News 1/28/26

Top News

Bloomberg reports that the valuation of prior authorization technology vendor Tandem Technology has reached $1 billion, with an anticipated $100 million in new funding.

Tandem founder and CEO Sahir Jaggi was previously a director at insurance company Oscar Health.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

It’s that time of year when LinkedIn is flooded with graphics posted by proud show-uppers. The HIMSS ones are also piling up. I’m only slightly annoyed at pitches by scheduled presenters who are trying to drum up attendance, but just being in the convention center is not newsworthy. It won’t be long before the “influencers” start posting their mandatory ViVE-fawning posts (three before, three during, three after) to pay for their free badge and accompanying sense of self-importance.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: February 18 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “From Blind Spots to Insights: Gaining Real-Time Visibility into Healthcare Risk.” Sponsor: CloudWave. Presenters: Jacob Wheeler, MBA, director of sales engineering, CloudWave; Mike Donahue, chief operating officer, CloudWave. Resilience starts with the ability to see clearly, across every endpoint, cloud workload, user, and clinical system. Join CloudWave’s cybersecurity leaders for an in-depth session on how real-time visibility transforms your ability to detect threats early, respond decisively, and strengthen resilience across the care ecosystem. Attendees will learn the practical steps that hospitals can take to move from reactive defense to resilient action.

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2026 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

People

HURC names Kevin Coloton, MPT, MBA (Reveleer) CEO.

Elissa Baker, RN (American Telemedicine Association) joins Nesa as president and chief clinical officer.

MedeAnalytics names David Figueredo (Experian) chief innovation officer.

Nicholas Testa, MD (CommonSpirit Health) joins Sentact as chief clinical officer.

Sevaro Health names Carl Dugart (Medically Home) CTO and Vineet Agrawal, MBA (DocSpera) head of growth.

Artera promotes Tom McIntyre, MS, MBA to president, Michael Jensen to CFO, Zach Wood, MBA to chief product and strategy officer, and Emily Coy to VP of communications and integrated marketing.

Dartmouth Health hires Randa Perkins, MD, MBA (Moffitt Cancer Center) as CHIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Qure.ai secures a multi-million dollar Gates Foundation grant to develop AI-powered point-of-care ultrasound tools that are aimed at detecting tuberculosis and pneumonia in low-resource settings. The project also includes building an open, multimodal data platform to support global lung health research and deployment at scale. The company’s products are being used by 4,800 sites in 105 countries.

Health Gorilla says that the lawsuit that Epic Systems and several health systems filed against it contains unfounded allegations about the company’s role in data exchange. Health Gorilla says that it suspended the disputed connections of some of its clients and accuses Epic of using litigation to stifle competition in interoperability. Health Gorilla says that it operates in conformance with all laws and requirements and accuses Epic of using litigation as a weapon so it can “monetize clinical data exchanges for their own benefit.” An Epic spokesperson provided this statement:

Health Gorilla enabled their customers to sell identifiable patient medical records to class-action law firms without patients’ consent or health systems’ knowledge. They had an obligation to protect patients’ intimate health information. Instead, they violated the privacy of hundreds of thousands of people. Epic and health systems together filed this lawsuit to hold Health Gorilla and other bad actors accountable and to stop further abuse and misuse of patients’ sensitive information.

Midwives at some NHS hospitals that use Epic are given the option to record the gender identity, sexual orientation, and pronouns of newborns, but according to a midwife quoted in The Times, lack a dedicated field to record biological sex in the same workflow. An executive of a sex rights charity criticized the configuration, saying, “The concept of babies having a gender identity is farcical, whereas a baby’s sex is essential medical information,” and argued that some trusts have prioritized ideological preferences over clinical clarity. A spokesperson for the One Devon Electronic Patient Record project says that any claims that Epic requires information about the gender identity or sexual orientation of newborns are incorrect, and the only mandatory entries are date of birth and legal sex. Epic has not publicly commented on the article.

Government and Politics

The VA Office of Inspector General’s annual report lists information systems and innovation among the top five management and performance challenges facing the department, particularly highlighting its beleaguered EHR modernization efforts. The Oracle Health-based program will restart this April at four sites in Michigan.

Other

The Connecticut College of Emergency Physicians develops a public dashboard that displays ER boarding trends across hospitals throughout the state to gain insight into ED overcrowding. State lawmakers passed a law in 2023 that requires hospitals to annually report their boarding data through 2029.

Nassau University Medical Center sues seven former executives, including its CIO, alleging that they received $1 million in improper payouts when they resigned in May and later refused to give the money back. Many of the hospital’s executives quit after the state took over the financially struggling hospital’s board. The hospital filed a $10 million lawsuit against the former hospital CEO who authorized the payouts. Her name is Meg Ryan, should you have a surplus of “When Harry Met Sally” Katz’s Delicatessen scene bon mots.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research publishes its Trust Framework, a formal standard that defines how the firm designs research programs, benchmarks performance, and recognizes high-performing healthcare technology and services providers.
• Optimum Healthcare IT posts a new white paper titled “From Vendor to Vital Partner.”
• Cardamom is recognized as the “#1 Best Place to Work” in the Madison area by Madison Magazine.

Blog Posts

• A Guide to the Use of AI in Healthcare: Deploying a Realistic Approach (Med Tech Solutions)
• Health system size impacts AI privacy and security concerns (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• The reality of cyberthreats: Why preparing for a breach is your best defense (Altera Digital Health)
• Advancing Rural Health Transformation: Reflections from a JPM Health Week Roundtable (Arcadia)
• AI Voice Agents in Healthcare: Inbound vs. Outbound (Artera)
• Looking back, leaping forward: Healthcare AI predictions for 2026 (Cardamom)
• JPM 2026 Takeaways: Cybersecurity in Healthcare PE Diligence (Clearwater)
• What 14 Ironmans, 50+ Marathons, and 30 Years in Healthcare IT Have Taught Me About Leadership (Divurgent)

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 1/26/26

Top News

Epic and 63 health systems ask The Sequoia Project to centralize vetting and ongoing monitoring of organizations that exchange medical records via Carequality and TEFCA. The letter recommends the following changes:

• Replace applicants’ self-attested business descriptions with validation using public records, NPIs, and criminal history checks.
• Require organizations to formally attest to their business purpose and exchange use cases and submit those attestations to HHS, creating potential federal liability for false representations.
• Implement active monitoring to detect potentially fraudulent exchange behavior.
• Shift responsibility for TEFCA dispute resolution and monitoring to the federal government, with federal consequences for misstatements or omissions.
• Create a public directory of all data exchange participants, including their business description and stated exchange purpose.
• Publicly report the number of records each participant contributes and receives, along with the stated purpose of exchange.
• Require intermediaries to disclose their data retention policies and publish them on a public website.
• Establish a joint federal and state task force, including federal agencies and state attorneys general, to target false documentation, identity impersonation, and high-volume data harvesting.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents say that Kaiser Permanente’s affiliates, like many health systems, were playing the Medicare Advantage game within the rules as designed.

New poll to your right or here: How has your use of AI improved your job performance? You’ll see a “comments” link after voting, which you can click to tell us more about your answer. I’m especially curious about AI use that has increased your effectiveness by 50% or more, which is likely a unicorn but still worth asking.

If you are socked in by snow or ice, cheer yourself up with a photo of Ms. O’s kindergarten class in Hayward, CA working with the STEM magnetic building sets that were fully funded by reader donations to Donors Choose, along with matching funds from my Anonymous Vendor Executive and outside groups. She reports, “This project has been so important because giving students a strong foundation in math and literacy in their first year of school makes a big difference by giving them a good start in their academic careers.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: February 18 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “From Blind Spots to Insights: Gaining Real-Time Visibility into Healthcare Risk.” Sponsor: CloudWave. Presenters: Jacob Wheeler, MBA, director of sales engineering, CloudWave; Mike Donahue, chief operating officer, CloudWave. Resilience starts with the ability to see clearly, across every endpoint, cloud workload, user, and clinical system. Join CloudWave’s cybersecurity leaders for an in-depth session on how real-time visibility transforms your ability to detect threats early, respond decisively, and strengthen resilience across the care ecosystem. Attendees will learn the practical steps that hospitals can take to move from reactive defense to resilient action.

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2026 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Medical records and coding vendor Rapid Care acquires DeepDoc, whose AI-driven system summarizes unstructured medical records for law firms and insurers.

Healthcare technology services vendor Healthcare Triangle will acquire Spain-based Teyame AI, which offers AI-powered contact center solutions, for a reported $50 million. HCTI shares have lost 99.9% over the past 12 months, valuing the company at $3 million.

People

CTG promotes Tom Niehaus to CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

State-owned UNC Health will acquire independently operated UNC Campus Health Services, likely moving Campus Health from EClinicalWorks to Epic.

A Wolters Kluwer Health survey finds that use of “shadow” AI is widespread in health systems, mostly by users who want to speed up workflows. Half of the respondents say they frequently use AI tools or rely on them for their work.

Other

Mark Cuban warns that insurers will find new ways to make money as their pharmacy benefit management companies, the top three of which fill 80% of US prescriptions, come under increasing scrutiny.

