News 10/24/25

Top News

The private equity owners of revenue cycle management company Ensemble Health have reportedly hired investment bankers to conduct a company sale or IPO early next year, hoping for a $13 billion valuation.

Reader Comments

From PissedOffPhysician: “Re: HLTH. Really? A private jet to the HLTH party? What a tone deaf, entitled post featuring a group of ‘founders’ and ‘investors’ in healthcare. An anonymous donor provided it – perhaps it will show up in opensecrets.org in a few months/years.” The tagged physicians represent these companies: Offcall, Qualified Health, Clarity Pediatrics, Proto Intelligence, Signos, and MDCalc. In their defense, HLTH has little to do with human caring or science, it’s all about picking investor pockets (Helping Launch The Hype). Meanwhile, what wisdom did the HLTH expense account fat-cat crowd glean from aging brat-packer and underage sex tape innovator Rob Lowe? Do any of the “innovators” pause between blowout parties and swag scrums to worry about the unaffordable individual and collective cost of US healthcare? Is healthcare’s moral rot visible from behind the velvet ropes at the sponsored rooftop lounge? 

From Titular: “Re: physicians turned tech people. Is it appropriate for them to call themselves ‘Dr.’ or to apply ‘MD’ after their name if they didn’t even complete a residency?” Yes, because MD and DO are earned degrees regardless of the ensuing career path. I’m not a fan of “Dr.” since it’s vague (doctorate in what?) and is often redundantly misused as “Dr. John Smith, MD.” I also don’t think it’s appropriate (and some of my former hospital employers agreed) for non-physicians to call themselves doctor out on the floors even if they earned clinical practice doctorates in nursing, optometry, pharmacy, podiatry, dentistry, audiology, or physical therapy since it’s asking a lot for patients to figure it all out. In a perfect world, nobody would use the unhelpful “Dr.” prefix, but egos make that unlikely. My zeal for HIStalk accuracy means that I list non-US conferred medical degrees (MBBS, MBChB, or BMBS) even when the holder or their employer calls it MD to avoid confusion. Slightly related, I don’t understand people who list “ABD” on LinkedIn, confusing failing to finish the hard part of a PhD with an a credential worth noting.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The most entertaining thing I’ve seen this week is a graphic for the “Complete Guide of [sic] Healthcare IT,” which obviously used ChatGPT to hilariously misspell nearly all of the companies of which it claims and sells expertise (including now non-existent ones like Allscripts and Cerner). It’s an India-based company with “global headquarters” in this shared house in the technology hub of Selbyville, DE:

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Quest Diagnostics references its use of Epic in this week’s earnings call:

During the quarter, we announced Epic Systems as our technology partner for Project Nova, our multi-year order-to-cash transformation. By deploying a suite of Epic Systems solutions, including Beaker, MyChart, and Care Everywhere, we will deliver deeper, more connected insights with easier, faster, and more efficient experiences … Today we have the application called MyQuest, which allows patients to make appointments, view your test results, pay your bills, and that application will be upgraded to what most people know as MyChart. In the Epic Systems world, that provides a lot of benefits, including patients will be able to see all of their information, regardless if it’s from Quest Diagnostics or a health system, on one MyChart site, if you will. It provides the integration of lab work with other medical records that they may be getting from their physicians, their health systems. We believe that really has tremendous benefits as well. As we’ve described in the past, it’s a five to seven year implementation timeline.

Epic will shut down its Workshop program, which co-develops software in partnership with third party companies such as Abridge and Nuance, Politico reports.

Social care technology company Findhelp acquires Uno Health, which offers a digital enrollment platform for government benefits.

Announcements and Implementations

AltaPointe Health (AL) will give the 50 most frequent 911 callers iPads that are loaded with MyCare behavioral health software in a pilot program that is aimed at reducing non-medical ambulance calls. The local fire chief says that first responders are strained by frequent callers who use 911 for non-emergency ED transport, noting that one resident calls about three times per week and 40 others have been taken to hospitals at least 10 times.

Patient experience orchestration technology vendor Praia Health launches an AI-powered personalization engine that supports health system patient acquisition, engagement, and retention efforts.

Podimetrics introduces SmartMat+, which tracks daily foot temperature, balance, and weight to support early intervention in heart failure, diabetes, and fall risk.

InterSystems integrates HealthShare with Google Cloud, allowing healthcare organizations to create a FHIR-ready data foundation, deploy advanced AI and agents from Gemini models, and improve interoperability and security.

AdvancedMD launches a cloud-based EHR/PM for small mental health practices.

Other

The cost of job-based health insurance has risen 6% this year to an average of $27,000 per year for family coverage even as deductibles continue to climb.

An interesting LinkedIn post from associate CHIO, informaticist, and psychologist Stephon Procter, PhD, MBMI from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia describes their pilot of Epic’s phenotyping AI tool. It summarizes patient note histories into Human Phenotype Ontology terms (symptoms and traits) to support genetic diagnosis and precision medicine.

Sponsor Updates

• Optimum Healthcare IT posts the final episode of Season 1 of the “Visionary Voices” podcast, featuring Chris Longhurst, MD, MS.
• The “PharmaPhorum” podcast features Medicomp Systems CMO Jay Anders, MD in an episode titled “Improving ROI on AI investments and data quality.”
• InterSystems and Google Cloud integrate InterSystems HealthShare with Google Cloud’s healthcare API.
• Judi Health releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “2025 Flu Season Update, with Libbi Green, PharmD.”
• Rhapsody introduces its API Guardian API management solution.
• Praia Health adds its new Praia Intelligence AI-powered digital personalization engine to its platform.
• Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “Quick HITs” podcast titled “From Bedside to Boardroom: Leading Clinical Systems at Boys Town, with Amber Schuetz.”
• LiveData will exhibit at the 2025 OR Manager Conference October 28-30 in Anaheim, CA.
• Mednition announces a partnership with Shannon Medical Center (TX).
• Navina will present at the Athenahealth Thrive Summit November 4 in Nashville.
• Black Book Research announces the winners of its 2026 Health Information Management Top Vendors Awards, which include HIStalk Sponsors AGS Health (outsourced CDI/ mid-RCM services), Inovalon (provider data management platforms (payer-side), Waystar (revenue integrity solutions), and Netsmart (behavioral health and post-acute HIM/coding solutions).

Blog Posts

• Praia Health, Providence, and Labcorp Collaborate to Transform Patient Engagement and Lab Order Adherence (Praia Health)
• Observation Status Management: Why Utilization Review Must Lead the Way (AGS Health)
• Driving AI adoption in APAC: A top-down and bottom-up approach (Altera Digital Health)
• Five9 Recognized with Two Major Honors at Sandler Summit 2025 (Five9)
• Lessons from the Front Lines: Learning from the SolarWinds Attack (Fortified Health Security)
• What is a billing cycle? Understanding the process and how automation improves it (Inbox Health)
• From Policy to People: Connecting Rural America to the Right Care (Kyruus Health)
• How to Manage, Run, & Promote Your Clinical Data Registry for Long-Term Success (MRO)

Contacts

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

News 10/22/25

Top News

OpenEvidence raises $200 million in Series C funding, just three months after raising $210 million. Its valuation has jumped to $6 billion.

The company has developed an AI-based clinical decision support search engine for healthcare providers.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

AI clinical summary startup Fourier Health raises $8.4 million in seed funding. Co-founder and CTO James Lloyd previously served as CTO at Redox, which he helped to launch in 2014.

DocGo, which offers remote patient monitoring, mobile urgent care, and medical transportation, acquires virtual care vendor SteadyMD.

Samsung Electronics wraps up its $115 million acquisition of Xealth, the digital health integration company that launched out of Providence Health & Services in 2017. Xealth CEO Mike McSherry will remain in that role as Samsung works to expand the Xealth team in Seattle and build out its consumer-facing health apps.

Announcements and Implementations

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (MA) uses Health Data Analytics Institute’s HealthVision platform and large language models to develop its Better Real-time Information on Documentation of Goals of care for Engagement in Serious Illness Communication protocol.

York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in England implements Agfa HealthCare’s Xero Viewer imaging technology.

Hackensack Meridian Health (NJ) uses Cadence’s Proactive Care Engine as part of a new remote patient monitoring program for seniors.

Government and Politics

HHS taps Palantir, Availity, Gainwell Technologies, and the Council for Affordable Healthcare to develop prototypes for a national provider directory. The CMS-led directory project will occur in several phases over the next year.

Privacy and Security

Mayo Clinic seems to be among the hundreds of organizations impacted by Monday’s Amazon Web Services outage. Its patient portal and phone lines were down for several hours. NHS facilities in England were also impacted, with one digital health chief anonymously commenting, “I think it’s worth knowing that if NHS services are dependent on cloud providers and they go down, then it’s probably more important than losing Snapchat.”

UC San Diego’s Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity develops Project CrashCart, a “hospital IT system in a box” that hospitals can quickly set up and use during downtimes caused by ransomware attacks or other cybersecurity incidents.

Other

Developers at the UNC School of Medicine, UNC Health, and the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute develop the new Secure Health Informatics Research Environment for analytics projects that use data from UNC Health’s EHR. The SHIRE cloud-computing environment will go live November 3.

Ascension Sacred Heart and Ascension St. Vincent’s launch a Telehealth Maternity Care Program with support from the Florida Department of Health. The program offers pregnant and post-partum women dedicated patient navigators, help with referrals to wraparound services, and access to medical devices.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research shares three solution areas survey respondents deem the most likely to displace incumbent health IT systems by early 2026.
• Surescripts announces a major expansion of its Touchless Prior Authorization technology, which now reaches more than 76,000 prescribers across the country.
• Praia Health, Providence, and Labcorp share outcomes from a collaboration that significantly improved lab appointment adherence, patient engagement, and operational efficiency at Providence.
• Censinet announces that Chief Commercial Officer Cambrey Ware has been named to the University of Tennessee’s Haslam Healthcare Distinguished Fellows Program.
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of “The Informonster Podcast” titled “Talking AI with ChatGPT.”
• Consensus Cloud Solutions will sponsor the Healthcare From the Heart Gala October 23 supporting Element Care PACE.

Blog Posts

• Agentic AI: The Future of Digital Workforces in Healthcare RCM (AGS Health)
• Revolutionize Your ePrescribing Workflow with eRx Pro (AdvancedMD)
• How to Transition from MEDITECH Legacy EHR to Expanse (CereCore)
• Keeping staffing front and center (Altera Digital Health)
• Why AI in Healthcare Is About More Than Just Chatbots (Artera)
• How Healthcare IT Helps Enterprise Practices Succeed (Bizmatics)
• Secure Our Workforce: Empowering Clinicians Against Cyber Threats (CloudWave)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 10/20/25

Top News

Alphabet-owned Verily launches Verily Me, a free consumer health app.

Verily Me lets users receive provider recommendations from their medical records from multiple sources, ask an AI companion questions about their records, analyze meal photos for nutrition, and join research studies.

A Reader’s Notes from the Georgia HIMSS Annual Meeting

Opening remarks by Hal Wolf, president and CEO, HIMSS

• Eight years ago, HIMSS had 77,000 members (75,000 in North America). Now there are 135,000 members (80,000 in North America), with 54 North American chapters.
• Anticipating a global shortage of healthcare workers of 10 million by 2030.
• He argues that advancements in healthcare and research, as well as the sheer volume of new information coming out (thousands of peer-reviewed articles per year), makes AI-powered clinical decision support a necessity.
• He sees leveraging AI and shifting scope of practice as solutions to the challenges of healthcare capacity (i.e., shift more work from physicians to other clinicians).
• New Technology + Old Organization = Costly Old Organization. Technology won’t solve everything on its own.

