameras verified my cart. No waiting in line to pay, no door-check bottleneck. I can see making a quick stop at Sam’s for just a handful of items, whereas the cupboard has to be pretty bare to be worth Costco trip anxiety. I’ll keep both memberships since Sam’s wins on prices, store layout, and produce, but Costco still leads on clothes, wine, and regular rollout of new items that I don’t need.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 4 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Securing a competitive edge in value-based care with AI: Data-driven strategies for enhancing returns across MA, ACO and Commercial programs.” Sponsors: Navina, AMGA. Presenters: Dana McCalley, MBA, VP of value-based care, Navina; Ron Rockwood, executive director of value-based care, Jefferson City Medical Group; Jonathan Meyers, CEO, Seldon Health Advisors. As value-based care models evolve, healthcare organizations must leverage AI to stay competitive and drive better financial and clinical outcomes. This webinar offers data-driven strategies for improving risk adjustment accuracy, optimizing risk stratification, and streamlining clinical and administrative workflows. You’ll walk away with proven techniques for measuring and quantifying the impact of your value-based care initiatives across your organization

Live Webinar: March 20 (Thursday) noon ET. “Enhancing Patient Experience: Digital Accessibility Legal Requirements in Healthcare.” Sponsor: TPGi. Presenters: Mark Miller, director of sales, TPGi; David Sloan, PhD, MSc, chief accessibility officer, TPGi; Kristina Launey, JD, labor and employment litigation and counseling partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP. For patients with disabilities, inaccessible technology can mean the difference between timely, effective care and unmet healthcare needs. This could include accessible patient portals, telehealth services, and payment platforms. Despite a new presidential administration, requirements for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not changed. While enforcement may unclear moving forward, healthcare organizations still have an obligation to their patients for digital accessibility. In our webinar session, TPGi’s accessibility experts and Seyfarth Shaw’s legal professionals will help you understand ACA Section 1557 requirements, its future under the Trump administration, and offer strategies to help you create inclusive experiences.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

OpenEvidence, which offers a clinical decision support chatbot for providers, announces $75 million in funding at a $1 billion valuation. It recently signed a content agreement with The New England Journal of Medicine.

EXA Capital acquires human services-focused EHR and care management software vendor PrecisionCare.

Clinical documentation software company Retrieve Medical will acquire Curatus, which specializes in AI-powered provider data management.

HealthStream reports Q4 results: revenue up 5.2%, EPS $0.16 versus $0.15. HSTM shares have gained 24% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $1 billion.

Sales

• Mass General Brigham (MA) will implement the Philips Capsule Medical Device Information Platform, Philips Clinical Insights Manager, and Philips Capsule Surveillance technologies.
• Hartford HealthCare (CT) will use K Health’s agentic AI-based virtual primary care software to power its new HHC 24/7 virtual care service.
• ECU Health (NC) selects Pep Health’s patient experience analysis software.

People

Eric Talbot, MBA (MedFuse) joins CheckedUp as chief data and analytics officer.

Troy Tazbaz, the former director of the FDA’s Digital Health Center of Excellence, returns to Oracle as SVP of data center planning – corporate development.

Guidehouse names Erik Barnett and Brian Smit (R1 RCM) partners in its health and managed services practices, respectively.

MGMA hires Julia Rosen, MBA (Pera Healthcare) as SVP of IT.

Jeff Surges (RLDatix) joins Brighton Park Capital as partner.

Eve Cunningham, MD, MBA (Providence) joins Cadence as chief medical officer.

Clinical Architecture names Laura Nixon, MBA (Nixon Strategic Consulting) as VP of interoperability solutions.

Announcements and Implementations

MyMichigan Health implements QGenda’s provider credentialing software.

Corti adds Wolters Kluwer Health’s UpToDate clinical decision support content to its AI-powered Assistant app for clinicians.

Lumeris announces GA of Tom, an AI-powered clinical workflow tool for primary care.

Ray County Hospital and Healthcare (MO) works with OCHIN to replace CPSI (now TruBridge) and EPowerDoc with Epic.