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart staff donate 500 books to their local libraries in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a case study titled “How Celerate Developed a Secure, Clinician-Ready AI Chatbot for Neurologists.”
• Judi Health launches The Judi Group, a healthcare benefits advisory firm.
• PerfectServe announces that it has been recognized as both highest in execution and furthest in vision in the “2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Clinical Communication and Collaboration.”
• Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust in England goes live on Altera Digital Health’s EPrescribing and Medicine Administration technology.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Anita Vanka, MD and Robert Stern, MD.
• “The Achieve Podcast” features Switchboard Health co-founder and CEO Derek Baird.
• Tegria publishes a new case study titled “Integrated Meditech Implementation, Hosting, and Application Support Transform Operations.”
• WellSky releases a new report titled “Addressing today’s healthcare workforce challenges: Results from a national study.”
• Zen Healthcare IT publishes a new white paper titled “The CMS ACCESS Model: What Health Technology Leaders Need to Know.”

Blog Posts

• CIO Forum Focus Group Recap: Overcome Healthcare IT Resource Gaps with Meaningful Managed Services (Med Tech Solutions)
• Governing the Digital Front Door: Why Hospital Boards Must Lead Digital Governance and Organizational Alignment in the Next 5 Years (Impact Advisors)
• Shadow AI: Providers are using unapproved tools to improve workflow (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• We measure everything in healthcare… except what matters (Nordic)
• 3 Steps to Autonomous Coding Success: Assessing Your Organizational Challenges (Before You Talk to Vendors!) (Nym)
• From Friction to Orchestration: How Top Health Systems Are Reimagining the Consumer Experience (Praia Health)
• Epic Space Bridge™ – An HL7 Interface Message Transformation Solution (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 1/23/26

Top News

ECRI publishes its “Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2026,” with misuse of chatbots topping the list.

ECRI says that unregulated chatbots give users expert-sounding responses, but have offered incorrect diagnoses, recommended unnecessary tests, promoted questionable supplies, and based answers on body parts they made up.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Companies exhibiting at ViVE and/or HIMSS, you are about to spend a small fortune on a well-lit, carpeted rectangle that you will occupy for a few exhausting hours while handing out geegaws. For a tiny fraction of that spend, you can claim a different rectangle, this one virtual and this one lasting 365 days, on HIStalk. It is read obsessively by the people who buy, influence, complain about, and occasionally approve health IT purchases. Black Book Research, in a health tech media analysis that found this amateurish and cynical site to be #1 for industry trust and influence, puts it this way: “HIStalk stands out for its influence, independence, and continued relevance to the decision-makers shaping the future of health IT.” Contact Lorre, who has a soft spot for new sponsors that sometimes leads her to offer perks that she glosses over when telling me.

Listening: Porcupine Tree, a 40-year-old English progressive rock band whose “In Absentia” popped up at me.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: February 18 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “From Blind Spots to Insights: Gaining Real-Time Visibility into Healthcare Risk.” Sponsor: CloudWave. Presenters: Jacob Wheeler, MBA, director of sales engineering, CloudWave; Mike Donahue, chief operating officer, CloudWave. Resilience starts with the ability to see clearly, across every endpoint, cloud workload, user, and clinical system. Join CloudWave’s cybersecurity leaders for an in-depth session on how real-time visibility transforms your ability to detect threats early, respond decisively, and strengthen resilience across the care ecosystem. Attendees will learn the practical steps that hospitals can take to move from reactive defense to resilient action.

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2026 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Harmony Healthcare IT acquires Meditech solutions provider Blue Elm.

OpenEvidence confirms earlier reports that it recently raised $250 million in a Series D funding round that values the company at $12 billion. The company says that physicians used its system to treat 100 million patients last year and requested 18 million clinical consultations in December 2025 alone.

People

Health data management platform vendor Health Chain names Eric Rosow, MS (Conduce Health) as CEO and Reed Perry, MBA (Availity) as chief commercial officer.

Valerie Mondelli, RPh, MBA (Iodine Software) joins DrFirst as chief commercial officer.

Announcements and Implementations

VectorCare launches Smart on FHIR as a Service, which incudes a no-code workflow builder and developer tools for building and deploying EHR-embedded applications.

The Washington Post covers Epic’s lawsuit that alleges that Health Gorilla knowingly provided treatment access to patient records by law firms that were looking for malpractice plaintiffs.

In England, Slingshot AI takes its therapy chatbot down over uncertainty about its compliance with medical device regulations. The company launched the therapy bot Ash in mid-2025.

Government and Politics

The federal government’s Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) will resume its meetings on February 19 following a year-long hiatus that was imposed by the White House. Both co-chairs of HITAC, which advises ASTP/ONC, resigned last week. The committee is scheduled to meet four times in 2026.

Epic files an answer to a Texas lawsuit that alleges that the company is a monopoly and violates Texas laws by blocking parents’ access to their child’s Epic medical records. In its response:

• Texas has not substantiated its claim that Epic is a monopoly.
• The state’s presumption that antitrust laws require Epic to provide free API access to any company, including competitors, is not supported by law.
• Antitrust laws do not prohibit Epic from sharing its software update plans with customers, as the lawsuit alleges.
• Despite a six-month investigation by State Attorney General Ken Paxton, the complaint relies on dated press releases, blog posts, and excerpts from Particle Health’s lawsuit against Epic.
• Epic created a guide that told its customers how to comply with the new Texas law about parental access, but ultimately those customers control access to patient records.
• The lawsuit does not identify any Epic customer that has not complied with the law.
• Epic’s response concludes, “What appears to be going on here is that the State has decided to target Epic over a politicized issue regarding proxy access that Epic does not belong in the middle of. The State confirms as much in its press release, calling Epic a ‘woke corporation’ that supposedly “undermines” parents’ rights. That simply is not true.”

Sponsor Updates

• Springhill Medical Center goes live on Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise 25.1.
• Black Book Research releases two new reports to help rural hospitals and critical access hospitals convert state awards into audit-ready implementation and accelerate vendor selection.
• Ellkay sponsors the 2026 AdvancedMD Sales Kickoff.
• Meditech announces Expanse Outpatient Therapy.
• Findhelp adds mental and behavioral health provider data company MiResource to its Behavioral Health Network.
• Fortified Health Security will host a roundtable dinner focused on current healthcare cybersecurity trends and patient protection strategies January 27 in Cincinnati.
• Health Data Movers will sponsor the CHIME Innovation Summit February 4-6 in Orlando.
• MRO releases a new report titled “2026 State of the Industry: Navigating Health Policy and Market Shifts with Smarter Data.”

Blog Posts

• Innovation starts with strong digital foundations (Altera Digital Health)
• Why Enterprise Healthcare Faces Different EHR Challenges in 2026 (Bizmatics)
• C-Suite Briefing: Top Health IT Trends and Takeaways from the 12th Annual HIT Industry Outlook Report (Med Tech Solutions)
• Epic Space Bridge – An HL7 Interface Message Transformation Solution (CereCore)
• What Healthcare Providers Need to Know About Qualified Overtime Reporting (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Ensuring Success During Your Epic Refuel Project (Impact Advisors)
• Finding the Right Balance for Operating Room Utilization (LiveData)
• VBC under pressure: Five insights from the front lines (Navina)

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 1/21/26

Top News

A preliminary VA Office of Inspector General report finds that the Veterans Health Administration doesn’t properly oversee its use of generative AI chatbots, potentially compromising patient safety. The report looked at the department’s use of its internally developed VA GPT and Microsoft 365 Copilot chat, both of which depend on clinical prompts. Neither tool has access to web searches, which means their knowledge bases are not current.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The preview of my ViVE Guide on what HIStalk sponsors will be doing at the conference is live. More companies will be added as they complete the information form, so check back for updates.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2026 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Australia-based 4DMedical raises $100 million in funding, which it will use to accelerate US adoption of its FDA-cleared, software-based lung imaging system that is used by several major US health systems.

People

Clearwater promotes David Bailey to VP, consulting solutions and strategy.

AdventHealth promotes Sarah Myers to regional CIO for AdventHealth Mid-America Region.

Sonney Sapra, MBA (Samaritan Health Services) joins UVA Health as CIO.

US Army veteran Elder Granger, MD joins MedSync as EVP for medical affairs and CMO.

Ovatient promotes Yasir Tarabichi, MD to head of digital; Jamie Carracher to head of growth and brand; and Amy Lukowski, PsyD to VP of operations and integration.

Announcements and Implementations

Nurses at Children’s Mercy (OH) use the Helen app to route non-clinical tasks to a dedicated concierge team.

BioticsAI gains FDA clearance for its AI-drive fetal ultrasound product.

Aultman Health System (OH) implements Nabla’s AI-based clinical documentation software.

In England, three Norfolk hospitals will delay go-live of their $118 million Meditech Expanse project, citing factors that include the work that is required to adapt the system for the NHS. 

A Baltimore theater will host a March 19 screening of “Suck it Up, Buttercup,” a documentary that calls out the dysfunctional US healthcare system that is driven by “corporate greed that’s filling coffers and coffins.” Both executive producers are physicians.