Session on tech initiatives at Emory

Guru Patel, associate chief of clinical informatics, Emory Digital

• Pilot of transition to Apple devices started at one unit in one hospital and ran for 6-12 months. Their biggest challenges were “tap to authenticate” and scanning integrations.
• Next phase was converting Hillandale Hospital by rolling out ~2,000 Apple devices (workstations, tablets, smartphones, etc.). The rollout was challenging because it occurred during the time of the highest hospital census.
• Separately, Emory worked on an initiative to leverage Epic Welcome kiosks for check-in and MyChart Bedside in hospital rooms.
• Only 10% of hospital patients are using the kiosks, and of those, nearly half can’t complete the check-in process independently. Biggest points of abandonment were for questionnaires and guarantor / insurance info.
• Emergency and OP rehab patients could check in on their own 80-90% of the time, whereas surgery patients could only 3% of the time.
• In the rooms, only 7% of patients were requesting meals through Bedside. Emory has found that the steps needed for patients to make requests in Bedside (e.g., request ice chips) are too numerous and is working with Epic to try to cut that down.

Session on building resiliency for IT disasters

Stoddard Manikin, CISO, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta

• Old way doesn’t work anymore: downtime procedures have often been designed for short periods of downtime, but the reality of ransomware attacks and recovery is that downtimes can be extensive. He cited Change Healthcare, Ascension, and Lurie Children’s as examples.
• Can’t assume you’ll have access to any electronic systems (including email, SharePoint, or the organization’s website) in the event of an incident. Have backup paper copies of downtime procedures and contact info for each of your vendors.
• You need to educate staff on what to use and what not to use during a downtime, otherwise they will go to whatever they can get to work, even if it isn’t the best or most secure option. Ensure they know to avoid texting, personal email, or social media. Ensure there are alternate, secure systems for communication. Ensure clinicians can (and know how to) access imaging directly on modalities.

David Kotz, VP of Technology Services, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta

• Scanning and hardening Active Directory is a valuable preventative step for building resiliency.

Derek Spransy, CISO, Emory Hospital and University

• Emory is moving their Epic production instance to Azure at the end of the month.
• Resiliency is essential; Emory built redundant connections to the Azure data centers, yet at one point within an hour, they had a backhoe cut one fiber connection in Georgia and a squirrel chew through another connection in Pennsylvania. Had to scramble to shift to a third option.
• They’re also looking into an isolated recovery environment for Epic to provide greater resiliency for extended downtimes.

Session on Grady Health’s adoption of AI

Wilhelmina Prinssen, Medical Director of Ambulatory Informatics

• The biggest challenge of implementing AI is provider adoption. Grady has seen stronger adoption among younger/digitally savvier providers.
• However, those physicians also show signs of relying on AI too much and not always thinking critically on their own.
• She says you should introduce AI from the beginning with students, but you have to change how you assess competency. Don’t just take correct answers from students; ask them why the AI-generated solution was the best one.

Kerem Eroglu, Director of Partner Success, Abridge

• There are numerous opportunities to leverage AI to enhance virtual care. A key use case is making telehealth visits easier by allowing the provider to focus on the patient and look into the camera, rather than having their head down typing a note.
• They see receptiveness to AI among providers to be less of a function of age and more a function of personality and openness to change.

CIO Panel focused on AI

Geoff Brown, Piedmont (recently retired)

• They kept AI governance separate from “typical” IS governance to allow for a laser focus and greater speed of AI adoption. In the beginning, their main concern with adoption was how to secure the systems and the data.
• He feels AI has helped on the clinical side but has been even more impactful for revenue cycle, citing claims adjudication as an example.

Chris Paravate, Northeast Georgia Health System

• Their C-suite is their IS governance team due to the sheer number of potential projects and their potential impact on the health system.
• They have chosen to focus on AI solutions from their established vendors and partners, rather than new ones.
• Completed an AI pilot with Epic that led to a 46% increase in coding efficiency.
• On average, each provider who adopts ambient listening sees 1.3 more patients per week, so the solution pays for itself. Physicians have said it’s a life-changer.

Jeff Buda, Atrium Health Floyd

• They have an AI council for governance. They start cautiously with any new AI solution and see if it passes the sniff test, then they move more aggressively to roll it out once it’s proven.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents say that technology investments are mostly driven, not shockingly, by the bottom line.

New poll to your right or here: Which social media platforms do you use regularly?

Become an HIStalk Sponsor for All Treats, No Tricks

I’m offering a few sponsorship perks to help push interested companies across the finish line before December 31. Contact Lorre if you’re curious (or read this to see why you should be).

• New sponsors: Get the rest of 2025 free plus a free ad in a HIStalk email update, earning a full year of exposure for less than you’d spend on zero-ROI conference booth carpet.
• Startups: You qualify for the new HIStalk Startup Scholarship package (which, to be honest, I just invented).
• Former sponsors: Come back and I’ll throw in a few extras.
• All sponsors: Renewals are locked in at current rates through the end of 2026.
• Webinar promotions: Take 50% off of one or more (some companies bank a package of them for future use). Sign up before November 15 and Lorre will enter you to win a free webinar promotion.
• All sponsors: in a “who’s paying attention” prize, email Lorre by end of day Tuesday, October 22 and she’ll give you a free email ad just for asking.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Virtual care operator Counsel Health raises a $25 million Series A funding round. The company offers an AI chatbot that answers health questions, then escalates the conversation as needed to a physician within its 50-state network. Bringing a doctor into the conversation costs $29 per use or a $199 annual fee that includes unlimited physician involvement.

Sage Care, which offers call triage, patient-provider matching, and scheduling tools, announces its launch and $20 million in funding.

Women’s health virtual and in-person clinic operator Tia lays off 72 employees, or 23% of its workforce, citing investor pressure to reach profitability.

Health smart ring company Oura raises $900 million, valuing its business at $11 billion.

People

Froedtert ThedaCare Health promotes Brian Sterns, MBA to SVP/CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

First Databank announces a Model Context Protocol servicer that connects AI systems and agents to its medication knowledge assets. The company is testing a prescription automation agent that can pre-populate medication orders by analyzing  the ambient listening output from encounters.

Star Valley Health (WY) sues Change Healthcare, claiming that it failed to submit insurance claims on time after Change rolled out Epic’s billing software in mid-2023 without sufficient staffing.

Other

Oracle co-CEO Mike Sicilia and healthcare and life sciences GM Seema Verma say in a shareholder call that the CEOs of Epic-using Mayo Clinic and Cleveland expressed  “a lot of enthusiasm for what we’re building” at Oracle’s recent healthcare conference. They say that the customers of competitors “are starting to understand the power, the value of AI” in being able to build and buy AI agents. Sicilia also said:

We’ve got dozens of AI agents live across our health ecosystem today, with many more planned. We’re looking at chart review care navigation, clinical decision support, patient risk predictions, preventative care, and many more. In fact, our next-generation AI EHR is now generally available … we’ve got a lot of competition in that market, but … the one question I ask our competitors is, see how many fuel cell power plants are you building on site right now? Because if you’re not doing that, then you probably are not going to have as good of a chance to be closely provisioned to a large language model and apply reasoning models and all the things you actually need to work to make this work at scale to automate an entire hospital.

Epic’s latest “Hey Judy” column explains why everyone pays Epic’s list price: she once felt sorry for an early customer who had “such nice people, and they didn’t know how to negotiate.”

A tongue-in-cheek essay suggests that belief in AI “magic” isn’t due to impressive capabilities of these “giant calculators,” but rather the user’s “Edge of Stupidity,” where their limited understanding prevents them from explaining it rationally. The author extends the Dunning-Kruger effect (which says that people are ignorant of their own ignorance), arguing that smart people are especially prone because they assume that their intellect allows them to detect “authoritative-sounding bullshit” in fields they barely understand.

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart celebrates client impact and the AI-driven transformation of its CareFabric platform at its recent Connections2025 conference.
• Surescripts offers its new First-Fill Abandonment solution to Arcadia’s customers.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Greg Aukerman.
• Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the backdoor” podcast titled “An Intelligence Infiltration – Hacking AI Agents from Silicon Valley’s Hottest Startups with guest Rene Brandel.”
• RLDatix will exhibit at the CIHQ Accreditation & Regulatory Summit October 21-25 in San Antonio.
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere company, releases a new e-book titled “TrustCommerce Community Connect Program.”
• TeamBuilder will present at the KLAS Healthcare Operations Summit November 4 in Salt Lake City.
• Ellkay and Inbox Health will sponsor Greenway Health’s Engage 2025 conference November 5-7 in Tampa.
• WellSky will exhibit at the 2025 AABB Annual Meeting October 25–27 in San Diego.

Blog Posts

• Healthcare innovation through interoperability: How we see what’s next (Altera Digital Health)
• Beyond Human Limitations: Why Traditional Quality Management is Breaking Down in the Modern Contact Center (Five9)
• Top Challenges in Medical Billing Service and How to Overcome Them (Med Tech Solutions)
• Epic, AI, and the new era of health IT: what leaders need to know (Nordic)
• And Just Like That… We Confuse the Cost of Care with the Value of Care and Patients are Paying the Price (Nym)
• Why Outsourcing Legacy EHR Support is a Strategic Move During New EHR Implementation (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The future of healthcare revenue cycle: 3 key insights from Waystar True North 2025 (Waystar)
• Key Takeaways from Civitas & CommonWell 2025 (Zen Healthcare IT)

Contacts

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

News 10/17/25

Top News

Microsoft extends its Dragon Copilot AI clinical assistant to nurses and adds an ecosystem for third-party extensions.

The nurse capabilities include ambient documentation, access to trusted medical content, and automating routine tasks.

Reader Comments

From Boysenberry: “Re: self-proclaimed industry experts. You proposed a scoring framework years ago that took into account clinical and IT experience from someone’s LinkedIn profile. Where is that?” I remember it, but I can’t find it despite many searches via Google and ChatGPT. I do recall that some of the folks who were dispensing unsolicited health tech advice scored low, having little actual experience other than in pontification. UPDATE: found it from 2017! See scoring grid above. I didn’t do much with it, and the low-scoring folks are still out there pontificating, so the effect was minimal. In fact, the vastly lowered barrier to entry for podcasts has probably given a whole new batch of industry lightweights a place to hear themselves talk.

From New Threads: “Re: corporate rebranding. Why do companies think anyone cares about why they chose a particular logo or website design?” I assume these “our redesigned website shows how we’ve evolved” posts exist mostly so the marketing folks who justified the project can get their ceremonial pat on the head. There’s always a tortured back story that someone has wasted time inventing about how the lowercase typeface represents empathy and the color gradient evokes innovation, when in reality, nobody outside the company cares. Announcing it just makes everyone else uncomfortable, like bragging about how great you look in your new suit while everyone’s politely trying not to roll their eyes because they are perfectly capable of forming an opinion without an announcement or editorializing. They also know that appearances aside, it’s still the same person underneath.

A Reader’s Notes from Global Health Innovators Summit, Nashville

Investment panel

Vic Gatto, Jumpstart Health Investors

• He says AI will cause a four orders of magnitude (10,000x) change to what we can deliver in healthcare.
• Current AI investments focus on workforce; he thinks we’ll need just as many people in healthcare despite AI.
• He sees a barbell of success for healthcare investing. On one end are solutions that cater to wealthy individuals, like biometrics and whole-body scans. On the other end are solutions that touch the low-income side of the market (e.g., Medicaid) and squeeze out efficiency gains and cost savings.

Tania Grant, Partner, Claritas Capital

• AI valuations are overhyped and expectations will have to come back down to earth at some point.

Fireside chat with Chris McGhee, CEO and Co-Founder, Current Health

• He thinks it’s a very difficult time to build a digital health company, partly because of inflated capital raises and inflated valuations that many companies can’t keep up with.
• The hardest part of the acquisition by Best Buy was the culture change and the difficulties integrating into a totally different culture. Incentives and pace of change are radically different at a big public company.
• When he reacquired Current, it had three times the number of employees as when he sold it. Had to let go about 100 people from the get-go, and he noticed that the culture had lost the customer focus and urgency.
• They’re focused on CAR-T therapy and moving that to the outpatient setting.