Altera Digital Health integrates Medicomp’s Quippe AI engine with its TouchWorks EHR. Medicomp also releases Quippe Alchemy that applies AI to problem list cleanup.

Inovalon launches an AI-powered, EHR-integrate clinical trials recruitment tool.

Government and Politics

The White House says that former health tech executive Amy Gleason is serving as acting administrator of Elon Musk’s DOGE cost reduction program.

Privacy and Security

Malware researchers find that a China-based hacker group is disguising its malware as a Philips DICOM viewer.

Other

Technical.ly profiles the University of Maryland Medical System’s AI-powered remote fetal monitoring program, which launched last year using technology from PeriGen. Sixteen nurses work at the Neonatal Outcomes Impacted by Escalation Safety Telemetry (NEST) center, monitoring labor and deliveries across seven hospitals in real time. Nurse Manager Christine Haas, RN points out that the nurses have often been quicker to catch abnormalities than the AI: “This program is fundamentally the nurses’ brains with the AI counterpart, just really sort of being a reinforcement and a help for them.”

Sponsor Updates

• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Pharmacy Benefits 101: Stop-Loss Insurance, with Mike Miele, FSA, MAAA.”
• Agfa HealthCare announces that several hospitals within the Osakidetza Basque Country healthcare network in Spain have successfully transitioned to its Enterprise Imaging for radiology and molecular imaging.
• Philips Capsule participates in the IHE North America Connectathon 2025 in Toronto.
• CloudWave publishes a new guide titled “The Strategic Value of Managed Cloud Services in Healthcare.”

Black Book Research’s list of top, physician-rated health IT for rural and critical access providers includes the following HIStalk sponsors:

• TruBridge and Meditech Expanse – rural and CAH inpatient EHRs
• Redox – rural healthcare interoperability and HIE vendors
• Inovalon – population health, rural healthcare management, quality and safety solutions

Blog Posts

• Celebrating 15 years of innovation and impact in healthcare (Nordic)
• How to Transform Patient Scheduling: 7 MEDITECH 2.2 Features (CereCore)
• Pharmacy Benefits 101: Building an Award-Winning Call Center from Scratch (Capital Rx)
• HIPAA is More Than Keeping Medical Records Secure (AdvancedMD)
• Agfa HealthCare Shines at ViVE 2025 with Incredible KLAS Triple-Award Win (Agfa HealthCare)
• 2025 New CPT Codes to Capture Evaluation and Management Telemedicine Services (AGS Health)
• EHR System Speed and Reliability – The Foundation for EHR Success (Goliath Technologies)
• Advancing interoperability: Altera at the IHE North America Connectathon (Altera Digital Health)
• 3 actionable steps to turn healthcare data into action (Arcadia)
• Inside Healthcare’s Cybersecurity Battle: A Q&A with Availity’s CISO (Availity)
• Managed services in healthcare: Balancing efficiency, stability, and growth (Cardamom)
• 8 Easy Ways to Prepare for an OCR HIPAA Compliance Audit (Clearwater)
• The Growing Importance of Population Health in 2025 (Direct Recruiters)
• Wintry Weather Can’t Dampen the Vibe at ViVE 2025 (DrFirst)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 2/24/25

Top News

A short-selling investment firm claims that mental health therapists in Teladoc Health’s BetterHelp business are using ChatGPT to respond to patients during therapy sessions without the patient’s knowledge.

Some BetterHelp therapists who were confronted by their patients admitted that they use AI tools because of heavy workloads and company bonuses that are tied to the number of words that a therapist types.

TDOC shares dropped 9% on Friday. They have lost 24% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $2 billion.

Teladoc Health paid $4.5 million in 2015 to acquire BetterHelp, which generates $1 billion in annual revenue, representing up to 40% of Teladoc Health’s total revenue. However, declining BetterHealth revenue caused Teladoc to take a $790 million impairment charge in mid-2024.