Other

Cleveland Clinic opens the Rubinstein Family Hospital Care at Home Suite, which serves as a technology command center for its hospital-at-home programs in Florida and Ohio. The suite was developed using a grant from Jon Rubinstein, an investor and  technology executive who helped spearhead development of the iPod and iMac.

AdventHealth will enhance its virtual care capabilities by installing an additional 800 cameras in patient rooms at its hospitals and urgent care centers in Colorado over the next several months.

University of Nebraska Medical Center researchers determine that embedding a standardized glucose management protocol into its EHR helps perioperative care teams better control the blood sugar levels of diabetic patients.

A Michigan Medicine study of 800 clinicians finds that those who disengage from work-related apps during non-working hours report feeling less stressed than those who don’t. Those who reported lower levels of stress were advised to turn on out-of-office replies to email and reduce screen time or delete work apps from their personal devices during their time away from work.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD announces that Software Advice has listed its EHR technology in its “Best Ophthalmology EMR Software of 2025” report.
• Linus Health reflects on its successes in advancing brain health in 2025.

Blog Posts

• 5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Improve Clinical Denial Management (AGS Health)
• AdvancedMD Top Predictions for AI in 2026: More Time with Patients, Less Burnout and Improved Personalized Care Models (AdvancedMD)
• Looking back, leaping forward: Healthcare AI predictions for 2026 (Cardamom)
• CIO Forum Focus Group Recap: Overcome Healthcare IT Resource Gaps with Meaningful Managed Services (Med Tech Solutions)
• Increasing healthcare access through expanded nurse mobility and simplification of licensure (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Better, faster, stronger: How Paragon is leveraging AI internally (Altera Digital Health)
• Top 5 Ambulatory EHR Vendors That Clinics Trust (Bizmatics)
• Elevating the patient experience: They’re already telling you how (Cardamom)
• Healthcare IT in 2026: Why Cloud Migration Matters for AI Adoption (Concord Technologies)
• Optimizing Healthcare IT Scaling: A Strategic Model for Resource Augmentation and Project Acceleration (CTG)

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 1/19/26

Top News

A McKinsey report predicts that healthcare services and technology will continue as the fastest-growing segment in healthcare. It expects providers and payers to increase outsourcing to tech and platform companies.

McKinsey projects that nearly half of healthcare profits by 2029 will come from software, platforms, data, and analytics, with traditional admin and consulting services growing slowly or shrinking. 

The authors expect federal funding for the Rural Health Transformation Program to drive adoption of telehealth and AI tools.

Payers that saw margins drop due to higher utilization and regulatory actions will face a decline of up to 30% in EBITDA from their ACA and Medicaid segments due to disenrollment driven by ACA subsidy expiration and impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents say that hospitals, like all other investors, put their money down primarily because they expect it to grow.

New poll to your right or here: What is the top industry takeaway from Kaiser Permanente’s settlement of Medicare Advantage overbilling allegations? These settlements always make me wonder whether a health system clearly violated the law, or whether vague coding rules come bundled with the unreasonable expectation that health systems will just forgo extra revenue to be responsibly nice. 

The paucity of recent health tech news suggests that everybody is on hold while they digest never-ending federal government changes that affect payments, a shifting regulatory environment, and having thunder stolen by AI froth. I’m not paid by the word or column-inch, so today’s short post gifts you free time.

HIStalk sponsors who are participating in the ViVE conference can send me your information to be included in my online guide. New this year: for more exposure and less work for me, I will post the guide immediately and update it as additional sponsors submit their details, which also creates an incentive to respond early.

Ms. G from Hope Mills, NC sent over this unpacking photo of the science kits that her fifth graders received courtesy of reader donations to her Donors Choose project. She reports, “We have officially received the science kits, and they have already made a huge impact in our classroom. The moment the boxes arrived, my students were buzzing with excitement and could not wait to explore what was inside. As they opened the kits, they eagerly examined the materials, asked questions, and started making connections to what they already know about science … Thank you for helping bring hands-on, joyful science learning into our classroom.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

People

Linus Health promotes Curt Thornton, MBA, MHS to president, Connected Care and names Chief Customer and Administrative Officer Leah Ray to the additional role of president, US healthcare.

Announcements and Implementations

SmartSense by Digi launches SmartSense One, a modular, scalable IoT operations platform that merges the capabilities of SmartSense and its acquired Jolt for unified monitoring, compliance, safety, and workflow management.

Other

Cerner co-founder Cliff Illig and his family sell a majority stake in the Major League Soccer Sporting KC for a record valuation of $700 million. He bought the team in 2006 with a group of six local investors, which also included his Cerner co-founder Neal Patterson, for a reported $20 million.  

Two women who were fired by businesses owned by a Huntsville, AL doctor file a sexual harassment lawsuit, alleging that the doctor forced them on multiple occasions to shave his legs. One of the plaintiffs notes in the complaint that “he was wearing lime green underwear.”

Sponsor Updates

• Altera Digital Health promotes Lindsey Honig to marketing communications manager.
• Black Book Research releases its “2026 Physician Practice Management Solutions Report.”
• Impact Advisors releases a new success story titled “Building a Scalable Quality Reporting Framework.”
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Steve Peltzman and Tim Woodward.
• ReferWell will exhibit at the Medicare Advantage Leadership Innovations conference January 21-22 in Buena Vista, FL.
• Symplr releases a new case study titled “Health First & Nebraska Methodist: A Blueprint for Value Analysis Excellence.”
• TruBridge will host its National Client Conference April 7-10 in Dallas.
• Waystar will exhibit at EClinicalWorks Day January 21 in Houston.

Blog Posts

• A Guide to the Use of AI in Healthcare: Deploying a Realistic Approach (Med Tech Solutions)
• Power to the people: Why digital healthcare transformations fail without effective change management (Nordic)
• Healthcare PMO Expert Answers Top Project Management Questions (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The Opportunity Cost of Your Old Hospital Switchboard (PerfectServe)
• Patients Win with Prescription Price Transparency (Surescripts)
• Elevating the patient experience: They’re already telling you how (Cardamom)
• All-payer OASIS documentation & accuracy: What home health agencies need to know (WellSky)
• CEO Letter: Reflecting on 2025 and Building the Infrastructure for 2026 (VectorCare)
• 5 Things Health Tech Leaders Need to Know About ACCESS (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 1/16/26

Top News

Kaiser Permanente affiliates will pay $556 million to settle False Claims Act allegations that they inflated Medicare Advantage risk scores.

Federal investigators say that Kaiser electronically searched patient histories for diagnoses that had not been reported to CMS for risk adjustment, then pushed clinicians months later to add those conditions to patient charts as medical record addenda.

Reader Comments

From Data Diver: “Re: Kaiser coding settlement. MA risk adjustment has become the national sport, where everyone claims innocence while quietly hiring more coders and consultants. A half-billion dollar settlement suggests that the line between legitimate documentation improvement and outright upcoding is not a faint one. If this is what gets caught, I can only imagine what stays below the waterline.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Ms. S of Burlington, NC provides an update about HIStalk reader donations that fully funded, with matching money applied from third parties as well as my Anonymous Vendor Executive, her Donors Choose teacher grant request for headphones.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Vista AI, which offers automated MRI scanning software, raises a $29.5 million Series B round, with several health systems joining other investors.

Sales

• Advanced Health chooses 1upHealth’s data interoperability platform.

People

The Stowers Institute for Medical Research names Dan Devers, JD (Cerner) as general counsel.

Steve LeBlond, MBA (Sutter Health) joins Prisma Health as CIO/CDO.

RLDatix hires Richard Jarvis, MSChE (OptumUK) as CTO.

Komodo Health names Amit Sangani (Meta) as CTO.

AMIA names Philip Payne, PhD (WashU Medicine, BJC Healthcare, and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis) as president and board chair.

Announcements and Implementations

Epic posts social media videos of Emmie, its MyChart AI assistant for patients that includes a chatbot for inquiries.

Google Research updates its open MedGemma model with improved medical imaging support and a speech to text model that is fine tuned for medical dictation.

Hospitals list their top RCM priorities as improving patient experience, boosting revenue, and cutting costs, according to a new FinThrive survey. Executives cite prior authorization, denials, and clinical documentation and coding as their main AI targets, and nearly 60% expect to consolidate RCM vendors within three years.

A Black Book survey finds that for behavioral health, post-acute care, public health, and community-based organizations, the “last mile” of health data interoperability still relies on manual work and fragmented systems because of cost, immature APIs, and slow vendor onboarding.

US healthcare spending rose 7.2% to $5.3 trillion in 2024, with $1.6 trillion spent on hospital services. CMS says that healthcare spending accounted for 18% of US gross domestic product.

Government and Politics

The White House unveils “The Great Healthcare Plan,” which would send federal funds directly to citizens to purchase their own health insurance, while asking insurers to lower premiums. The proposal also seeks to require drug makers to match US prices to those charged overseas and to shift more prescription drugs to over the counter status. The administration will ask Congress to approve the plan, which does not restore federal ACA premium subsidies or address the significant cost driver of provider pricing.