Panel on data utilities, policy, and regulation

Brenton Hill, Head of Operations and General Counsel​, Coalition for Health AI

• CHAI views transparency as table stakes and has been placing a greater emphasis on transparency.
• A key thing to figure out is who is responsible for an AI solution over the course of its life cycle. Is it the developer or the health system/payer who has deployed it?
• The current regulatory framework for healthcare data is not built for AI. AI moves at the pace of governance, not government. He says we should look at governance not as an inhibitor but as what will allow AI to scale.

Brett Meeks, Vice President of Government Affairs for Health Technology and AI, Kimbell & Associates

• Government is struggling to regulate technology, given the fast pace of change.
• He expects the current administration to follow through on enforcing info blocking regulations.
• He floated the idea of states using the $50 billion rural health fund from the OBBB Act to incentivize EHR adoption in behavioral health.

Peter Embi, Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center

• VUMC has built a tool that monitors the 200+ AI systems they are using throughout the health system. The tool checks for algorithm drift and impact on health equity.

Panel on innovation in cancer care

Lauren Connor, breast reconstructive surgeon, Vanderbilt University Medical Center

• A key advancement in treatment and reconstruction in breast cancer care has been minimally invasive procedures, and those have been made possible by robotics.

Jillian Wright, CEO, Onsite Women’s Health

• They’ve seen screening mammogram compliance rates go from 50% to 85% when the mammograms are offered in-clinic by primary care providers.

Abbey Vandersall, Chief Clinical Officer, AMSURG

• Any solution that boosts compliance is a value-add. Only 50% of patients who use Cologuard and get a positive result actually follow through with the necessary confirmatory colonoscopy.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

MD Integrations, which offers a white labeled telehealth service to digital health companies, raises a $77 million investment.

Senior platform vendor Cairns Health acquires Together by Renee, which offers a personal healthcare assistant.

Remote care company Brook.ai raises $28 million in Series B funding.

Sales

• UPMC will extend its deployment of the ambient documentation solution of Abridge, in which it is an investor and founding site, to all of its locations.

People

Harmony Healthcare IT hires Sharon Cook (Inovalon) as chief revenue officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Redox and Kno2 partner to offer unified integration, data translation, and nationwide TEFCA connectivity.

Mount Sinai researchers develop InfEHR, which scours a patient’s EHR lab results, medications, and vital signs over time to create a personalized network that discovers hidden associations with disease state.

Altera Digital Health announces GA of Sunrise Axon, which was built in partnership with Health Gorilla to bring real-time clinical data into Sunrise EHR.

Wolters Kluwer Health releases UpToDate Connect, which offers developers API access to its evidence-based clinical content.

Surescripts introduces First-Fill Abandonment, which alerts care managers when patients fail to have a first-time prescription filled.

Lapsi Health launches Keikku 2.0, a $375 FDA-cleared digital stethoscope that uses AI to generate clinical notes that are integrated into the EHR.  

Digital health marketplace operator Avia acquires Panda Health, which offers digital health peer input and market intelligence services.

Government and Politics

HHS’s new Medicare Plan Finder provider directory, which was built by a vendor under the administration’s “Make Health Tech Great Again” program, is generating conflicting or inaccurate listings about whether providers are in-network for Medicare Advantage plans. The tool also limits searches to providers within 50 miles and excludes hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. Errors in the temporary open enrollment site, which was intended as a first step toward a national provider directory, could mislead seniors into choosing plans that their doctors don’t accept. A previous CMS announcement suggests that the directory’s developer is SunFire Matrix, a private equity-owned services platform vendor that sells similar tools to insurance brokers.

Privacy and Security

Integris Health pays $30 million to settle a class action lawsuit related to a 2023 data breach that impacted 2 million people.

Other

In England, NHS administrator Sir Jim Mackey requires NHS England’s transformation directorate to personally sign off on readiness before electronic medical records are brought live during the busy winter period.

Keep scrolling if health tech history isn’t your thing (or if it is, go deep with Vince Ciotti’s magnificient HIS-tory). Industry veterans will appreciate John Gomez’s insider recap of what onetime frontrunner Eclipsys got wrong during his time as CTO (spoiler: dismissing Epic as being too small to threaten Sunrise Clinical Manager). He generously avoids blaming the unremarkable Eclipsys CEOs who followed founder and industry legend Harvey Wilson through the early 2000s, namely Paul Ruflin and Andy Eckert, neither of whom had recent relevant experience (they must have learned hard lessons since they’ve done fine since in other health tech leadership positions). Then came Phil Pead, who had the savvy to sell publicly traded Eclipsys to Allscripts for $1.2 billion in 2010, only to be fired in 2012 in a power struggle with Glen Tullman. Allscripts was a slow motion car crash under Tullman, but maybe it wasn’t his fault (ever-stumbling Misys was its majority owner) since after the company fired him, he became health tech investing’s golden boy by launching 7wireVentures and unloading Livongo on Teladoc for $18.5 billion in 2020.

Sponsor Updates

• Altera Digital Health publishes a new client story titled “On the way to the peak: Scaling technology at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center.”
• Judi Health releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Addressing Barriers to Drug Access & Affordability, with Valeris’ Andy Glade.”
• Agfa HealthCare powers enterprise imaging modernization across North America.
• Wolters Kluwer Health and Vanderbilt University’s Heard Libraries collaborate on a transformative medical research agreement.
• Ellkay will exhibit at NextGen Healthcare’s User Group Meeting November 2-5 in Nashville.
• Fortified Health Security announces that it has been named the winner of the “Managed Security Innovation of the Year” award in the CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards.
• Healthcare Growth Partners publishes “Observations – October 2025.”
• Black Book Research founder and CEO Doug Brown will deliver the keynote address at OpenEHR’s EHRCON25 conference.
• Health Data Movers names Joshua Arkin account manager.
• Impact Advisors publishes an analysis of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the economic effects it may have on providers.
• Inbox Health exhibits at the American Medical Billing Association National Medical Billing and Coding Conference through October 17 in Las Vegas.
• Aspen Medical will implement Meditech Expanse at its two hospitals in Fiji.

Blog Posts

• Seize the moment: Redefining healthcare at HLTH 2025 (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Health Literacy Month: What Comes First in Patient Education? (First Databank)
• Amplify Your Impact: Become Findhelp Certified (Findhelp)
• Experience the New CX — Why I’m Excited for Five9 CX Summit 2025 (Five9)
• Lessons From the Front Lines: How One Hospital Survived 30 Days Offline (Fortified Health Security)
• Why Outsourcing Legacy EHR Support is a Strategic Move During New EHR Implementation (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Are you ready for the biggest shift in MIPS reporting? Why your practice needs an MVP strategy — now. (Healthmonix)
• Enhancing Patient Care with Smart Inpatient Rooms (Impact Advisors)
• Northfield Hospital + Clinics boosts efficiency and engagement with Meditech Expanse (Meditech)
• Online Payment Systems for your eClinicalWorks Practice: A Closer Look at Healow Pay and PayGround (Med Tech Solutions)

Sponsor Spotlight

Findhelp is powering a more connected and efficient social safety net. They’re replacing fragmented systems with a modern, digital infrastructure that streamlines social care delivery from start to finish, from identifying needs and authorizing services to tracking data and ensuring better outcomes. Findhelp’s solutions support the entire care journey, including state benefit eligibility workflows to drive successful redetermination and post-acute care and behavioral health networks to provide whole-person care. They now work with 157 payers, 217 hospitals and health systems, and 88 health centers (and growing). Connect with Findhelp on LinkedIn to stay up to date on their work. (Sponsor Spotlight is free for HIStalk Platinum sponsors).

Contacts

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News 10/15/25

Top News

OutcomesAI announces $10 million in seed funding.

The company’s Glia software combines AI voice agents with licensed nurses to handle nursing workflows.

Founder and CEO Kuldeep Singh Rajput, PhD was founder and CEO of Biofourmis, which was merged with CopilotIQ in October 2024.

Reader Comments

From Spigot: “Re: healthcare conference. Interesting keynotes, eh?” The best part is always the brochure straining to justify why the speakers have anything to do with healthcare, beyond being has-been celebrities whose agents offered an affordable glad-hander. They are inevitably described as visionary entrepreneurs, resilient leaders, and universal storytellers whose wisdom will somehow inspire the healthcare community. Maybe McEnroe will share his insights from narrating “Never Have I Ever,” which like McEnroe himself has no healthcare relevance but was wickedly funny (as was this collection of Emmitt Smith’s oratorical fumbles). Here’s the one relevant similarity: as in healthcare, people and organizations are most motivated to do whatever benefits them most, so Becker’s must have flashed cash and perks.

A Reader’s Notes from Nashville Healthcare Sessions

Panel on the investing landscape in healthcare

Julie Yoo, General Partner, a16z

• Diagnostics has been a challenging area to invest and be successful in, but there are opportunities, especially with companies taking a platform approach.
• She’s bullish on robotics as an investment opportunity.
• She said even in challenging sectors, there are investment opportunities. For example, the OBBB Act will significantly impact Medicaid eligibility, and that creates opportunities for companies who make it easier to navigate Medicaid eligibility and redeterminations.
• Every company in their portfolio is using an AI-based software development solution.
• She commented on the changes in the investing environment since the pandemic. Seven companies since 2020 have reached $100 million ARR in five years or less, whereas none did that before 2020. She says the current environment pushes companies to broaden their targets to multiple verticals (providers, payers, and employers).

Vijay Patel, Managing Partner, CVS Health Ventures

• Also taking a hard look at robotics.
• He’s thinking about investments not just in terms of health tech but also tech that enables healthcare delivery. An example is an AI company CVS Health just invested in that assists call center agents; they are also seeing value in tech investments on behind-the-scenes aspects of healthcare delivery, like supply chain.

Conversation on employer-based healthcare

Mercedes Ikard, Senior Director, US Benefits Operations, The Walt Disney Company

• Disney spends $1 billion annually on healthcare benefits and wellness programs in the US. They have 80,000 primary care visits a year and provide care for families, not just employees.
• They have disease management programs that provide care managers and coaches to navigate healthier living. They do things like offer culinary classes to employees to promote healthier eating.
• Pharmacists are an integral part of the care team for their employees and coordinate with physicians, nutritionists, etc.

Panel on the shift to ambulatory care

Jeff Snodgrass, President & CEO, AMSURG

• Taking procedures off the inpatient-only list and moving more of them to ASCs has knock-on effects of moving other procedures to the ambulatory setting. Seeing this trend in orthopedics and cardiology especially.
• Example: when total shoulder replacements are inpatient-only but partial replacements are not, providers are incentivized to schedule partial replacements at the hospital because they don’t want the inconvenience of operating at two places in a day. Bringing total shoulders to the ASC brings partials with them.

Eric Evans, CEO, Surgery Partners

• Bringing 500 new surgeons into their ASCs each year. The surgeons are attracted to lower bureaucracy and better control over their schedules.

Renee Buckingham, President, Primary Care Organization, Humana CenterWell

• Rural settings are seeing significant strains on healthcare labor, not just for physicians but also medical assistants and nurses.

Miscellaneous tidbits

• Tom Hale, CEO, ŌURA: the biggest change they see with ŌURA users is that they drink less alcohol.
• Eduardo Conrado, President, Ascension. Health system has $25 billion in revenue, 95 hospitals, 26 joint ventures. Focusing on growing its ambulatory presence (e.g., AMSURG acquisition). Serves 2.5 million commercial lives, 1.5 million Medicare lives, and 1.15 million Medicaid or uninsured lives.
• David Dill, Chairman & CEO, Lifepoint Health. 60 acute hospitals, 50 rehab hospitals, 30 behavioral health facilities 350,000 surgeries and 1 million ED visits annually

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

RCM vendor R1 will acquire Phare Health, which offers AI solutions for inpatient coding and clinical documentation improvement. R1 will fold the startup into its R37 AI lab, which it launched earlier this year with Palantir.