Reader Comments

From Placater: “Re: agentic AI. What does that even mean and why should I care?” AI began as a simple chatbot that answered user questions, sometimes even correctly. Over time, it improved by learning to analyze, correct its mistakes, and respond based on context to please its master. We’re now at agentic AI, which can take keyboard actions like placing an Amazon order or prescribing medication. This is the step that will start killing jobs, although software developers were already ripe for reduction by the last phase. The next short step is AI-powered robots performing human-like tasks, which is really just another output of agentic AI that is limited more by robotics maturity than AI itself. Self-driving cars already showcase AI’s ability to make better decisions than distracted human drivers. With each leap, fewer people benefit — while tools like ChatGPT help the masses, only industry titans and their investors will gain when robots replace human workers.

From Monetary Magnet: “Re: health tech conferences. I’m thinking about attending HIMSS next year as a frustrated patient. Will software vendors listen, or am I wasting my time? Didn’t you sponsor several patient advocates to attend HIMSS years ago?” I did, but that experience didn’t encourage me to repeat it. Reasons:

• Health tech vendors create products that the market wants, and that market isn’t patients. Consumers don’t see 99% of the available software and their complaints usually relate to how it is used, not how it was designed.
• Software vendors can’t fix the problems that are inherent with our dysfunctional US healthcare system. I eat at restaurants occasionally, but I would add zero value by attending a restaurant software convention. That’s a cleaned up version of my initial cynical healthcare thought, which is that having patients at health tech conferences would be like inviting livestock to attend a slaughterhouse software convention (that came to mind because I have a friend who is an executive in exactly that business).
• Healthcare is not a retail market. Patients aren’t the ones paying and often don’t have a say in major decisions that affect them as a result.
• Conferences like HIMSS and ViVE are designed for industry experts, and any patient representation is likely symbolic at best or tokenistic at worst. Their emotional keynote anecdotes get us all worked up, but we walk out of the conference room with nothing actionable.
• It’s easy for patient advocates to become overwhelmed by conference parties and booth giveaways. A lack of relevant education sessions would probably leave them to wander the exhibit hall.
• Healthcare is fragmented by geography, demographics, provider choices, and medical needs. A single patient’s experience and viewpoint don’t necessarily represent that diversity.
• Vendor input on patient needs is more effectively gathered from their provider customers who write the checks. Those providers should be talking with their patients / customers and choosing software that supports whatever strategies the providers choose. Blame providers for bad patient experience.
• The bottom line is that we’re all patients, just not at the same time, but what we think as patients doesn’t necessarily move markets. Change would need to come from providers, politicians, insurers, and life sciences firms that are pretty happy with the profitable status quo. Patients might better invest their time by engaging with people from those organizations.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Three-fourths of poll respondents don’t believe that their job performance can be entirely measured by objective metrics. Question: if that’s the case, what is your boss using instead, especially if you work remotely? I assume subjective criteria such as peer feedback, customer satisfaction, and the maddeningly vague areas of responsiveness, collaboration, problem-solving, and worth ethic, all of which might be heavily influenced by likeability or brown-nosability.

New poll to your right or here: Who is most responsible when a telehealth company regularly prescribes drugs that patients want in the absence of clear medical need? I admit that I don’t understand why companies are punished for fraud, opioid overuse, and prescribing without adequate clinical due diligence, but the clinicians who actually generated those prescriptions for cash aren’t even named, much less punished. Would you as a patient want to know that your doctor has willingly agreed to rent their license to the highest bidder? The concept probably extends to health systems – aren’t doctors supposed to represent the best interest of the patient rather than of their corporate bosses?