Researchers question a bill that would require Medicare to cover every FDA-designated “breakthrough” device, warning that it would sidestep CMS’s evidence-based review, expose patients to unsafe or unproven products, and hamstring CMS from reversing coverage if unfavorable evidence arises.

Privacy and Security

A Fortified Health Security report finds that total reported healthcare breaches doubled in 2025, as did the number of email-based breaches.

Sponsor Updates

• Medicomp Systems releases a new episode of its “Tell Me Where IT Hurts” podcast featuring Acting Administrator of DOGE and CMS Strategic Advisor Amy Gleason.
• Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “Quick HITs” podcast titled “Turning Healthcare Data Strategy into Execution with Mohammed Abdelaziz.”
• Five9 expands its partnership with Google Cloud and announces a new joint Enterprise CX AI solution.
• Healthmonix rebrands its MIPS Cost Analytics product to Healthmonix Cost and its MIPS Analytics product to Healthmonix Analytics.
• The “Walk-Ins Welcome” podcast features Inbox Health Enterprise Sales Lead Guy Bergman and SVP of Sales Edward Sherlock.
• The University of Southern California presents its Distinguished Alumni Award to Infinx co-founder Sandeep Tandon.

Blog Posts

• Navigating healthcare data through QHIN connectivity: A smarter approach to patient information (Altera Digital Health)
• Hospital CIOs Share Their EHR Help Desk Improvement Wish Lists (Med Tech Solutions)
• Major Challenges Facing the Healthcare Industry Today (Bizmatics)
• Share Your Story at the 2026 Connect Social Care Summit (Findhelp)
• Patient Access Automation: A Strategic Imperative (Impact Advisors)
• 2026 Horizon Report: The New Reality of Healthcare Cybersecurity (Fortified Health Security)
• The High Cost of Delayed Details in Surgical Departments (LiveData)
• The latest in interoperability: Everything you need to know (Meditech)
• VBC under pressure: Five insights from the front lines (Navina)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 1/14/26

Top News

Epic, OCHIN, and three health systems sue Health Gorilla, alleging that the data-exchange vendor has improperly allowed access to Epic-stored patient records by organizations that aren’t delivering care.

The suit claims that some companies are selling the data to attorneys seeking class-action clients. It says that some of those companies have used fake websites, shell firms, and bogus NPI numbers to hide their intent. It also alleges that they have inserted junk data into exchange frameworks to create the appearance of treating patients and sending back updated patient information.

Health Gorilla denies the accusations, says Epic that is trying to limit competition and data access, and maintains that it supports legitimate information sharing, including for organizations and use cases that Epic does not serve.

Reader Comments

From Cristol: “Re: news. Is it me, or is there less than before? I would have thought it would have accelerated with AI news, but it appears not to be.” It is lumpier, with some days have little interesting going on (Monday) and others overloaded with real news (today). Some of the last week’s feast and famine was driven by the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference that started Monday. I don’t pad news posts with non-newsworthy junk, so it’s pretty obvious when not much is happening. Rightly or wrongly, most health-related news involves business rather than science.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cardamom will use new funding from Valspring Capital to expand its professional services for healthcare IT.

ChatGPT developer OpenAI acquires AI-powered medical records insights startup Torch Health for a reported $100 million. The four-employee, year-old startup was co-founded by Ilya Abyzov, who previously co-founded doc-in-a-box kiosk vendor Forward, which shut down in late 2024 after raising $650 million with little to show for it.

Oncology-focused health IT vendor VieCure raises $43 million, bringing its total funding to $113 million.

Healthcare financing and payments solution provider HPS/PayMedic raises $33 million in funding.

PE firm Sheridan Capital Partners acquires ICANotes, which offers a behavioral healthcare EHR.

Claims automation technology vendor EnableComp acquires H/ROI, which offers denials and revenue recovery services.

Sales

• Inova Health (VA) will use Notable’s AI Platform to automate revenue cycle, referral management, and patient access workflows.
• Community Memorial Hospital (NY) selects Oracle Health.
• Parrish Healthcare (FL) will implement Meditech Expanse.

People

Tendo hires Beth Godsey, MBA (Vizient) as GM of Tendo Insights.

Direct Recruiters names Graham Gardner, MD, MBA (Kyruus Health), Michael Schram (Get Well), and Todd Helmink (DrFirst) as principals and operating partners of its new Healthcare Operator Advisory practice.

HealthLeap hires Wayne Grodsky (SmarterDx) as chief commercial officer, Michael Blumenthal (Hyro) as chief strategy officer, and Tamir Shklaz (Wordware) as CTO.

Umair Shah, MD, MPH (Washington State Department of Health) joins Jaan Health as chief medical officer.

Announcements and Implementations

HCA Healthcare implements Meditech at 43 hospitals.

Waystar adds agentic AI to its revenue cycle solutions.

Anthropic debuts Claude for Healthcare, giving users the ability to connect their medical and insurance records and wearables data into the AI app for personalized insights. Developers can take advantage of the ability to connect to the CMS Coverage and ICD-10 databases, and the National Provider Identifier Registry. Anthropic developers stress that Claude for Healthcare is HIPAA-ready and that health data shared with the app is not retained for the training of future models. The company has also launched new features for life sciences.

Surescripts launches its Script Corner prescription price transparency app for patients.

Other

Eureka Springs Hospital (AR) fires its CFO after discovering unpaid invoices to Oracle America, with the CEO noting that the hospital had been paying bills based solely on submitted invoices rather than verifying them against contract terms and payment schedules.

The CEO of Shopify uses Claude to create an HTML-based viewer of the exported data from his annual MRI scan.

OSF Healthcare’s Innovation team develops CliniPane, an EHR-integrated clinical insights and data visualization tool designed for use at the point of care. A select group of primary care physicians is piloting the new software.

Heart failure patients who engage with text messages about their medications fill their prescriptions at higher rates and are less likely to be readmitted to the hospital than those who opt out of such messages. Magnolia Regional Health Center (MS) sent the messages from DrFirst’s prescription engagement tool within Meditech Expanse.

Sponsor Updates

• Findhelp’s new partnership with SimplePractice connects people seeking behavioral health services with real-time provider availability and scheduling from within the Findhelp platform.
• Judi Health shares 2025 milestones, including the signing of more than 80 new partnerships for the second year in a row.
• WellSky’s Scribe ambient listening technology helps clinicians reduce documentation time by up to 50%.
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of “The Informonster Podcast” titled “Dr. Sarah Matt on Healthcare Data Gaps.”
• Arcadia names Sandy Leonard general manager of life sciences.

Blog Posts

• Four Revenue Cycle Management Trends for Healthcare Leaders to Watch in 2026 (AGS Health)
• Health IT Staffing Resource Guide: Overcoming 6 Key EHR Support Challenges Amid Competitive Market Pressures (Med Tech Solutions)
• A360 Isn’t Just Another Update. It’s a Turning Point for Accreditation Readiness (RLDatix)
• Transforming patient care: How a leading ACO is setting the standard for value-based care success (WellSky)
• Charting the future of healthcare: 2026 and beyond (Altera Digital Health)
• Bridging the Gap: How Payers and Providers View Shared Accountability in Value-Based Care (Arcadia)
• Healthcare PMO Expert Answers Top Project Management Questions (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The Pros and Cons of Electronic Health Records (EHR) (Bizmatics)
• When the Perimeter Disappears: Securing OT, IoMT, and Clinical Devices in Modern Healthcare (CloudWave)
• Cultural Connection in IT Managed Services for Healthcare: A Q&A With Linda Janiszewski (CTG)
• AdvancedMD Top Predictions for AI in 2026: More Time with Patients, Less Burnout and Improved Personalized Care Models (AdvancedMD)

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 1/12/26

Top News

Google removes some of its health-related AI Overviews from search results after reports that they were providing inaccurate information.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Asked about streamlining EHR certification requirements, poll respondents have achieved the perfect balance of confusion, optimism, pessimism, and indifference.

New poll to your right or here, inspired by Brian Too’s comment last week:  What factors drive health system investment in health tech firms? Multiple answers are OK. It would be fascinating to compare expectations to reality, but of course we hear a lot about the former and little about the latter. If you’ve been involved in a health system’s commercial dabbling, what are your conclusions?

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare staff protection system vendor Canopy raises $22 million in Series B funding. The company sued Commure in May 2025 for using its insider knowledge as a Canopy reseller to develop a competing product. The lawsuit was settled in July 2025, when Canopy took over customer management of Commure’s Strongline Pro panic button system.

People

Aidoc hires former AMA President Jesse Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH as chief medical officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Health systems that have signed up for ChatGPT for Healthcare include AdventHealth, Baylor Scott & White, Boston Children’s, Cedars-Sinai, HCA Healthcare, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Stanford, and UCSF.

Other

A Georgia jury awards $52 million to the family of a woman who died following a Brazilian butt lift. The cosmetic surgery clinic ran out of anesthesia during the procedure, and staff who attempted to revive her found that they also had no oxygen. The clinic, which did not carry insurance and is unlikely to pay much of the damages, was immediately dissolved by its owner. His previous business in the same building was called Butts Gone Wild.