A Miami publication profiles Gameday Men’s Health, which operates 400 testosterone and erectile dysfunction clinics nationwide. The company, which doesn’t accept insurance and therefore requires no billing capabilities, built its own EHR using Lobbie software that offers no-show prediction, outcomes tracking, workflow reminders, and an upcoming mobile app for patient scheduling and messaging.

WellTheory, which offers virtual care management services for autoimmune conditions, raises $14 million in Series A funding.

Sales

• Advocate Health’s Atrium Health Medical Group (NC) selects WellBeam’s post-acute care coordination software.
• Northwell Health (NY) will implement Abridge’s ambient AI technology across its 28 hospitals.

People

Adria Jackson, PhD, MBA, RN (Flourish & Thrive Labs) joins the Veterans Health Administration’s Eastern Oklahoma VA Health Care System as chief health informatics officer.

Counterpart Health names Blaine Lindsey (AnsibleHealth) VP of enterprise growth and partnerships.

Ascertain hires Molly O’Neill, MS (Aegis Ventures) as chief commercial officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Jennie Stuart Health (KY) goes live on Epic after merging with Deaconess Health (IN).

AGS Health launches AI-powered RCM workforce solutions for tasks related to insurance eligibility verification, prior authorizations, denials management, and appeals.

Infinx makes a strategic investment in Voxology AI and adds the company’s AI scheduling agents to its contact center software.

Inovalon adds DoseMe’s precision dosing software to its VigiLanz Pharmacy Surveillance application.

Teladoc Health adds a hospital workplace safety tool to its monitoring solution that analyzes audio and video to identify hostile facial expressions, threatening gestures, aggressive language, and entry into restricted areas.

LiveData launches an analytics tool that provides visibility into OR performance such as room usage, case booking efficiency, and identification of bottlenecks.

Other

Thanks to AMIA for citing Dr. Jayne’s HIStalk piece in its Informatics Smart Brief on the potential of AI scribes to restore joy in medicine. My key takeaways from Dr. Jayne:

• Some studies have found that use of AI scribes doesn’t always reduce after-hours “pajama time.”
• Some employers are reclaiming any AI-created time savings by assigning doctors additional after-hours work.
• Pajama time measurements may be unreliable. They may track only documentation hours rather than all activities, may not detect when an EHR application is open but idle, or may fail to distinguish specific tasks.

Sponsor Updates

• Altera Digital Health announces that Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust achieved significant time savings across its wards by introducing automated vital signs integration into its Sunrise EHR.
• A Black Book Research survey names Verisma the top provider of release-of-information services.
• Modern Healthcare ranks Cardamom #6 in its Best Places to Work in Healthcare 2025.
• CereCore publishes a new case study titled “Cybersecurity Advisors Bring New Hope to Orgs Without Security Officials.”

Blog Posts

• Medical Coding Automation Journey: From Assistance to Autonomy (AGS Health)
• From the Top: Former Health System CIO & CNO Share Keys to Clinical-IT Collaboration (Symplr)
• Reclaiming medicine’s human element with ambient listening (Altera Digital Health)
• DEIcency: Reframing human decency in the workplace (Cardamom)
• The Perennial Cybersecurity Problem: Tool Proliferation and the Talent Crisis (Clearwater)
• How to obtain Rx data and what to do with it (Judi Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Monday Morning Update 10/13/25

Top News

Pharmacy operations software vendor Foundation Health raises a $20 million Series A round.

Founder, CEO, and pharmacist Umar Afridi, MPharm was co-founder and CEO of Truepill, a B2B digital pharmacy company that was acquired by Ireland-based LetsGetChecked in August 2024 for $525 million.

Reader Comments

From Dagger: “Re: last week’s news. The center of gravity is shifting. Microsoft’s deal with Harvard for medical content signals a shift toward clinically credible AI. The Qualtrics acquisition of Press Ganey consolidates patient-experience data under enterprise analytics. Policymakers are questioning who sets AI guardrails. The real competition now isn’t between EHRs, but between ecosystems that own both the data and the trust.” I’m most interested in HHS’s disdain for CHAI and other private efforts to lead or regulate some aspect of healthcare. HHS’s CMS itself supports (directly or otherwise) groups such as The Joint Commission and other accreditors, NCQA, URAC, NQF, CAP (proficiency testing), HL7, and IHE/HIMSS. Inside HHS, one might question ASTP/ONC’s EHR certification program role now that Meaningful Use money is long gone, market requirements exceed the certification ones, and vendors who sell non-certified EHRs may have competitive advantage due to lower costs and lack of developer exposure to ASTP/ONC information blocking requirements (although the customers of those vendors remain liable for information blocking as providers, which might influence their EHR choices). Slightly related, that might be another of many arguments for physicians to switch the the Direct Primary Care model where patients pay a monthly membership fee – if you don’t submit claims, check eligibility, or make referrals electronically, HIPAA doesn’t apply to you because it’s an outdated administrative privacy law, not a privacy law, even though most consumers don’t realize that. Ditto consumer wearables and data held by employers and life insurance companies – HIPAA doesn’t apply.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents gave “digital transformation” the top spot in overused health tech terms. However, it’s a great descriptor for a nail salon. 

New poll to your right or here: Which health system goal carries the most weight when making technology investments?

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

AirStrip secures a $50 million growth credit facility from OrbiMed plus an additional equity investment, which it will use to expand its clinical surveillance, decision support, and remote monitoring solutions across health systems.

Government and Politics

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. uses a post on X to directly criticize CHAI and any non-governmental efforts to regulate the use of healthcare AI.

Senators press Deloitte and three other companies over widespread errors in Medicaid eligibility systems, raising concerns that beneficiaries will lose coverage when work requirements are implemented.

Austin Diagnostic Clinic (TX) restores parental access to children’s medical records under a settlement with Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office found that the clinic’s EHR was automatically revoking parental access when patients turned 12.

Senators consider a bill that would require healthcare facilities and plans to include a “human override” option in AI-driven clinical decision tools, ensuring that clinicians can reject AI recommendations without penalty. Covered entities would also be required to accept clinician feedback on AI-powered clinical decision support and would be prohibited from sharing data about clinician overrides that would identify a particular practitioner.

Other

A Pulitzer-winning climate publication covers Epic’s geothermal network, which it says is one of the largest geothermal heating and cooling networks in the world. The system includes 6,100 boreholes, and drilling started last month on another 2,400. Epic’s buildings use one-fourth of the amount of energy of typical office buildings from a combination of the geothermal system, high-efficiency lighting, and extra insulation and weatherization.

Sponsor Updates

• RLDatix staff raise $1,500 for SickKids Hospital at the Heatwave Volleyball Tournament.
• Ellkay, Navina, and Artera will exhibit at the Athenahealth Thrive Summit November 3-5 in Nashville.
• ReferWell appoints Charles Steller to its Board of Directors.
• Waystar will sponsor the CORE Combined Conference October 15-17 in New Orleans.

Blog Posts

• A little bot can spark big change: How RPA can bring better outcomes to organizations (Altera Digital Health)
• How employers can take back control of unnecessary pharmacy spending (Judi Health)
• 5 Ways to Strengthen the Cyber Conversation with CFOs (Fortified Health Security)
• Babies aren’t born with cell phones; your EHR didn’t get the memo. (Nordic)
• The Strategic Value of Autonomous Coding for Health Systems (Nym)
• Behind the Scenes: How We Build Trust into Every Line of Code (Surescripts)
• The Evolving Role of the Healthcare CIO (Symplr)

Sponsor Spotlight

A better patient payment experience starts with a smarter Epic integration. TrustCommerce brings over 15 years of experience helping Epic clients implement secure payment solutions that streamline workflows and improve financial outcomes. Our team ensures smooth onboarding, reliable support, and best-practice implementation. When it comes to payments, the right partner delivers more than technology, it delivers trust, efficiency, and lasting value across the entire care journey. Learn more. (Sponsor Spotlight is free for HIStalk Platinum sponsors).

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Sponsorship information.
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News 10/10/25

Top News

Amazon Pharmacy will fill prescriptions from kiosks in One Medical clinics and is talking to health systems about broader use.

Patients are sent a QR code in the Amazon app that is scanned at the kiosk to pick up the custom-labeled medication.

Reader Comments

From Made in the USA: “Re: H1-B visas. How are companies in this space being affected? My employer relied on H1-B employees heavily for years. They even restructured a major division in a way that nobody’s responsibilities changed whatsoever, but people got split into one role or the other. One of the roles allowed visa sponsorship, while the other didn’t. I am curious to know if other firms also rely on visas like we did, and how they are being impacted.” I welcome feedback from the front lines.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIStalk sponsors who are participating in the HLTH conference October 19-22: tell me about your activities and I’ll include them in my conference guide.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Bizmatics. Bizmatics Inc., a leading innovator in healthcare technology, empowers ambulatory medical practices to thrive in today’s evolving healthcare landscape. PrognoCIS EHR Software, our AI-integrated comprehensive suite of clinical and business productivity solutions, includes Practice Management, Medical Billing, Telemedicine, Patient Portal, and Occupational Medicine. PrognoCIS equips clinics of all sizes – from small to large and multi-specialty – with the tools they need to achieve operational efficiency, create better patient outcomes, and maximize revenue. Thanks to Bizmatics for supporting HIStalk.

I found this YouTube video that introduces PrognoCIS EHR.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Workforce solutions vendor HealthStream acquires Virsys12, which offers a provider data management suite.

Oracle releases renderings of its planned $1.2 billion, 70-acre riverfront headquarters campus in Nashville, which will include a Nobu hotel and restaurant and a public park.

Microsoft reportedly licenses Harvard Health Publishing content to provide answers to healthcare questions that are posed by Copilot users.

Sales

• University Hospital Heidelberg and the German Cancer Research Institute will replace three legacy PACS with Pro Medicus’s Visage 7 imaging.

People

Seattle Children’s hires Christopher Longhurst, MD, MS (UC San Diego Health) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

WellSky adds an ambient listening and transcription to its home health platform and will launch a voice assistant to complete OASIS documentation in December. 

A KLAS review of credentialing technology concludes that vendor relationships matter most, but full credentialing automation is not yet available and clinician usability lags.

TigerConnect earns FDA 510(k) clearance for its cloud-native alarm management solution.

Oracle Health announces GA of its Health Connection Hub data governance and reporting console.

All nine Epic-using health systems in Louisiana go live on MyChart Central, giving patients single sign-on, cross-facility access to records, messaging, and care management.

Wolters Kluwer Health updates Lippincott DocuCare, its EHR simulator for training nurses.

A Bain & Company and KLAS report finds that providers are prioritizing ROI-driven technology and are widely adopting ambient documentation and RCM solutions. Payers are focusing on care coordination and utilization management. Only 20% of providers prefer best-of-breed tools, and two-thirds of Epic customers would choose a given Epic option over a competitor’s better product. 

Government and Politics

A new KFF poll finds that 59% of respondents disapprove of the job performance of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, with most Republicans approving and most Democrats disapproving.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research offers an analysis of how healthcare organizations are adjusting to the federal government shutdown in the areas of finance, operations, IT, and supply chain.
• Judi Health releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Solving Pharmacy Benefits: Inside the RFP Process, with Josh Golden & Nic Bolitho.”
• Healthmonix is exhibiting at the NAACOS Fall Conference this week in Washington, DC.
• Netsmart opens a new office in Bengaluru, India.
• WellSky adds new SkySense AI capabilities to its Home Health EHR.
• MRO will present at the NCQA Health Innovation Summit October 14 in San Diego.