I’m testing a weekly, 60-second LinkedIn carousel that lists my picks of the week’s most important health tech news stories for the TL;DR types. I’ll post a new one each Wednesday morning to see how it goes.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: March 20 (Thursday) noon ET. “Enhancing Patient Experience: Digital Accessibility Legal Requirements in Healthcare.” Sponsor: TPGi. Presenters: Mark Miller, director of sales, TPGi; David Sloan, PhD, MSc, chief accessibility officer, TPGi; Kristina Launey, JD, labor and employment litigation and counseling partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP. For patients with disabilities, inaccessible technology can mean the difference between timely, effective care and unmet healthcare needs. This could include accessible patient portals, telehealth services, and payment platforms. Despite a new presidential administration, requirements for Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not changed. While enforcement may unclear moving forward, healthcare organizations still have an obligation to their patients for digital accessibility. In our webinar session, TPGi’s accessibility experts and Seyfarth Shaw’s legal professionals will help you understand ACA Section 1557 requirements, its future under the Trump administration, and offer strategies to help you create inclusive experiences.

HIMSS25 Guide: HIStalk sponsors can provide conference participation details by February 24 to be included in my guide.

Survey Opportunity: Healthcare AI Purchasing. Responses from health system and imaging center readers to this short survey will trigger a Donors Choose donation from Volpara Health plus matching funds.  

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Waystar reports Q4 results: revenue up 19%, EPS $0.11 versus –$0.12, beating analyst expectations for both. WAY shares have gained 104% since the company’s June 2024 IPO, valuing the company at $7 billion.

Sales

• Akron Children’s will implement Abridge for ambient documentation.
• Blessing Health System (IL) will implement Epic, replacing Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise.

Announcements and Implementations

Mass General Brigham researchers develop an Epic tool that identifies frail patients who are at risk for higher rates of hospital readmission and death. The tool works even when primary care visit data is not available.

Government and Politics

Website operator Gregory Schreck pleads guilty to federal charges that accused him of tricking Medicare patients into giving up their personal information so they could be sent “free” medically unnecessary items like braces and pain creams that were then billed to federal insurance programs. The scheme led to $1 billion in false Medicare claims, with Medicare and insurers paying out more than $360 million. Schreck was a VP at DMERx, the Internet platform that was used to generate the false prescriptions. He was also VP of HealthSplash, which advertised its service as helping payers, providers, and suppliers share data.

Other

The UK’s medical exam administrator admits to sending incorrect scores to September 2023 test-takers. It mistakenly told 222 internal medicine doctors they had passed when they had actually failed, while 61 who passed were told they had failed. The British Medical Association warns that those who were wrongly told that they passed now face an uncertain future, while some of the 61 who were incorrectly failed may have already left the profession as a result.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research publishes a free report, “2025 Black Book of Rural and Critical Access Healthcare IT Solutions.”
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Doug Turner, MBA.
• Nym names Yaara Libai and Bella Sirota clinical data annotators, Ariela Krumgals VP of HR, Yiftah Sasson product manager, Shiraz Tov junior backend engineer, and Hadar Yehezkeli NLP research engineer.

Blog Posts

• Meditech customers create efficiencies to address emergency department utilization (Meditech)
• IDD Workforce Empowerment: 3 Takeaways from the IDD Summit Expert Panel Discussion (Netsmart)
• Same-day visits: Will you be the leader to make it happen in your organization? (Nordic)
• The New Patient Priority: Why Healthcare Payment Flexibility is No Longer Optional (TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company)
• The role of AI in modern healthcare: Striking the balance between progress and accountability (Wolters Kluwer Health)

Contacts

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

News 2/21/25

Top News

Vanity prescription vendor Hims & Hers acquires Trybe Labs, an at-home lab testing provider that process customer self-collected blood samples.

The company says the acquisition will allow it to offer whole-body testing and give it de-identified health data for AI training.

HIMS shares rose on the news are are up 350% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $15 billion.

Reader Comments

From Hal2k: “Re: HIMSS25. Federal employees, including those from ONC / ASTP, have had to drop out. What will be the downstream impact? I heard lower turnout overall – they had to cancel a couple of hotels.” Unverified. I gave the conference website a quick look, with the only surprise being that Hal Wolf will be doing a fireside chat with Oracle Health EVP/GM Seema Verma on improving patient-centered care, which seems questionable for several reasons.