Sponsor Updates

• Five9 partners with the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation.
• Fraser Health saves seven minutes per patient in discharge with Meditech’s AI-powered Hospital Course Summary in its Expanse EHR.
• Findhelp opens registration for its virtual Connect Summit, which will take place May 13-14.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Aditi U Joshi, MD.
• Nym names Shachar Borovitz and Ido Shitrit medical data analysts, Oren Shalom and Inbal Tako software engineers, Sapir Shekhtman R&D medical project manager, and Inbal Rudin linguist.
• CHIME’s “Leader2Leader” podcast features Optimum Healthcare IT Chief Strategy Officer Rick Shepardson in an episode titled “Empowering Transformation: Leading with Strategy, Purpose, and Partnership in Digital Health.”
• PerfectServe offers a new case study titled “Improving Clinical Efficiency with Optimized Care Schedules and Integrated Care Team Communication.”
• Praia Health publishes a new case study titled “LabCorp and Praia Health partner to improve patient adherence, satisfaction, and outcomes at Providence.”
• Rhapsody expands its AWS Marketplace presence to power AI-ready healthcare data exchange.
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere company, will exhibit at the HFMA Western Region Symposium January 18-21 in Las Vegas.
• TruBridge and The Health Management Academy launch the Rural Health Collaborative.
• VitalChat names Alan Young, MD, MBA general manager.
• Waystar will present at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference January 12 in San Francisco.

Blog Posts

• Denial Management Trends, Challenges, and Innovations (AGS Health)
• CISO Brief: 7 Healthcare Cybersecurity Predictions for 2026 (Fortified Health Security)
• EHR Health IT Service Desk FAQs (Med Tech Solutions)
• Opportunities for AI to empower preventive healthcare (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Season of Clarity: The Life Changing Power of Early Autism Technology (Netsmart)
• If you want AI to think like a clinician, show it what clinicians see (Nordic)
• What Healthcare Executives Read Most in 2025 (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• 2025: A Year in Review (RLDatix)
• From Denials to Dollars: Turning Revenue Cycle Pain into Financial Wins (SlicedHealth)
• From Pain to Progress: Faster Benefit Verification for Specialty Medications (Surescripts)
• Federal Regulations & Standards for Credentialing and Privileging (Symplr)
• Tegria Embarks on a New Chapter (Tegria)
• Waystar + Google Cloud: How is AI transforming healthcare revenue cycle management? (Waystar)
• The top 5 revenue cycle changes for 2026: What post-acute care organizations need to know (WellSky)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 1/9/26

Top News

OpenAI announces ChatGPT Health, which supports health conversations with encryption, isolation from model training, and connectivity to wellness and medical records applications such as Apple Health and MyFitnessPal. Access is via waitlist.

B.well is providing the health data network connectivity with its SDK for Health AI.

Reader Comments

From Vendorize: “Re: product names. You should be including our copyright and trademark symbols.” Wrong. US law does not require anyone, even the owning company, to use those symbols to create or maintain rights. I don’t trust third-party sites or LinkedIn posts that include the symbols, which runs contrary to AP Stylebook standards, just because the company itself voluntarily chose to do so. It’s also improper and possibly illegal for someone to use a trademark symbol for a name they don’t own no matter how fawning their intentions.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare staffing platform vendor IntelyCare acquires CareRev, which offers a hospital shift-bidding platform. CareRev made headlines in 2023 when it reportedly laid off 100 employees following the resignation of its founder and CEO William Patterson, who departed after telling a colleague that he had delivered the company’s $50 million Series A pitch (“Uber for nurses”) while taking LSD.  

Oasys Health, which offers therapist workflow automation with wearables integration, raises $4.6 million in seed and pre-seed funding.

A Bain & Company report finds that global healthcare private equity investment hit a record $190 billion in deal value in 2025, driven by an increase in large transactions and strong activity across sectors like biopharma and healthcare IT, with buyout counts and exit values also approaching historic highs.

Sources report that private equity firm TPG is reportedly close to acquiring UnitedHealth’s Optum UK business, which supplies electronic patient record systems to most of Britain’s GPs, for $1.5 billion. Analysts speculate that TPG could combine Optum UK with its portfolio company Nextech, a US-based specialty EHR/PM vendor.

Sales

• Lifepoint Health chooses ambient documentation from IScribeHealth.

People

Lyric names Halsey Wise, MBA (Lime Barrel Advisors) as CEO.

Imprivata promotes Tom Shapiro to VP of cybersecurity sales.  

Announcements and Implementations

Dentists who have access to a patient’s shared comprehensive health record in Epic avoided 260,000 potential drug interactions in 2025, the company reports.

VectorCare launches Lyft Smart on FHIR App, which allows care teams to schedule and manage patient rides within EHRs, starting with Epic.

Government and Politics

The FDA will step back from regulating low-risk wellness technologies, including fitness apps and activity trackers. Products that only share information won’t need clearance as long as companies avoid making medical claims.

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore team members volunteer at the Salvation Army Angel Tree event.
• Black Book Research recaps 2025 research announcements and customer-related honors.
• Ellkay offers a new customer success story featuring West Feliciana Hospital titled “Empowering Rural Healthcare: From Integration to Enterprise Data Management.”
• Health Data Movers names Carl Ferguson (Healthcare IT Leaders) director of client partnerships.
• Healthmonix’s Emergency and Acute Care Clinical registry earns CMS QCDR approval for 2026.
• Infinx will exhibit at the HFMA Western Symposium January 18-21 in Las Vegas.
• Judi Health names Sara Bunn (Boston Consulting Group) chief human resources officer.
• Clearsense appoints Terry Shaw, former president and CEO of AdventHealth, as its board chair.

Blog Posts

• Current Procedural Terminology® 2026 Code Set Overview (AGS Health)
• Preparing for the New Era of HCC Risk Adjustment (Medicomp Systems)
• AI is helping nursing educators teach more effectively, and students to learn more deeply (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• A Rural CNO on Why Most Healthcare Innovation Fails Nurses (CereCore)
• How Insurance Discovery Enhances Hospital Revenue Recovery Rates (FinThrive)
• Why Healthcare Vulnerability Threat Management Breaks Down and How to Fix It (Fortified Health Security)
• The Value-Based Care Wake-Up Call for Health Tech CEOs (Get-to-Market Health)
• Reflections from a Doctor’s Visit (HCTec)
• December Momentum: A Look Back at 2025 and Ahead to 2026 (Health Data Movers)
• Adoption Over Implementation: Incorporating a Change Management Mindset (Impact Advisors)
• The Right Tool for the Job: An EHR Alone Isn’t Enough to Drive Efficiency (LiveData)
• Advancing health equity through data, community, and action: Insights from ACHDM leaders (Meditech)
• Top 10 Legacy Health IT Support Client Questions and Answers (Med Tech Solutions)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Send news or rumors.
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News 1/7/26

Top News

Healthcare-focused private equity firm Altaris acquires Tegria from Providence St. Joseph Health.

Tegria was formed in 2020 from Engage, Bluetree, and Navin Haffty. It then acquired Cumberland, Sisu Solutions, Cloud21. It had previously acquired KenSci, Colburn Hill Group, Lumedic, Community Technologies, and MediRevv. 

Providence spun out analytics firm Advata in June 2022 by combining KenSci, Colburn Hill Group, MultiScale, Lumedic, Quiviq, and Alphalytics. That company apparently shut down in early 2023. Providence sold Acclara to R1 RCM in early 2024 for $675 million.

Altaris acquired Sharecare in 2024. Its exited healthcare holdings include Acclara, AGS Health, Clearwater, and Precyse.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor VectorCare. VectorCare is the first patient logistics platform that is built directly inside leading EHRs using SMART on FHIR. Care teams can schedule transportation, home health, and DME in under a minute, without leaving thepatient chart or relying on phone calls and portals. Our SMART on FHIR integration embeds VectorCare into Epic, Cerner, Meditech, Allscripts, Athena, and more with zero code or IT effort. Real-time updates, vendor communication, and live tracking flow directly into the EHR to streamline every transition of care. With VectorCare’s no-code workflow builder, organizations can standardize discharge and care-coordination workflows instantly. This reduces delays, improves handoffs, and helps lower preventable readmissions by up to 30%. Explore our SMART on FHIR app in the Epic Showroom or request a demo. Follow us on LinkedIn and X for updates on patient logistics innovation. Thanks to VectorCare for supporting HIStalk.

I found this YouTube demo of Vector’s SMART on FHIR app within Epic.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Sales

• Kirby Medical Center (IL) selects Switchboard, MD’s automated healthcare communications software.

People

InterSystems promotes Don Woodlock to president.

MDAudit promotes Nisheet Goenka, MSEE to CTO.

The Guthrie Clinic (NY) promotes Brad Carvellas, MS to SVP and chief digital officer.

Asif Ali, MD (University of Houston College of Medicine) joins Kencor Health as chief medical officer.