Blog Posts

• The future of EHRs in Wales: A turning point for digital health (Altera Digital Health)
• The Specialty Drug Surge: Can Hospitals & Specialty Pharmacies Keep Pace? (First Databank)
• Minnesota Social Care Summit: Highlights from the North Star State (Findhelp)
• CX Metrics That Matter: Optimizing Your Customer Experience for Growth (Five9)
• Lessons from the Frontlines: Navigating a Cybersecurity Crisis During Healthcare Integration (Fortified Health Security)
• Updated 2024 MIPS quality benchmarks: What providers need to know for 2024 final scores and 2025 performance tracking (Healthmonix)
• “Beautiful” for Providers? Economic Effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 on Hospitals, Health Systems & Medical Groups (Impact Advisors)
• Reactive to Proactive: Using Denial Management Software for Healthcare (Inovalon)
• Revolutionizing Patient Access: Mastering AI Search for Healthcare (Kyruus Health)
• From data to action: Leveraging technology and collaboration to advance community health (Meditech)
• You Call the Shots: NG8 Upgrade (Med Tech Solutions)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Sponsorship information.
Contact us.

News 10/8/25

Top News

The VA will add nine sites to its Oracle Health EHR rollout in 2026.

Four Michigan sites will also go live in 2026.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Survey: “What’s your take on the value of IT Managed Services?” Sponsor: CTG. Due to recent legislative changes, Healthcare organizations are under growing pressure to balance cost, performance, and innovation. CTG wants to hear from leaders like you on how IT managed services can help — or hinder — those goals in this quick, 5-minute survey. Your insights will help inform industry understanding and provide a clear picture of how IT managed services is currently being used.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Australia-based healthcare AI company Heidi raises $65 million in Series B funding and names Simon Kos, MBBS, MBA (Lumyra.AI) as chief medical officer. Heidi works with Beth Israel Lahey Health (MA) and MaineGeneral in the US.

Qualtrics, which offers customer and employee experience software, will acquire healthcare market research company Press Ganey for $6.75 billion.

Health system call center technology vendor Attuned Intelligence raises $13 million in seed funding.

Savista, which offers RCM outsourcing and technology, acquires the cancer registry business of Onco Services.

Image-guided surgery technology vendor MediView raises a $24 million Series A funding round.

Chartis acquires Healthlink Advisors.

Sales

• Community Health Network (IN) will implement TripleKey’s risk management platform.
• Tanner Health (GA) selects Robbie AI fall-prevention technology from Healthliant Ventures.

People

ReferWell names Mark Bergen, MS (Gebbs Healthcare Solutions) SVP of sales.

Susan Reagan (RLDatix) joins AssureCare as VP of sales.

Datavant names Josh Builder (CVS Health) as CTO.

Announcements and Implementations

The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital moves from piloting to fully implementing Veris Health’s remote patient monitoring platform.

CommonSpirit Health implements Safety Net Connect’s advanced care planning software at its four hospitals in Los Angeles as part of a pilot program for improved recuperative care coordination.

A new report from Trilliant Health titled “2025 Trends Shaping the Health Economy” contains some interesting points:

• Healthcare spending was $14,570 per person in 2023, 18% of GDP, with poor value.
• It poses the question, “How long can the US allocate more than $1 trillion each to Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the federal debt?” also noting that Medicaid spending makes up a disproportionate share of state budgets.
• The most expensive 10% of patients account for two-thirds of spending.
• Half of US adults are unable to access and/or pay for healthcare.
• “Inexplicable” price variation contributes to high costs, and negotiated rates vary wildly withing the same hospital by payer.
• The health status of Americans is deteriorating as chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, depression, and cancer rise.
• The supply of primary care physicians is insufficient and unevenly spread.
• Quality reporting and EHRs are expensive and provide low ROI.
• The UK’s NICE cost review program doesn’t recommend 75% of FDA-approved drugs, citing lack of clinical evidence and cost-effectiveness.
• Ambulatory surgery centers are capturing more surgical cases while charging less.
• Telehealth use is down, with non-behavioral virtual care declining 52% since 2020.
• The report predicts that hospital price caps are imminent unless value improves.

Government and Politics

Zus Health CEO and Athenahealth co-founder and CEO Jonathan Bush will reportedly announce this week that he is running as a Republican in Maine’s 2026 governor’s race.

Sponsor Updates

• Clinical Architecture staff volunteer with Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana.
• AdvancedMD announces AI-enhanced product updates across its EHR, practice management, and patient engagement solutions.
• Black Book Research offers an assessment of how the government shutdown is forcing sweeping furloughs and program suspensions at the FDA, CDC, NIH, CMS, and SAMHSA.
• CereCore joins the Oracle PartnerNetwork Program.
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes an infographic titled “How Managed Services Can Reduce Your Healthcare IT Spend.”
• AGS Health, HealthMark Group, MRO, Nym, RLDatix, SmarterDx, TruBridge, Vyne Medical, and Wolters Kluwer Health will exhibit at AHIMA 25 October 12-14 in Minneapolis.

Blog Posts

• Implementing Automation in Appeals Management (AGS Health)
• Stop the spread: How infection preventionists can combat infodemics (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Three takes on transforming hospital admin with tech (Altera Digital Health)
• The Perennial Cybersecurity Problem: Tool Proliferation and the Talent Crisis (Clearwater)
• What Is A Net Promoter Score, And What Does It Measure? (Concord Technologies)
• Pharmacy Benefits 101: Successful Implementations (Judi Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Send news or rumors.
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Sponsorship information.
Contact us.

Monday Morning Update 10/6/25

Top News

The Cancer AI Alliance, a research collaboration of four major cancer centers, launches a platform that securely centralizes anonymized data from its members to train AI models.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents aren’t so loyal to their doctors that they will tolerate administrative frustration.

New poll to your right or here: What health tech term is most overused? That inspired me to check my HISsies awards from 10 years ago, where I was reminded that the most overused buzzword was “big data.”

I consummated my occasional urge this week to binge my favorite finance thriller movies: “Wall Street,” “The Big Short,” “Boiler Room,” and “Margin Call.” It was either impossible or expensive to do this before rollout of ad-supported streaming channels such as Pluto TV, Tubi, and The Roku Channel.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Uniform virtual care platform vendor Collette Health acquires the Virtual Nursing Academy, which provides education for deploying virtual nursing in health systems.

Former pharmacy chain giant Rite Aid closes its last drugstores, adding to the one-third of US pharmacies that shut down between 2010 and 2021.

People

TruBridge hires Michael Daughton, MBA (EnableComp) as chief business officer.

Lisa Dykstra, CHIME advisor and former Lurie Children’s Hospital SVP/CIO, died last week at 55.

Announcements and Implementations

England requires all GP practices to keep online consultation tools active 8 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. on weekdays, allowing patients to request appointments, ask questions, and describe symptoms without joining “the 8 a.m. scramble.” Some practices disable apps once slots fill, driving 6.6% of patients who can’t get through by phone to the ED. One practice cut appointment wait from 14 days to three, with 95% of patients seen within a week.

Sponsor Updates

• Inovalon will host its annual Empower summit November 2-4 in Washington, DC.
• Netsmart introduces its new “Voices of Care” podcast.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Matthew Denenberg, MD.
• Waystar will exhibit at the PACHC Annual Conference and Clinical Summit October 7-9 in Lancaster, PA.
• WellSky releases a new report titled “Addressing today’s healthcare workforce challenges.”

Blog Posts

• Improving Referral Workflows: A Key Driver for Improving Patient Experience and Collections (Vyne Medical)
• 6 Ways Revenue Cycle Leaders Can Balance Urgency With Empathy (Tegria)
• Single-entry point: Addressing the patient record access problem in the NHS (Nordic)
• The Strategic Value of Autonomous Coding for Health Systems (Nym)
• A Q&A with Dr. Andrew Mellin on Patient Access and the Power of a Direct Connection (Surescripts)
• From Cerner to Oracle Health: Lessons on Partnerships, Governance and the Future of AI (CereCore)

Contacts

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

News 10/3/25

Top News

Medicare’s telehealth flexibilities lapse due to the federal government’s shutdown, with these changes:

• Geographic restrictions are restored.
• Medicare patients won’t be able to receive services in their homes.
• An initial In-person visit will be required within the six months before a behavioral or mental telehealth service and then annually.
• Audio-only telehealth services are no longer permitted.
• The Acute Hospital Care at Home program is shut down, forcing hospitals to move those patients, some of whom have mobility, transportation, and immune deficiency limitations, to overcrowded inpatient programs. All participating patients had to be discharged or moved back into the hospital by Tuesday.
• Providers can continue to offer services to Medicare patients. They can hold those bills until the shutdown is resolved, but they are not guaranteed that Congress will authorize retroactive payments as it has in the past.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIStalk sponsors who are participating in the HLTH conference October 19-22: tell me about your activities and I’ll include them in my conference guide.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Survey: “What’s your take on the value of IT Managed Services?” Sponsor: CTG. Due to recent legislative changes, healthcare organizations are under growing pressure to balance cost, performance, and innovation. CTG wants to hear from leaders like you on how IT managed services can help — or hinder — those goals in this quick, 5-minute survey. Your insights will help inform industry understanding and provide a clear picture of how IT managed services is currently being used.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Fortified Health Security acquires cybersecurity firm Latitude Information Security.

Veradigm’s special investor update call offered no details on its anticipated Nasdaq relisting. The company said that its financials remain sound, but it again withheld profit metrics, citing the unresolved revenue recognition discrepancies that led to its delisting. It continues to hope to become current on SEC filings and have shares relisted sometime in 2026.

Waystar closes its $1.25 billion acquisition of Iodine.

General Catalyst’s HATCo closes its $500 million acquisition of Akron-based Summa Health, two years after it was announced. The VC firm will convert Summa to a for-profit and use it as a living laboratory for the technology products of GC’s portfolio companies.

People

TigerConnect hires Peter Stetson, MD, MA (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) as CMIO and Sheeza Hussain (Press Ganey) as chief growth officer.

NextGen Healthcare promotes Srinivas Velamoor, MBA to president and CEO. He replaces David Sides, who will remain an investor and board member.

Government and Politics

The VA updates its AI strategy, which includes:

• Rollout of AI-powered digital assistants for appointment scheduling and form submissions.
• Enhance the EHR as a “more adaptive, context-aware copilot” by adding real-time transcription.
• Automate claims processing.
• Use AI copilots and agents to handle routine inquiries and administrative tasks.
• Support staff by using AI to retrieve and summarize information from all VA sources.

HHS officials say that the administration does not support private sector vetting of AI tools in healthcare. Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill, who is a technology investor, tells Politico that the Coalition for Health AI could become a “cartel” that allows big companies to squelch startups.

Privacy and Security

Meta will use conversations with its AI products for targeted advertising. Its upcoming privacy update also authorizes using data that is captured by its smart glasses and its AI image generator to target ads on Facebook and Instagram, with no opt-out option offered.

Other

Medical school professor Robert Wachter, MD provides interesting analysis of the “AI knowledge war” among OpenEvidence, Wolters Kluwer’s UpToDate, and Epic. Notes:

• UpToDate’s medical literature content is overseen by thousands of human experts.
• OpenEvidence quickly became popular because it could analyze a full clinical case and provide an immediately useful and accurate AI “curbside consult.” Wachter says that is comparable to the difference between a Google search result and getting more in-depth, human-like answers from a GPT.
• UpToDate just added some AI capabilities, but its expert-curated approach to evidence still contrasts with OpenEvidence’s direct literature search. According to Wolters Kluwer’s chief medical officer, those experts add value because they “understand the intersection of evidence, real-world patient care, the fact that there isn’t a randomized study for everything, and they have judgment.”
• Epic’s Art and Cosmos have access to huge amounts of EHR treatment and outcomes data that UpToDate and OpenEvidence don’t have, although Wachter is not yet convinced that their results will be more helpful in patient care.
• He sees Epic’s big advantage as allowing doctors to ask specific questions without typing in the patient’s situation, which could offer “the capacity to transform the practice of medicine.”

Keep the pumpkin-everything products — my most-anticipated fall treat is Mr. Autumn Man.