From Tired Sales Gal: “Re: ViVE. My perspective is that its attendance was down from previous years. Not sure if the weather played a part or not. Attached is an attendee list. The majority were vendors versus providers and payer representatives. Fewer investors attended. I question whether the list might not have included those attendees who registered through CHIME, but that might only be another 500 folks.” The list has about 4,000 vendors versus 900 providers, and some of those provider folk don’t have a title that suggests purchasing influence (podcast host, professor, administrative fellow, etc.) I’ve never heard of quite a few of the companies on the list. Maybe if I decide that I care enough I’ll compare the ViVE and HIMSS exhibitor lists.

ViVE Conference Day 3 and 4 Observations from an Attendee

• Tuesday felt like the busiest day; lots of activity across the floor as folks tried to wrap up before the snow.
• Simply based on my perceptions from walking around, it felt like sessions on the four primary stages were sparsely attended. One-on-one and small group meetings seemed to be the dominant activities throughout the conference.
• Nashville got about 1.5″ of snow, so on the low side of expectations. On Wednesday there were lots of flight delays but relatively few cancellations, and major roads were in decent shape.
• I’d estimate only ~2,000 folks were around on Wednesday. Probably one-third of booths had no one, and many started packing up early.
• ViVE should’ve had a scavenger hunt to find all the booths that don’t have AI mentioned somewhere in their display or marketing materials. Practically every company is trying to say they have or use AI, but how real it is is unclear to me.
• I want to give a shout-out to Streamline Flow. They were demoing until the very end, and in an industry of bad software, their product seems attractive, intuitive, clinician-friendly, and easy to use. It’s early, but looking forward to seeing how they progress.
• Now the hard work begins. Companies that had a good conference and generated valuable leads are only on first base; there is a lot remaining to do to get to home plate. We feel good about how ViVE was for us but how we execute in the coming weeks and months will determine whether it was worthwhile.

Sponsored Events and Resources

HIMSS25 Guide: HIStalk sponsors can provide conference participation details by February 24 to be included in my guide.

Survey Opportunity: Healthcare AI Purchasing. Responses from health system and imaging center readers to this short survey will trigger a Donors Choose donation from Volpara Health plus matching funds.  

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

A remarkably fine MedCity News investigative piece (it’s well worth clicking over) by Arundhati Parmar looks at Transcarent:

• Founder Glen Tullman had said previously that care navigation companies are as obsolete as travel agents. Transcarent then acquired care navigation company Accolade for $621 million last month at what was seen as a fire sale price.
• Insiders say that Transcarent wildly missed its 2024 sales targets, booking $60 million instead of the expected $175 million, and earned most of its big clients via its acquisitions or from Tullman’s executive connections.
• Another insider says that 70 employer navigation RFPs were issued last year and Transcarent not only failed to win any of them, it wasn’t even considered in any.
• Accolade’s prospects were fading after being dropped by big customers, trading as a penny stock, and being shopped to potential buyers.
• A CEO who has known Tullman for years criticizes the strategy of Transcarent selling directly to executives who tend to perform less due diligence than benefits consultants: “I think Glen preys on the benefits buyers who do not have a ton of resources to understand that there is nothing under the veneer that he is presenting. There is no Transcarent model. They have no NCQA designation, no URAC designation. They have no hard standard accreditation for care management. He invests a lot of money in political connections and in being part of CEO clubs that give him access to board members that don’t know much about benefits.”
• A healthcare CEO who passed on acquiring telemedicine vendor 98point6 after reviewing its financials said of Transcarent’s $100 million acquisition of the company: “They were losing 60 cents for every dollar of revenue they made. Glen has a pattern of taking distressed, low-quality assets and then slapping a bunch of tech together.”

Therapy Brands, which offers EHR/PM software for mental health and therapy providers, expands its Fusion rehab therapy product to the adult market.

Venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners merges two of its population health management technology companies, Azara Healthcare and I2i Population Health. The announcement is coy about what name the combined businesses will use.

Hummingbird Healthcare raises $20 million in a Series B funding round.