Atropos Health promotes Kevin Smith to chief growth officer.

TeleTracking appoints Derek Ritchea, MBA (Lincoln International) as chief strategy officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Utah launches a pilot to allow AI technology from Doctronic to autonomously manage prescription refills for 190 common medications. The company also markets a free chatbot that assesses systems, offers guidance, and then offers to connect users with virtual providers for a $39 virtual consultation.

Healthcare data foundation operator CAQH restructures to assign ownership to 12 shareholder entities that are affiliated with national health plans.

Southwestern Medical Center and Comanche County Memorial Hospital merge to form Memorial Health System of Southwest Oklahoma. The combined system will implement Meditech Expanse this summer.

Connecticut’s Connie HIE implements Clinical Architecture’s PIQXL Gateway patient data quality measurement tool.

Government and Politics

The FDA issues an RFI on a proposed contracting vehicle that is aimed at making it easier for VC-backed companies to do business with the agency. FDA notes that many breakthrough health technologies come from firms that lack the resources and know-how to navigate federal procurement, and that the government’s use of prime contractors, whose incentives favor billable hours over scalable solutions, often impedes adoption.

The VA sees a 10% annual increase in telehealth use amongst veterans, 92% of whom report being satisfied with the care received.

Other

A social determinants of health-focused survey of 145 healthcare facilities in Arkansas finds that, while providers screen at a high rate, significant gaps exist in referring patients to services and providing services directly. The survey also found that SDOH-related needs most often pertain to housing, transportation, and food insecurity.

Sponsor Updates

• TruBridge staff partner with United Way of Southwest Alabama to support the Africatown Hall & Food Bank in Mobile, AL.
• Netsmart announces its commitment to the CMS Health Tech Ecosystem initiative as a CMS Aligned Network.
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere company, announces the release of a KLAS First Look report highlighting strong early results and customer satisfaction for its Cloud Payments solution.
• Black Book Research releases its “2026 State of Global Digital Healthcare Technology” report.
• AdvancedMD helps mental health practice Modern Mojo reduce time spent on insurance eligibility by more than 80%.
• Artera releases new insights on the rising cost of patient no-shows across healthcare systems.
• Grand Lake Health System will implement Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise Axon, connecting through Health Gorilla’s TEFCA-enabled QHIN.
• Consensus Cloud Solutions CRO and EVP Johnny Hecker wins the 2025 Gold Globee Business Award.
• CereCore releases a new podcast titled “A Rural CNO on Healthcare Innovation That Actually Helps Nurses.”

Blog Posts

• Maximizing Utilization Review Processes for Quality and Productivity (AGS Health)
• Centralized solutions help align drug development teams, providers, and patients (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Headlines across healthcare: Altera’s take on top trends in 2025 (Altera Digital Health)
• Why Most Organizations Are Already Behind on CMS-0057-F (Canopii Collaborative)
• What Healthcare Executives Read Most in 2025 (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• EHR build sprawl: Why “just in case” is costing you more than you think (Cardamom Health)
• Visibility Ahead: How 2026 Will Defog the Prior Authorization Process (DrFirst)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 1/5/26

Top News

The Drug Enforcement Administration extends telehealth flexibility in the prescribing of controlled substances through December 31, 2026.

This fourth extension came during the last hours of December 31 and took effect the next day.

The flexibilities allow practitioners to remotely prescribe scheduled drugs without first conducting an in-person visit. They may also manage maintenance and withdrawal treatments for opioid use disorder.

Reader Comments

From Boyd Beaver: “Re: HTI-5. Washington keeps writing rules as if health IT were competitive, while the market keeps behaving like it isn’t.” In health tech, some companies are innovative and some are imitative, but the rules assume equal market power and equal buyer choice. Companies don’t grow unless they are selling something customers actually want over competitive alternatives. It’s not clear that EHRs are in such demand in the post-Meaningful Use era that vendors are staying out of the market primarily because certification costs are too high. It’s also worth noting that EHR certification was created under a Republican administration and announced days into the Obama presidency as the string attached to federal stimulus money, a move that pushed out smaller vendors and permanently shaped the product roadmaps of the survivors. Today’s EHR market was deliberately created by federal certification.

From AI Drop: “Re: AI. Health systems aren’t adopting AI because it is transformational. They are using it because it’s cheaper than people. Nobody should be surprised that workflow messes persist and disruption is limited to financials.”

From UHG Whiz: “Re: the January 1 mess of US health insurance. Premiums have skyrocketed, deductibles are up to the point of making all policies catastrophic coverage only, and the resetting of those deductibles causes people to defer care that they can’t afford. Just try to get through to insurer to ask about new formulary changes or another round of prior authorizations. This isn’t cost control so much as cost shifting, with patients left to absorb the risk and the consequences.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIStalk readers want HIMSS to pick a lane, but can’t decide on which one, which is probably the same challenge that faces Hal Wolf. The #1 choice could be a moneymaker but only at modest scale, #2 doesn’t generate much revenue, and #3 is history because they’ve sold the annual conference exhibit. Respondents are looking for HIMSS to provide industry relevance while HIMSS itself is trying to stop its post-2020 free fall. Respondents skew heavily US, so the global conference answer might be underrepresented. Maybe the takeaway that both sides is that expertise beats booths, plus its pre-COVID ambitions involved selling consulting services around its now-multiple adoption models. Another good poll question would be – would you pay out of your own pocket for HIMSS membership?

New poll to your right or here: What is your reaction to ASTP/ONC’s proposed cutback of EHR certification requirements? Is it a free pass for vendors, a catalyst for innovation, or are those effectively the same thing?

Thanks to these companies for recently supporting HIStalk. Click a logo for more information.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Population health technology vendor Clint shuts down and files Chapter 7 bankruptcy, citing insufficient cash to make payroll and pay creditors.

People

Rich Rogers, MBA, SVP/CIO at Prisma Health, retires.

Announcements and Implementations

The FDA grants 510(k) clearance for BrainSpace’s Intellidrop autonomous brain fluid pressure management system for ICUs. Brain Fluid Interface (BFI) products monitor cerebrospinal fluid, interstitial fluid, and cerebral blood and create training data for Physical AI models.

Other

I enjoyed this LinkedIn photo taken by Altera Digital Health during San Gorgonia Memorial Hospital’s (CA) upgrade to Sunrise 25.1. Go-live teams of both vendor and hospital people, united by their immediately recognizable team support shirts, usually get squeezed into temporarily and lightly repurposed conference rooms (hint: tape cables down, make sure computer-controlled HVAC doesn’t automatically take off for the night, wheel in a whiteboard, and source an unreasonable amount of coffee). Go-live warriors will be taken back olfactorily to long nights in the war room — overheated laptops and printers, panic sweat, and the stench of around-the-clock leftover junk food like pizza and everything bagels. Regards to those who know the smell and have thus earned the shirt.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 12/31/25

Top News

CMS will award all 50 states an average of $200 million each under the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, which states are expected to use to modernize rural health infrastructure and technology.

Reader Comments

From Blaspheme: “Re: HIMSS board. It doesn’t have many C-level executives from non-profits.” Excluding Hal Wolf, five of the 12 board members work for non-profits, two of them hospitals. Seven of the 12 are based outside the US. None work for a US-based non-profit health system, although that perspective is represented by recently retired Hal Baker, MD, former SVP/CDO/CIO of WellSpan Health.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Struggling Maimonides Health will be taken over by NYC Health + Hospitals in a move that is backed by $2.2 billion in New York state funding to protect Brooklyn’s safety-net healthcare. The city cites as a benefit that Maimonides will be able to implement Epic, replacing applications from its best-of-breed portfolio that include several systems that it acquired from the former Eclipsys and Allscripts.

People

University of Utah Health promotes Donna Roach, MS to system CDIO.

Announcements and Implementations

The US Navy will extend the pilot of its new medical operations system for at-sea care after completing testing earlier this month.

Epic is working with Penn Medicine to improve patient and clinician experience by deploying technology at the point of care. The organizations previewed a model exam room for the Montgomeryville multispecialty clinic that will open in late 2027.

Black Book Research reports that 80% of international health tech buyers are using digital sovereignty as a first-cut, pass-fail test in eliminating companies that store and host data outside the buyer’s own country. The shift is due to pressure from tariffs, export controls, geopolitical risk, and mandates to use in-country hosting.

A new KLAS report on health system AI use finds that ambient documentation leads by far, with 79% of participating organizations using it. Microsoft, Abridge, Epic, and Oracle Health are considered most often. Two-thirds of organizations use some form of AI, primarily for productivity. Microsoft, Epic, OpenAI, and Abridge most often considered. Agentic AI remains mostly a buzzword, with just one of 3,000 respondents reporting live use. Planned AI use cases focus on revenue cycle management, patient engagement, and clinical workflows.

Government and Politics

The Defense Health Agency issues an RFI to solicit industry feedback on its draft contract strategy for a follow-on to MHS Genesis. It proposes a program office structure that would separate technical integration, human-centered design, and product management.