Sponsor Updates

• ISG Software Research 2025 Data Platforms Buyers Guide ranks InterSystems as an overall leader.
• AGS Health wins a UiPath AI25 Award for its use of agentic AI automation to assist providers in managing the rising rate of healthcare claim denials.
• Inovalon announces that its advanced analytics and real-world data capabilities are now available on Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud for Healthcare & Life Sciences.
• Surescripts releases a new report that details key drivers of clinician burnout, including administrative burdens and inefficiencies.
• Kyruus Health gives its customers the ability to manage provider and practice profiles on Healthgrades and its syndication partners.
• Symplr creates a Nurse Executive Advisory Council, which will be chaired by Symplr Chief Clinical Officer Susan Grant, DNP, RN.
• Waystar closes its acquisition of Iodine Software.
• Ellkay sponsors the Bergen New Bridge Medical Center (NJ) Golf Outing.
• DrFirst announces the 2025 Healthiverse Heroes Award Winners, including HIStalk sponsor Elsevier.
• Findhelp welcomes new customers UAB Medicine (AL), The Lockhouse Group, and the University of Oklahoma Health Campus.

Blog Posts

• Enabling clinicians to be clinicians (Altera Digital Health)
• Data Accessibility is Key to Healthcare Analytics (Dimensional Insight)
• From Fragmented to Fast: Future-Proofing Healthcare CX with AI and Agent Collaboration (Five9)
• CISO Brief: Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2025 (Fortified Health Security)
• TEAM is mandatory. Success isn’t. What hospitals must do now to prepare. (Healthmonix)
• Best Claims Management Software for Hospitals: What to Look For (Inovalon)
• Strengthening Rural Care: What States Need to Know About the CMS Rural Health Transformation Program (Konza Health)
• Celebrating Our Inaugural 2025 Care Access Champions: Announcing Our Medical Group Winners (Kyruus Health)
• Charting healthcare’s future through partnership: Highlights from Meditech Live 25 (Meditech)
• How Proactive Healthcare IT Support Prevents Costly System Failures (Med Tech Solutions)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 10/1/25

Top News

Specialty care coordination company Switchboard Health acquires Conduce Health, which offers AI-powered referral management and analytics software for specialty care.

I interviewed Conduce Health CEO Najib Jai, MD, MBA earlier this year.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Survey: “What’s your take on the value of IT Managed Services?” Sponsor: CTG. Due to recent legislative changes, Healthcare organizations are under growing pressure to balance cost, performance, and innovation. CTG wants to hear from leaders like you on how IT managed services can help — or hinder — those goals in this quick, 5-minute survey. Your insights will help inform industry understanding and provide a clear picture of how IT managed services is currently being used.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Sunstone Partners acquires a majority stake in healthcare cybersecurity and compliance company Clearwater.

CareCloud will acquire the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s MAP App, a revenue cycle performance benchmarking tool used by providers.

Assort Health raises $76 million in a Series B round, bringing total funding to $102 million since launching in 2023. It offers specialty-specific AI voice agents for inbound patient phone calls.

Confido Health raises $10 million in a Series A round to expand its AI voice agent platform for appointment scheduling and patient access.

Investors file a class action lawsuit against online weight loss clinic operator LifeMD, claiming that executives touted strong Q1 results and raised guidance without disclosing high acquisition costs and refunds. The company then missed Q2 targets, cut guidance, and saw shares fall 44% in one day. LFMD shares are down 80% from their all-time high in early 2021, valuing the company at $322 million.

Huntzinger Management Group renames itself to Avarion.

People

Elsevier promotes Brent Gordon to president of its Health Education business unit.

Clearwater promotes Baxter Lee to president. He takes over from Steve Cagle, who becomes a board advisor.

ChristianaCare names Petrena Saunders, DNP, RN (Vizzia Technologies) CNIO.

David Bartley, MBA (MedeAnalytics) joins Iris Telehealth as chief solutions officer.

Sales

• Seattle Children’s will implement Abridge’s ambient clinical documentation software across its hospital following a 90-day pilot.

Announcements and Implementations

Beebe Healthcare (DE) will go live on Epic next month.

RevSpring announces GA of its new referral management software.

Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in England will roll out Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise EHR in November.

Innovaccer develops a Social and Community Health Information Exchange for public sector agencies.

Trilliant releases SimilarityIndex Hospitals, a free tool that allows hospitals to compare their key operating metrics with those of the 50 most similar US hospitals.

Ambience Healthcare launches an inpatient ICD-10 CDI assistant that helps hospitalists capture precise, compliant diagnoses during the encounter.

Government and Politics

UK Prime Minister Keith Starmer announces NHS Online, a virtual service launching in 2027 that will let GP-referred patients speak to specialists by phone or video. The model draws on projects such as University Hospital Southampton’s, where irritable bowel disease patients could request help as needed, cutting in-person visits by 73% and wait times by 58%.

Other

Golisano Children’s Hospital’s NICU increases the survival rates for babies born at 22 to 24 weeks from 14.3% to 70% after creating a collaborative initiative that includes adding protocols to its EHR.

Sponsor Updates

• ReferWell staff donate handmade bookmarks and gently used books to Books 4 Everyone.
• CereCore releases a new podcast titled “From Cerner to Oracle Health: Building Partnerships That Last.”
• SelectQuote uses Findhelp’s platform to connect its low-income Medicare customers with free and reduced-cost social services.
• KLAS Research recognizes significant satisfaction gains amongst Agfa HealthCare customers who use the company’s Enterprise Imaging VNA and Xero Viewer.
• Western Australia Health implements Altera Digital Health’s Opal document management solution.
• AvaSure announces the 2025 AvaPrize Award Winners, recognizing innovation and excellence in virtual care.
• Canopii Collaborative names Ben Hintz account executive.
• Judi Health becomes the exclusive Jersey Patch Partner of the Charlotte Hornets.
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of “The Informonster Podcast” titled “PIQI Update and HL7 Connectathon Recap.”
• The “Empowered Patient” podcast features CliniComp SVP of Client Services Sandra Johnson in an episode titled “Hospital CIOs Setting Priorities and Plans to Use AI.”
• Concord Technologies launches the Concord Connect Ignition Program to help healthcare organizations transition from manual document processing to AI-driven, Straight-Through Processing.
• Divurgent names Amanda Young director of client service.

Blog Posts

• FY 2026 ICD-10-CM: What Coding Leaders Need to Know (AGS Health)
• Epic AI Strategy: Getting AI Approved in an Ever-Changing Landscape (CereCore)
• Enhancing medication safety through technology: A pharmacist’s perspective (Altera Digital Health)
• Revenue cycle optimization: Moving beyond the buzzwords (Cardamom)
• Unifying Healthcare Communication: Why Direct Secure Messaging (DSM) Matters (Concord Technologies)
• Defending Healthcare’s Frontline with Advanced Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (CloudWave)
• Key Takeaways from DIUC25 (Dimensional Insight)
• Take Heart: Medication Adherence Programs Solve Problems Before They Start (DrFirst)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Monday Morning Update 9/29/25

Top News

KLAS interviews 35 Epic customers at UGM following the company’s AI announcements. Most said that Epic’s move into ambient speech was expected.

Customers generally expect Epic’s product to be cheaper and better integrated than those of competitors.

Some respondents worry that Epic’s expanding footprint will stifle competition and innovation, although more than half expect to implement Epic’s ambient speech offering within two years.

Reader Comments

From Skeptical CIO: “Re: Epic’s ambient speech. Everyone assumes it will be cheaper than Nuance or Abridge, but Epic add-ons haven’t exactly reduced overall costs. The Epic tax keeps going up while reducing competitor innovation. I don’t buy the argument that Epic will run this as a loss leader.”

From Grizzled Analyst: “Re: federal telehealth coverage. Ending with a shutdown and turning off a decade of progress with the stroke of a Congressional pen. Hospitals spent millions on virtual care platforms, patients got used to access, and now it’s all at risk because of political brinkmanship.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents don’t expect personal financial improvement next year, with federal government volatility most often cited as the cause.

New poll to your right or here: Would you change doctors over non-clinical problems such as staff behavior, billing errors, bad tech, or scheduling headaches? It probably depends on how much you rely on continuity of care, whether you perceive your physician as better than the alternatives, or who takes your insurance. Medical practices are odd that much of the management and public-facing behavior is left to unqualified or unmotivated employees because doctors are poor managers. 

Pondering: 

• Would outcomes differ if health system C-level executives, especially those who are going all-in on AI, were themselves replaced by AI that was trained on hospital data? That might be even more relevant to for-profit company C-level folks, who seem to misfire often enough that maybe AI can’t do worse while saving huge annual salaries.
• With the raft of upcoming MyChart enhancements, should it work like Uber where doctors and patients rate each other for future consideration in booking appointments?
• Were you really “promoted” if your new job is higher on the org chart but comes with no increase in pay? I admit that I accepted an offer like that once, and would do so again, because (a) the office view was killer; and (b) the alternative was to hope they didn’t hire an insufferable idiot as my new boss. The health system claimed that they couldn’t afford to pay me more, which wasn’t the strongest argument since I had IT access to its salaries and financials.

Listening: The Favors, a collaboration between apparently popular (judging from Spotify stream counts) Finneas O’Connell (“Finneas,” a 10-time Grammy winner and Billie Eilish’s brother and collaborator) and Ashley Willson (“Ashe”). They wrote all the songs on their new release. It’s not usually my kind of genre, but I’ve played the album several times and can’t get enough. My painfully obvious prediction is that they will soon approach household name status, probably both individually and collectively.

Meanwhile, I’m cooling on podcasts just as quickly as I embraced them. I tried all the reader suggestions, but endless commercials are so jarring and distracting that I can’t focus on the story.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Survey: “What’s your take on the value of IT Managed Services?” Sponsor: CTG. Due to recent legislative changes, Healthcare organizations are under growing pressure to balance cost, performance, and innovation. CTG wants to hear from leaders like you on how IT managed services can help — or hinder — those goals in this quick, 5-minute survey. Your insights will help inform industry understanding and provide a clear picture of how IT managed services is currently being used.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Veradigm will provide a business update after Tuesday’s market close, raising speculation that it will make an announcement about Nasdaq relisting.

Bonsai Health, whose AI agents automate the front-office workflows of medical practices, raises $7 million in seed funding. Founders Travis Schneider and Luke Kervin have launched three previous companies together, most recently PatientPop, which merged with Kareo in late 2021 to form Tebra.

People

Randall Sanborn, MS (MyMichigan Health) joins Aspirus Health as VP of system IT process and emerging technologies.

Announcements and Implementations

A Black Book Research poll of physician practice managers finds rapid growth in digital tool use and stronger EHR/RCM vendor ties, but half worry that collections will drop with medical debt removed from credit reports, while 81% don’t trust their system’s AI prompts due to lack of transparency and auditability. The report notes that practice managers often don’t recognize or use the capabilities of their current systems.

A sponsored 9to5 Mac article highlights 100-bed Emory Hallandale Hospital’s deployment of Macs, IPads, IPhones, and Apple Watches that run Epic Hyperspace, including its native MacOS app.

A Canadian news network warns patients that Epic MyChart’s new user agreement requires arbitration and a class action waiver, though such clauses aren’t enforceable under the consumer protection laws of some provinces. It also notes that patients can instead use hospital-specific web version of MyChart, which doesn’t include those terms.

Yale School of Medicine researchers validate that consumer prices increase when hospitals acquire medical practices. Interesting facts:

• States do not enforce antitrust laws.
• Healthcare quality doesn’t usually improve post-acquisition because “doctors are rather good at providing care across corporate boundaries” due to experience navigating insurance and referrals.
• Hospitals aren’t required to report practice acquisitions to regulators, so the authors had to develop an AI algorithm that probed available records to find doctors who changed employment from private practices to hospitals.
• Prices go up because hospitals press employed doctors to keep referrals in-house, insurers are reluctant to remove practices from their networks when that would mean removing the hospital as well, and consolidation increases market power.