Walgreens shares jump Tuesday following a report that its potential acquisition by private equity firm Sycamore Partners could be back on the table.

IRhythm Technologies announces Q4 results: revenue up 24%, EPS –$0.04 versus -$1.26. IRTC shares are down 1% over the past 12 months, valuing the ambulatory ECG solution vendor at $3.5 billion.

Sales

• Cleveland Clinic will roll out ambient documentation from Ambience Healthcare.
• Inspira Health announces that it will replace Oracle Health with Epic, as a reader reported here last September.

Announcements and Implementations

WellSky launches a patient scheduling and workforce management solution for home care agencies. 

Availity launches Rapid Recovery, a solution that is designed to swiftly restore critical healthcare operations after large-scale catastrophic events, including cyberattacks. Key features include a five-day recovery objective, an air-gapped recovery environment, comprehensive backups, and third-party certification.

Epic will expand its 11,400-seat Deep Space underground conference center by 23,000 square feet with a new 750-seat auditorium and a dining facility. The expansion is intended to accommodate the company’s user group meeting and is scheduled to open before UGM 2026 next August.

Government and Politics

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) presses Paul Lawrence, PhD at his confirmation hearing for VA deputy secretary:

EHR started in 2018 under President Trump and in 2020, it deployed to two Washington state VA hospitals. Instead of helping to improve our veterans’ health care, the rollout ending up being a complete disaster, and it endangered veteran patients. Unfortunately, the system still is not working the way that the VA doctors and nurses need, and veterans are continuing  to suffer. Last month, the VA announced that it would be moving forward with pre-deployment activities at the next four sites for this Electronic Health Record. You will oversee the EHR program, so if confirmed, I want to know what you are going to do differently to hold Oracle accountable and to make sure we get this system right for our veterans?” Lawrence responded that he will figure out an accountability plan, to which Murray said, “We have heard that answer from every VA person that’s come before this committee for a number of years now. Everybody’s looked at it, everybody’s considered it, everybody’s talked about it, everybody’s convened panels. It is not working.”

Other

I saw this after reading Dr. Jayne’s piece on tech for seniors and thought it looked interesting. The free version turns an old tablet into a companion device that serves as a smart picture frame, text and photo messaging tool, and task manager. A $10 per month subscription adds auto-answer video calls, auto-join of Zoom meetings, AI activities and check-in, and connection of multiple family members. Onscreen Joy was announced last month at CES.

In the Netherlands, a man buys five 500GB hard drives for $5 each at a flea market and discovers that they contain patient medical records, apparently from the defunct healthcare software vendor Nortade ICT Solutions.

Sponsor Updates

• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Judi Health: Going Beyond Pharmacy and into Medical Claims, with AJ Loiacono and Dr. Sunil Budhrani.”
• BNH Hospital in Thailand implements the TrakCare EHR from InterSystems.
• A Surescripts analysis projects more than $3.76 billion in healthcare savings could be realized if care managers leverage Surescripts Medication History for Populations technology.
• First Databank publishes a new white paper, “Empowering Consumer Choice with EPrescribing.”
• Findhelp welcomes new customers Cone Health (NC), Help at Home (IL), and Marion County Commission on Youth (IL).
• FinThrive will present at the Idaho HFMA Spring Conference March 3 in Boise.
• Five9 announces its global availability on Google Cloud Marketplace.
• Healthcare Growth Partners advises Insight Partners on its investment in Azara Healthcare and I2I Population Health.
• Inbox Health partners with Lighthouse Lab Services.
• MRO achieves HITRUST CSF certification for its Exchange Services platform.

Blog Posts

• Signs it is time to change your PBM vendor, and how to overcome common hesitations (Capital Rx)
• 5 Healthcare IT Trends Shaping the Industry (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• AI in Enterprise Clinical Imaging: Capitalizing on the Value Proposition (Impact Advisors)
• HEDIS MY 2026 Public Comments: Highlights for Quality Teams (Inovalon)
• Full speed ahead: Interoperability at MEDITECH enters a new era (Meditech)

Contacts

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