HHS ASTP posts a recorded  information session on the just-published HTI-5 Proposed Rule. The 60-day public comment period closes on February 27, 2026.

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 12/29/25

Top News

New York Governor Kathy Hochul vetoes the New York Health Information Privacy Act, which would have required companies that handle health-related information to obtain user consent before storing or selling that data.

The bill defined Regulated Health Information to include data from apps, wearables, telehealth, and employer-provided health information.

Critics said that the definition was so broad that it could encompass non-health data, impose complex and costly compliance requirements, threaten innovation, and create unnecessary burdens for health systems.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most provider poll respondents say that remote patient monitoring payment changes won’t really affect them.

New poll to your right or here: What primary role should HIMSS choose to maintain or increase its business success? This question addresses big-picture strategy, but leave a poll comment after voting to suggest the #1 thing HIMSS should do within the next year to position itself for the future.

HIStalk supporters and vendor marketing folks: Current HIStalk sponsors get free spotlights and text ads, while prospective ones can talk to Lorre about the benefits of full-year exposure. Startups and former sponsors might even get a lagniappe. Lorre also has a single Top Spot banner for companies that are seeking maximal exposure (10,000 clicks in the past year) and the satisfaction of always seeing their ad atop those of competitors. Sponsors get zero influence over news and opinion, but that’s to their advantage since decision-makers will bail quickly on thinly veiled pay-for-play and inexpert babbling.

News is understandably slow, so let’s enjoy the results of reader donations to Donors Choose. Dr. K says that her Florida first graders started using their new STEM materials immediately after she explained, “I told them that they were donated to our classroom by people who wanted to help them learn.”

Meanwhile, new reader donations, matched with third-party donations and funds from my Anonymous Vendor Executive, fully funded these Donors Choose teacher grant requests:

• Visual learning tools for Ms. W’s Honors Algebra and Geometry middle school classes in Oklahoma City, OK.
• STEAM manipulatives for Ms. W’s elementary school class in Oklahoma City, OK.
• Headphones for Ms. S’s elementary school class in Burlington, NC.
• Math manipulatives for Ms. M’s disability needs middle school math class in Charlestown, MA.
• STEM toys for Ms. N’s elementary school class in Brighton, MA.
• A laptop to support robotics coding and 3D printing in Mr. G’s high school class in Bloomfield, NM.
• A math classroom (learning tools, organizers, sensory tools, and supplies) for Ms. K’s elementary school class in Dorchester, MA.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Announcements and Implementations

Peer-reviewed studies find that Linus Health’s AI-based digital cognitive assessments can detect subtle behavioral signals that are associated with Alzheimer’s pathology years before symptoms appear, allowing early identification of people who should be tested for blood-based biomarkers.

Black Book Research posts its annual report on the standards it uses to rank health tech products and services. The company does not sell consulting, advisory, or improvement services to vendors, does not offer paid placements, does not pay survey participants, and offers no pay-to-play options such as offering score improvement services and related recognition. This statement caught my eye:

Black Book’s annual refresh cycle is informed by a widely recognized measurement principle often referred to as Goodhart’s Law: once a measure becomes a target, it can become less effective as a measure. In vendor rankings, stable rubrics can unintentionally encourage optimization for what performs well in the scoring system rather than what consistently delivers implementation success, operational reliability, service responsiveness, and realized value after contract signature. Over time, a ranking can drift toward measuring “ability to rank” instead of “ability to deliver.”

Government and Politics

A federal grand jury indicts the physician owner of a clinic for allegedly billing Medicare $45 million for Botox injections that were medically unnecessary and, in many cases, never provided. Violetta Mailyan, DO is also charged with obstructing a criminal investigation by allegedly submitting falsified medical records in response to a grand jury subpoena. Prosecutors say the clinic billed for services on dates when it was closed, when Mailyan was traveling outside the country, and on at least one date when the Medicare patient was incarcerated in federal prison.

Other

The New York Times profiles the kidney transplant-matching National Kidney Registry, which transfers much of its millions of dollars in annual income – collected mostly via hospital fees – to for-profit technology and holding companies that were formed by Founder and CEO Garet Hil, who developed the software that matches donors to recipients. NKR had $69 million in annual revenue in 2023 and paid Hil’s technology company $8.2 million when it sold the commercial operations portion to Hil for $2.6 million.

I was fascinated by a New Yorker article titled “The Role of Doctors is Changing Forever,” written by Weill Cornell hospitalist Dhruv Khullar, MD, MPP. He says that doctors are losing their cultural authority as patients seek “unbundled” medical advice and services outside of traditional practice. Doctors once reigned as the gatekeeper to everything that relates to health, but now people are obtaining and trusting information from attention-optimizing TikTok docs, direct-to-consumer companies, the MAHA movement, and AI, causing people to trust doctors less or to avoid them entirely. He writes this, although glossing over how doctors might actually earn a living in this new role:

When a hegemon loses status, it can take a few paths. It can aim for restoration — bringing back the empire — which in this case would probably focus on gatekeeping. It can retreat, which might mean abdicating medicine’s broad public role, perhaps in favor of a narrow focus on earnings and technical skills. The last — and, in my view, the best — path is reinvention. Doctors can remake their profession by embracing the multi-polar medical landscape they now inhabit, and by acting as a kind of system stabilizer: working with other powers to help shape rules, norms, and relationships.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 12/24/25

Top News

ASTP/ONC releases HTI-5, a proposed rule that streamlines its Health IT Certification Program, updates information blocking regulations, and establishes a foundation of FHIR-based APIs to support AI-enabled interoperability.

HTI-5 would remove 34 of the 60 certification criteria and revise seven to reduce developer cost.

The proposal would also eliminate a Biden administration requirement that health tech vendors provide “model cards” that explain how their AI models work and how they should be used, similar to food nutrition labels.

Reader Comments

From Lippy: “Re: Donors Choose. Remind me again how to donate.” I will first explain that I do not strong-arm readers into donating to Donors Choose through me. However, it is one of few organizations that I trust and whose mission I believe in. Donating as described below allows me to choose projects, apply matching funds from third parties and my Anonymous Vendor Executive, and then list the projects that were funded (a cranky reader once accused me of “virtue signaling” by listing the projects here, but it’s fun to celebrate them collectively). The same process works for company donations. Instructions:

1. Purchase a Donors Choose gift card in the amount you’d like to donate.
2. Choose the option to send the gift card by the email to mr_histalk@histalk.com (that’s my Donors Choose account).
3. Print your own Donors Choose receipt for tax purposes.
4. I’ll pool the money, apply the matching funds, and publicly report here the projects that I funded.

A generous donation from long-time HIStalk supporters Ben and Michelle at ST Advisors, boosted by matching funds, fully funded these Donors Choose teacher grant requests:

• Headphones for Ms. C’s middle school class in Houston, TX.
• Headphones for the technology classes of Ms. S’s middle school science academy class in Austintown. OH.
• A laptop extended for Ms. A’s elementary school class in Houston, TX.
• STEM computer lab supplies for Ms. B’s middle school class in Port Saint Lucie, FL.
• A rolling white board for Ms. B’s middle school class in Newark, DE.
• Math and science activity stations for Ms. D’s middle school class in Aston, PA.
• Science lab supplies and materials for Mr. B’s middle school class in Yuma, AZ.
• STEM lab supplies for Ms. K’s elementary school class in Knightdale, NC.
• A document camera for Ms. D’s elementary school class in Randolph, MA.
• Magnets and microscopes for Ms. W’s elementary school class in Oilton, OK.
• Chemistry lab supplies for Mr. S’s high school class in Greenwood, DE.
• Classroom library shelves for Ms. T’s high school early college high school class in Louisburg, NC.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Neurable raises a $35 million Series A round to accelerate commercialization of its brain-computer interface technology that allows wearables to track mental fatigue, cognitive recovery, and focus state detection. The company says that an immediate application will be to integrate brain insights into electronic gaming.

Sales

• Saint Peter’s Healthcare System (NJ), whose planned merger with Atlantic Health was cancelled in October 2025, will implement Epic.

Government and Politics

The former CEO of Power Mobility Doctor Rx is sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay $452 million in restitution for running a telemarketing, telemedicine, and kickback scheme that defrauded Medicare and insurers of $1 billion. The company’s software platform connected DME suppliers and pharmacies with telemedicine companies that accepted kickbacks and bribes to issue fraudulent prescriptions. The company targeted Medicare beneficiaries who agreed to provide their personal information and accept the medically unnecessary medical equipment and supplies when contacted via offshore call centers and mass mailings.  

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Monday Morning Update 12/22/25

Top News

New Mountain Capital private equity president Matt Holt leaves the firm after nearly 25 years to combine five of New Mountain’s healthcare portfolio companies into Thoreau, which will use AI to reduce medical costs. The companies are:

• Datavant — health data exchange, includes the acquired former Ciox Health.
• Swoop — drug company marketing.
• Machinify — payment integrity.
• Smarter Technologies — payment processing, formed by New Mountain in May 2025 by combining Access Healthcare, Thoughtful.ai, and SmarterDx.
• Office Ally – claims clearinghouse, payments processing, and medical practice systems.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

AI-powered personal care robots get a definitive “maybe” from poll respondents.