Government and Politics

Politico reports that a looming federal shutdown, which can be avoided only if Congress passes a funding bill by Tuesday night, would end Medicare’s coverage of telehealth visits this week.

The UK government creates a National Commission on the Regulation of AI in Healthcare, which will accelerate NHS adoption of AI by advising on regulation and reviewing technology such as ambient voice that falls into a regulatory gray area. The group’s chair is University of Birmingham medical professor Alastair Denniston, MBBChir, MA, PhD.

Other

My favorite headline of the week calls Oprah an influential “woo-woo wellness” aficionado, only lightly mentioning that she gave our Medicare leader an early, scrub-wearing medutainment platform to peddle miracle cures and fad diets.

Sponsor Updates

• PerfectServe sponsors the American Heart Association’s Greater Washington Golf Tournament.
• RLDatix launches its new Hello from RLD campaign, reintroducing the company in the wake of its major transformations over the last few years.
• Arcadia, MRO, Healthmonix, and Navina will exhibit at the NAACOS Fall 2025 Conference October 8-10 in Washington, DC.
• Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the backdoor” podcast titled “The Link Between Disney Imagineering and Healthcare Security Teams – Making the Impossible Possible with guest Bob Weis.”
• Waystar will exhibit at the KPCA Annual Conference October 1-3 in Covington, KY.

Blog Posts

• How Kern Medical Closed a $963K Gap and Gained $3M in 60 Days (Inovalon)
• Prioritizing Mental Health: 67% of Medical Groups Have a Behavioral Health Specialist on Staff (AdvancedMD)
• Reimagine trust for today’s healthcare with UpToDate Expert AI (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• How Autonomous Coding Keeps Pace with AMA/CMS and Simplifies Update Season (Nym)
• Demystifying Healthcare Payments: Complexity, Change, and What’s Next (TrustCommerce a Sphere company)
• And the 2025 Surescripts White Coat Award Winners Are… (Surescripts)
• Confronting the Crisis of Workplace Violence in Healthcare (Symplr)
• 4 Key Takeaways From Meditech Live 2025 (Tegria)

Contacts

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

News 9/26/25

Top News

Epic announces these items at Thursday’s Open@Epic:

• MyChart Central, which adds biometric login using Epic ID and allows retrieval of a patient’s records from any participating organization.
• Connection of home medical devices without external apps using Epic’s new Bluetooth Generic Health Sensor specification.
• Real-time “blue dot” patient wayfinding in MyChart (November 2025).
• Additional prior authorization APIs (February 2026).
• Developer licenses for the Clarity Data Model.
• Staff duress APIs (February 2026).
• Updates to Open.Epic and Epic’s Vendor Services, including a five-step guide with developer roadmap, 40 developer playbooks, and expanded Sandbox testing capabilities.

Reader Comments

From Concerned Clinical Staff: “Re: Children’s Mercy Kansas City. Rolling out the Go Helen Nurse Concierge app ahead of Epic implementation. Does anyone have more information on the company? It seems duplicative with Epic’s Rover and Bedside and lack of Epic integration seems like a prime situation for errors in allergies, NPO, etc.” My understanding is that patients use the company’s voice app to make non-clinical, hospitality-type requests from their rooms (bring ice, order meals, etc.) that are then routed internally by the company’s concierge team. Nurses can also make in-room requests to have supplies brought to the room. The hospital is piloting Helen.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIStalk sponsors who are participating in the HLTH conference October 19-22: tell me about your activities and I’ll include them in my conference guide.

I’m slowly warming up to podcasts after years of dismissing them, and I now see why they’re perfect for long walks and road trips. My first full series, which I’ve actually listened to twice, is the Peabody-winning investigative documentary “S-Town.” It’s gripping, provided you aren’t put off by profanity. Since its 2017 release, it has been downloaded 200 million times, which may make it the most-listened-to podcast ever. The experience reminds me of 1940s radio drama, where intimacy and imagination fill the mental space more powerfully in the absence of visuals.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Concord Technologies. Concord Technologies is a leading provider of Secure Document Exchange, Intelligent Document Processing, and Interoperability solutions to healthcare providers, payers, and  other highly regulated businesses. For more than 20 years, billions of sensitive records containing valuable patient information have been reliably, accurately, and securely exchanged across Concord’s digital health network, and today, the company processes more than 4 billion pages of protected data each year. The company is also recognized for its best-in-class development of new artificial intelligence technologies, including Concord’s Practical AI approach to solving the most pervasive administrative challenges in the healthcare industry and for pioneering end-to-end Straight-Through Processing of healthcare data into the system of record. Thanks to Concord Technologies for supporting HIStalk.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Datavant acquires DigitalOwl, which summarizes patient records for law and insurance firms.

AmplifyMD, which offers hospitals a multispecialty virtual care platform and physician network, raises a $20 million Series B round.

Oracle awards its newly announced co-CEOs stock options worth $350 million, $250 million for Clay Magouyrk and $100 million for Mike Sicilia.

Sales

• Java Medical Group will expand its use of TruBridge’s technology and services at Russellville Hospital (AL).
• Bethany Children’s Health Center will implement Commure’s documentation and workflow platform, integrated with Meditech.
• Primary care provider Marathon Health chooses Medbridge’s Pathways musculoskeletal care platform.

People

Intermountain Health promotes Mike Harmer, MPA to VP of ERP digital services.

Announcements and Implementations

CommonSpirit Health will use ESO’s EMS–hospital integration platform to give nearly 4,000 Utah first responders real-time access to the hospital outcomes data of patients they have transported.

CareCloud launches a hospital-focused physician relationship management platform obtained from its acquisition of Medsphere one month ago.

AI meeting assistant vendor Fireflies.ai rolls out Fireflies for Healthcare, a HIPAA-compliant documentation platform that integrates with EHRs via Chrome and generates clinical notes, patient summaries, referral letters, sick notes, and follow-up scheduling. Plans start at $10 per provider per month.

WellSky launches the AI-supported WellSky CarePort Referral Intake solution.

Wolters Kluwer Health announces UpToDate Expert AI, which allows clinicians to access evidence-based answers at the point of care.

The Joint Commission recognizes Tampa General Hospital with its inaugural innovation award, citing its work with Palantir, implement of ambient documentation, use of Apella’s OR safety computer vision technology, and its hospital-at-home program.

Ambience Healthcare introduces HCC Compliance Validator, which verifies in real time that clinician-selected diagnoses are substantiated for CMS compliance.

Access Community Health Network collaborates with Epic and the Social Security Administration to exchange medical records electronically to speed up disability benefit review.

Sutter Health launches Sutter Sync, developed with Epic, to send readings from its proprietary blood pressure cuff, scale, and glucometer directly to Epic’s MyChart app on the patient’s phone, eliminating the need for a separate device app. Epic mentioned its Bluetooth Generic Health Sensor specification this week at Open@Epic.

Other

A study finds that private equity hospital takeovers are linked to staff and salary cuts, more patient transfers to other hospitals, and increased ED deaths.

ProPublica details an insurer’s denial of mental health coverage for a man who tried to commit suicide twice. His wife accuses the company of “weaponized incompetence” for intentionally throwing up barriers such as publishing incorrect fax numbers and blocking her access to billing codes, denial reasons, and medical records that her husband had authorized her to see.  

Sponsor Updates

• Medicomp Systems releases a new episode of its “Tell Me Where IT Hurts” podcast featuring Health Gorilla Chief Medical Officer Steven Lane, MD.
• The “NCPDPunscripted” podcast features First Databank VP of Clinical Network Services Lathe Bigler.
• AvaSure, First Databank, Inovalon, PerfectServe, Symplr, and Wolters Kluwer Health will exhibit at the ANA Magnet & Pathway Conference October 8-10 in Atlanta.
• Healthcare IT Leaders publishes a new guide titled “The Ultimate Workday Resource Planning & Staffing Guide.”
• Gartner recognizes Linus Health in its Hype Cycle for Digital Care Delivery, 2025, under the category of digital clinical voice analysis.
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a new episode of its “Visionary Voices” podcast titled “Agentic AI in Healthcare,” featuring Sameer Sethi from Hackensack Meridian Health.

Blog Posts

• Technology can help meet patients where they are (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• New Jersey Social Care Summit: Highlights from the Garden State (Findhelp)
• Why Five9 in Epic’s Toolbox Program Sets a New Standard for Healthcare CX (Five9)
• Why Unstructured Data Is a Hidden Risk (Fortified Health Security)
• Be Ready Before Disaster Strikes: Building an Effective Business Continuity Plan (Impact Advisors)
• How to improve the patient financial experience: Address these 8 reasons why patients do not pay their medical bills (Inbox Health)
• Inside a Mental Health Provider’s Revenue Cycle Transformation (Inovalon)
• How Should AI Be Used in Healthcare? A Guide to Intentional Implementation (Kyruus Health)

Sponsor Spotlight

Wolters Kluwer Health announces UpToDate Expert AI, GenAI for clinicians, built by clinicians. Clinicians get fast, reliable, evidence-based answers for patient care in a chatbot-style interface. UpToDate Expert AI is purpose-built for centralized, enterprise-wide deployment and management. For health system administrators, Wolters Kluwer’s well-established ecosystem approach is committed to supporting enterprise needs for transparency, compliance, and governance. And, UpToDate is embedded in top digital health tech platforms, AI scribes, and EHRs ensuring workflow integration. See details. (Sponsor Spotlight is free for HIStalk Platinum sponsors).

Contacts

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

News 9/24/25

Top News

Oracle promotes Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia to co-CEOS, replacing Safra Catz.

Magouyrk was president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and has been with the company 11 years. Sicilia joined the company in 2008 and most recently was president of Oracle Industries. Both were heavily involved with Oracle’s AI work.

Sicilia, a former lobbyist, was an early post-acquisition spokesperson for Oracle in several federal hearings about the VA’s stalled Oracle Health project. He is a regular critic of Epic and CEO Judy Faulkner. CTO Larry Ellison said, “Mike has spent the last several years modernizing Oracle’s Industry applications businesses, including Oracle Health, by completely rebuilding those applications using the latest AI technologies.”

The promotions were first disclosed in a June SEC filing.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Patient communications and payment solutions RevSpring will acquire Kyruus Health, which offers provider search and scheduling.

Pharmacy benefit manager and administrator Capital Rx rebrands to Judi Health, the name of its AI-powered health benefit management platform, and announces $400 million in new funding. The company has raised $732 million since its 2017 launch. I interviewed CEO AJ Loiacono last October.

Patient Square Capital will acquire tech-enabled group purchasing and supply chain company Premier Inc. in a $2.6 billion take-private deal. Premier, which went public in 2013, has been evaluating strategic alternatives for two years.

Prosper AI raises $5 million in seed funding. The company develops AI voice agents for patient access and administrative workflows.

Enterprise telehealth vendor Caregility announces $25.1 million in new funding, bringing its total raised to $92 million.

Diabetes software vendor Glooko acquires Monarch Medical Technologies, which offers a glucose management system. Glooko’s CEO says the acquisition will support its efforts to deliver a full hospital-to-home service.

Sales

• The New York Office of Mental Health will implement Oracle Health’s EHR across 24 inpatient psychiatric facilities and 300 outpatient programs.
• Yale New Haven Health (CT) will roll out Artisight’s Smart Hospital Platform, initially focusing on virtual nursing.

People

ReferWell names Loren Koerber (Medecision) VP of strategic account management.

Jason Bond, MBA (CareAbout Health) joins Sevaro Health as CFO and SVP of strategy.

Matt Rockhold (GE HealthCare) joins Thynk Health as chief commercial officer.

Joe Moscola, PA, MBA (Northwell Health) leaves the organization and will offer advisory consulting services.

Allymar Health Solutions hires Cecil Lynch, MD, MSc (Accenture) as CMIO.

Scottsdale Institute appoints John Glaser, PhD (Harvard Medical School) as board chair, replacing co-founder Don Wegmiller.

Announcements and Implementations

Sutter Health (CA) will use Epic-connected medical devices in its Sutter Sync digital care program for patients with chronic conditions and pregnancy.

Quest Diagnostics announces a collaboration with Epic to integrate its lab operations nationally, streamlining ordering, results, billing, and patient engagement through technologies like MyChart as part of its Project Nova initiative

Micromedex adds AI-powered drug information search for clinical decision support.

Government and Politics

VA Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office CNIO Toni Phillips, RN touts the new Oracle Health-based federal EHR’s streamlined medication administration capabilities, noting that the clicks to scan patient IDs have been reduced from 15 to two.

Sponsor Updates

• Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust’s review of Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise EPR finds that the system has delivered significant advancements in care quality, patient safety, and clinical efficiency.
• Black Book Research publishes a new report titled “The Middleware Mandate.”
• Linus Health, Navina, and Wolters Kluwer Health will exhibit at AAFP FMX October 5-9 in Anaheim, CA.
• Clinical Architecture sponsors CHIME Innovation Summit Southwest through September 25 in Irving, TX.
• Consensus Cloud Solutions will exhibit at the HIMSS Gulf Coast Conference September 24-26 in New Orleans.
• Divurgent releases a new episode of “The Vurge” podcast celebrating the company’s 18^th anniversary.
• Canopii Collaborative names Brady Thomas account executive.
• Symplr adds capabilities to its Operations Platform that unify provider data.
• Surescripts announces the 11 winners of its 2025 Surescripts White Coat Award.

Blog Posts

• Emerging Trends and Challenges in Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management (AGS Health)
• How clinical decision tools improve healthcare and potentially reduce malpractice risk (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Arcadia Customers Outperform National Average in 2024 MSSP (Arcadia)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 9/22/25

Top News

The American College of Medical Informatics will present its Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence to Christopher Chute, MD, DrPH at the AMIA annual meeting November 15-19 in Atlanta.

He is an informatics professor and head of biomedical informatics and data science at Johns Hopkins University and professor emeritus of biomedical informatics at Mayo Clinic, a division he founded and chaired for 20 years.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The vast majority of poll respondents don’t agree with Larry Ellison’s belief that Oracle’s size and application development technology gives it a strong competitive advantage over Epic. Reader Jim says this:

I think Epic’s customer focused strategy and market size gives it a strategic advantage. Oracle has significantly underestimated what it takes to win in healthcare. Healthcare requires a long-term view and consistency even when profits are elusive. Mass layoffs, major customer losses, and not mentioning healthcare in their quarterly presentations supports my belief.

New poll to your right or here: Do you expect your personal financial situation to improve in 2026? Leave a poll comment to elaborate further.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Canopii Collaborative. Canopii is a healthcare IT services firm that specializes in providing consulting services for health plans and health systems. Our primary focus is ensuring that you achieve the maximum value of your Epic software. Leveraging deep domain expertise in the Epic ecosystem, Canopii offers personalized attention to clients and delivers measurable, sustainable results. We are committed to improving healthcare outcomes by optimizing systems, increasing efficiency, and helping clients achieve their strategic goals. Thanks to Canopii for supporting HIStalk.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Morgan Stanley predicts that AI will generate “trillions of dollars in savings” by 2050, including $600 billion from drug development and $900 billion from hospital costs.

Investigative outlet The Lever reports that Epic’s new MyChart user agreement requires users to accept binding arbitration and a class action waiver, with patients who decline being redirected to a downgraded version of the portal.

People

Ganesh Persad, MSBI (Emory Healthcare) joins Cottage Health as VP/CIO.

UnitedHealth Group promotes Sandeep Dadlani, MMS, MBA to CEO of Optum Insight, its technology-enabled services business that includes the acquired Change Healthcare.

Announcements and Implementations

Evidently launches Ask Evidently, an AI chat tool that embeds in any EHR and lets users query information in the patient’s chart.

Joint Commission and the Coalition for Health AI publish “Guidance on Responsible Use of AI in Healthcare,” which provides internal governance for US health systems on implementing AI at scale.

University Hospitals launches its whole-hospital Connected Care Team initiative at UH Lake West, where it provides virtual nursing support to inpatient nursing units.

A new KLAS report reviews patient communications.

Other

A new Harris Poll survey finds that half of healthcare workers will seek or take a new job next year, although two-thirds say they would stay if their employers provide tuition support. Half of healthcare employers say that lack of advancement and educational opportunities drive employees to seek jobs elsewhere. Employees cite AI as the top skill they expect to need within five years, although 42% worry that it will take their jobs. 

A therapist accidentally shares his screen during a virtual session, allowing the patient to see that he is pasting their conversation into ChatGPT to suggest responses. In another case, a therapist who is replying via email to a grieving patient forgets to delete the AI prompt header, “Here’s a more human, heartfelt version with a gentle, conversational tone.” Patients not only feel misled, but unhappy when they find out that their private thoughts are being exposed to a tool that offers limited privacy assurances.

Sponsor Updates

• PerfectServe surpasses $100 million in contracted annual recurring revenue, a testament to the accelerating adoption of its Unite healthcare communication and scheduling platform.
• Black Book Research announces that Meditech Expanse has been ranked the top EHR for community hospitals under 150 beds.
• Surescripts publishes a new data brief titled “Care Teams Seek Tools to Improve the Patient Experience.”
• Meditech announces that customers are now live with the latest workflow advancements to its Traverse Exchange interoperability solution, which now includes consolidated patient summaries.
• Altera Digital Health, Artera, HealthMark Group, Infinx, Meditech, MRO, Nym, PerfectServe, TruBridge, and Waystar will exhibit at the MGMA Leaders Conference September 28-October 1 in Orlando.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health” podcast titled “Interview with Justin Schrager, MD and Nick Sterling, MD, PhD.”

Blog Posts

• Key insights from healthcare leaders on redesigning care models around nursing priorities (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Going Beyond Your KLAS Measurement: Turn EHR Experience Data into Actionable IT Conversations (Goliath Technologies)
• 5 Things Healthcare Leaders Want from AI in 2025 and Beyond (Netsmart)
• Beyond the sandbox: Building real infrastructure for clinician-led innovation (Nordic)
• The Evolution of ICD Coding: What to Expect with ICD-11 (Nym)
• New AI‑Powered Physical Threats to Healthcare—and How to Prepare (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Digital Experience Is the Patient Experience (Praia Health)
• The denial dilemma: How AI is reducing the burden of prior authorization (WellSky)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 9/19/25

Top News

Sevaro Health raises $39 million in a Series B funding round.

The company’s Synapse AI technology connects hospital-based providers with virtual neurology care.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Bambu Ventures and Innova Capital Partners acquire telehealth company Lemonaid Health from what’s left of 23andMe, which is currently in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings, for $10 million. 23andMe acquired Lemonaid Health in 2021 for $400 million.

Provider workforce management software startup Assured raises $6 million in seed funding.

The feud between OpenEvidence and Doximity heats up, with Doximity now countersuing OpenEvidence for defamation and false advertising. OpenEvidence sued Doximity in June for “brazen corporate espionage” related to Doximity executives allegedly impersonating various physicians and using their NPI numbers to gain access beyond what they were entitled to, with their alleged ultimate goal being to grab OpenEvidence code. (Dr. Jayne had fun summarizing the suit when she came across it several months ago.) Both companies are looking to create a ChatGPT-like tool for healthcare.

Sales

• Sutter Health (CA) customer support teams will use Hyro’s AI-based voice and chat capabilities.

People

Todd Holling (University of Texas Health San Antonio) will join Kootenai Health (ID) as interim CIO.

Konza Health promotes David Dooley, MBA to VP of software solutions and engineering, Melissa Talley to VP of clinical data quality, and Sara Warnock to VP of health IT.

Announcements and Implementations

Ardent Health implements Ambience Healthcare’s AI software for documentation, coding, and clinical workflows across its ambulatory sites.

University Hospitals (OH) launches a Connected Care Team virtual nursing program at its Lake West Medical Center using technology from Vitalchat.

Other

Mayo Clinic’s Department of Nursing develops Nurse Virtual Assistant, a generative AI tool that displays patient care summaries and evidence-based nursing resources in a tab within Mayo Clinic’s EHR.

Sponsor Updates

• Infinx sponsors The Cancer Research Collaboration & RadNet Golf Tournament in Mission Viejo, CA.
• Ellkay sponsors the Emerson Health (MA) Auxiliary Golf Tournament.
• First Databank names David Beam strategic account manager, Ethan Donohue software engineer, and Crystal Krebs clinical informatics pharmacist.
• Five9 develops an AI-powered integration for ServiceNow.
• Fortified Health Security names Grant Thorburn enterprise regional director.
• Healthcare IT Leaders sponsors the SCHIMSS Annual Fall Golf Tournament & Scholarship Fundraiser.
• Health Data Movers wins a Best Firms to Work For Award from Consulting Magazine.
• MRO will exhibit at the NAHRI Revenue Integrity Symposium September 25-26 in Westminster, CO.

Blog Posts

• Redefining speed: The AI revolution in clinical decision-making (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Why Amazon Connect Is the Perfect Choice for Call Centers in Healthcare (CTG)
• AI Evaluation in Clinical Decision Support: Building a Foundation of Trust (Elsevier)
• Our Pricing Philosophy: People First, Always (Findhelp)
• MIPS MVPs: Your complete guide to choosing the right value pathway in 2025 (Healthmonix)
• The Digital Cure: Improving Access and Efficiency in Healthcare (Impact Advisors)
• Top 5 Listings Management Software Solutions for Healthcare in 2025 (Kyruus Health)
• Mobile clinics, farming, and community outreach: how to creatively tackle health equity challenges (Meditech)

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Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Healthcare AI News 9/17/25

News

Meditech announces several AI enhancements to its MyHealth patient portal and Expanse EHR at its customer event, including the addition of chatbots and the integration of Commure’s AI-powered clinical documentation software with its Expanse Now app. Meditech is also working to bring agentic AI to its billing and operational workflows.

URAC launches a healthcare AI accreditation program with pathways for AI developers and users of AI in healthcare delivery.

Sutter Health (CA) customer support teams will use Hyro’s AI-based voice and chat capabilities.

Ardent Health implements Ambience Healthcare’s AI software for documentation, coding, and clinical workflows across its ambulatory sites.

Business

The FDA grants clearance for the upgraded Tempus Pixel cardiac imaging platform from precision medicine vendor Tempus AI. The company acquired Paige, a developer of FDA-cleared AI pathology tools, last month for $81 million.

AI-powered virtual care startup Doctronic announces $20 million in Series A funding. The company has developed a chatbot that can assess symptoms, offer guidance, and connect users with virtual care providers.

Automated patient billing and payments software vendor Inbox Health announces $20 million in new funding.

Healthcare AI operating system developer Innovaccer acquires Story Health, which offers a digital specialty care management platform.

Research

Researchers at Stanford University develop healthcare AI benchmarks to help users determine how well AI agents can automate tasks that clinicians typically perform manually in EHRs.

Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital (NY) launches a cardiac catheterization AI research lab to explore how AI can improve patient care and outcomes.

Other

HHS makes ChatGPT available to its employees, noting that it’s a helpful tool for summarizing long documents and advising users to to read results with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Three high school seniors in Nebraska develop MedFinanceAI, a bilingual chatbot designed to help Omaha residents better understand local medical costs. The team sourced the online tool’s data from local hospitals and medical databases.

The National University Health System in Singapore initiates AI-free periods amongst its providers to help prevent clinical de-skilling.

A patient in southeastern Pennsylvania uses Confluence Health’s AI tool to successfully appeal her insurer’s repeated denial of coverage for her ADHD medication. The insurer, however, claims the denial was initially caused by a physician reviewer error and that the AI-generated, 11-page appeal letter had no bearing on its final decision.

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Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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