New poll to your right or here, for providers: Does your organization rely on RPM revenue enough to get excited about insurer RPM payment changes?

The top-of-page HIStalk banner has been solidly booked for years, but it is available now to the first company that commits. Its previous occupant generated over 10,000 clicks in the past 12 months, so it draws attention and interest from people who read health tech news on purpose and make decisions accordingly. Contact Lorre.

A generous donation from Mike, plus matching funds from outside organizations as well as my Anonymous Vendor Executive, fully funded these Donors Choose teacher grant requests:

• Lunar New Year resources for Ms. H’s elementary school science academy class in Youngstown, OH.
• Math tiles for Ms. M’s elementary school class in Charlotte, NC.
• Math practice headphones and markers for Ms. A’s middle school class in Ayden, NC.
• Headphones for Dr. P’s elementary school math class in Orlando, FL.
• Science fair supplies for Ms. D’s high school class in Aurora, CO.
• Hands-on science kits for Ms. G’s elementary school class in Hope Mills, NC.
• Dry erase boards and markers for Ms. F’s middle school math class in Riverdale, GA.
• Math games for Ms. M’s elementary school class in Springfield, MO.
• Classroom pillows, balance ball seating, and learning prizes for Ms. D’s high school class in Los Lunas, NM.
• Supplies, dyslexia tools, and math boards for Ms. J’s elementary school class in Las Vegas, NV.
• Special Olympics shirt-making supplies for Ms. E’s elementary school class in Dallas, TX.
• Pi Day match celebration activities and decorations for Ms. D’s middle school class in Panorama City, CA.

I note with appreciation the matching funds that my Anonymous Vendor Executive provides annually. Most readers know this person, who asks that their donations remain anonymous and instead requests giving teachers the credit. I mostly choose STEM-related teacher needs in historically underfunded schools.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Mexico-based Leona Health raises $14 million seed funding and launches its AI copilot for physicians who use Meta-owned WhatsApp (meaning everywhere in the world except the US, China, and North Korea). Patient WhatsApp messages are routed to Leona’s app, which categorizes them, suggests responses, and supports team collaboration without exposing the user’s telephone number. I use WhatsApp on the desktop for my weekly video chats with my Ukrainian English student since Teams gave us problems after Microsoft killed Skype.

People

MRO promotes Hassan Abdallah, JD to VP / chief compliance and privacy officer.

Aaron Martin, MBA (Amazon) joins Humana as president of Medicare Advantage and will move to Insurance Segment President upon the retirement of George Renaudin in Q3 2026.

Government and Politics

HHS publishes an RFI seeking feedback on how it can use its regulatory, payment, and R&D activities to increase healthcare AI adoption.

Diagnostic radiology software vendor PenRad Technologies will pay $529,069 to settle False Claims Act allegations that its software used default settings that caused providers to bill Medicare and MassHealth for medically unnecessary breast cancer screening procedures. The whistleblower lawsuit was brought by Community Health Programs, Inc., which will collect $93,000 of the settlement. Intelerad acquired PenRad in August 2022.

Three Democratic senators express concern to VA Secretary Doug Collins that the VA plans to implement its EHR at 13 new sites in 2026 despite unresolved issues and software defects, asking for information on rollout support resources, provider feedback, unimplemented GAO recommendations, planned staffing levels, and pharmacy-specific corrective actions.

Other

Not new, but new to me. CBS Evening News covers Baltimore family physician Michael Zollicoffer, MD, who was left without radiation treatment for his newly diagnosed cancer when his insurer declined to pay and he didn’t have the money to self-pay. His patients created a GoFundMe that has raised $300,000. He said in an award acceptance speech, “You cannot see the patient from a computer. Put it down. Look at their faces, look at their hearts, and look at their souls.”

Sponsor Updates

• TruBridge and RevSpring expand their partnership to bring enhanced financial engagement and payment solutions to rural and community healthcare.
• Wolters Kluwer Health announces the introduction of Lippincott CoursePoint+ with Expert AI for nursing education.
• CHIME’s “Leader2Leader” podcast features Optimum Healthcare IT Chief Strategy Officer Rick Shepardson.

Blog Posts

• HOPE Early Impressions: How Hospice Teams Are Navigating the New Era of Quality Reporting (Netsmart)
• 2026 Patient Experience Predictions: The Year Healthcare Becomes Consumer‑Driven (Praia Health)
• 2025: A Year in Review (RLDatix)
• Patient experience tips for mother-baby units (Sonifi Health)
• Clinical Evidence AI for Healthcare: Promises and Pitfalls (Symplr)
• Topics That Sparked Your Interest in 2025 (Tegria)
• Application Rationalization – Critical, Complex, and Absolutely Attainable (CereCore)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 12/19/25

Top News

UnitedHealthcare will delay implementation of a controversial policy that would have restricted its payment for remote patient monitoring, according to Stat.

The recently announced policy was to have gone into effect on January 1, but will instead be delayed until later in 2026.

Reader Comments

From Dr. Herzenstube: “Re: FHIR. The new version of the FHIR US Core Implementation Guide removes extensions for birth sex, gender identity, and individual pronouns as required to comply with the White House’s executive order titled ‘Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.’” Verified, per the document above.

From Potentate: “Re: HIMSS. I worked for them until recently. They were having major money issues and could not compromise on membership restructuring from the top to allow revenue generation, mainly from the corporate side of things. Funds were not allocated optimally after the sale of the global conference. They laid off what I would say was about half the organization because they knew that the chaos between the new CRM system (causing a lag in data and membership issues) and revenue, things were going south quickly. There is barely any chapter team left as the director and senior manager left before the layoffs. No corporate relations. Most of the media, engagement strategy, and government relations teams are down to bones.” Unverified. This report came from a verified former employee.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Sunday, December 21 is Yalda, a holiday that I like because it excludes no one (although to be fair, neither does New Year’s Day). Yalda celebrants, most of whom are in or from Iran and neighboring countries, mark the last day of fall and thus the longest and darkest night of the year. Then comes winter, when the light begins its slow return. Families celebrate Yalda by staying up until dawn, protecting each other from the dark forces and eating watermelon and pomegranates whose glowing reds signify sunrise and renewal. Yalda means “birth,” which feels exactly right for people like me whose energy level rises with long summer days (Southern Hemispherians must do their pomegranate procurement in June). Celebrant or not, may your Yalda or winter holiday of choice be filled with light, warmth, good company, and the optimism that the clock is about to be reset with 12 months that have no mistakes in them yet.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Startup Hundred Health launches its $499 annual membership program and app that offers lab testing, health tracking, and nutritional supplement sales.

People

Navina hires Shlomit Labin, PhD, MSc (Shield) as VP of AI.

Sean Dennehy, MBA (Oracle Health) joins Infinx as VP of business development.

Impact Advisors names Casey Bryson (Lurie Children’s Hospital) as VP and client relations executive.

Emory Healthcare promotes interim chief information and digital officer Laura Fultz, MS to the permanent role.

Announcements and Implementations

An Athenahealth survey of ambulatory practices finds that 62% used four or more AI-enabled tools in the past year, and most expect AI to reduce documentation burden and improve patient engagement. Respondents say that AI’s potential is limited by inconsistent data formats and the challenge of finding needed clinical information.

HCA Healthcare UK goes live on Google Cloud-hosted Meditech Expanse in its 11 hospitals, with project support from CereCore.

A KLAS Arch Collaborative analysis of previous surveys of acute care nurses finds that unproductive charting is a key contributor to nurse dissatisfaction, burnout, and departures. Nurses asked for streamline or reduced charting twice as often as any other EHR enhancement to address duplicate and redundant documentation (especially in flowsheets), lack of task standardization in flowsheets, and a requirement to document information that nobody ever looks at and that doesn’t make a difference in patient care.

Government and Politics

A federal jury indicts Done Global on allegations that it arranged the distribution of 40 million doses of Adderall for non-legitimate medical reasons to members who paid it $100 million in subscription fees. The company’s former CEO and medical president were convicted of controlled substances distribution and fraud charges last month.

Other

Cisco provides its hospital customers with Connected Santa, which offers hospitalized children a virtual visit with Santa via Webex with help from onsite company and hospital volunteers.

Sponsor Updates

• Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new report titled “2026 healthcare AI trends: Insights from experts.”
• Fortified Health Security names Justin Bockrath penetration tester and Jace Cawiezell threat defense analyst.
• Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “QuickHITs” podcast titled “How Great CIOs Lead: Insights from Luis Taveras, PhD.”
• The “Tech Teams Today” podcast features Healthcare IT Leaders CTO Paul Cannon in an episode titled “Reliability Beats Cutting Edge.”
• Infinx names Heather Swanson business development director.
• WEDI honors InterSystems with its annual Innovation in Health IT Award.

Blog Posts

• 8 healthcare dashboard examples and the metrics they track (Arcadia)
• Arkansas Social Care Summit: Highlights from the Natural State (Findhelp)
• Why Data Security Will Define Cost-Effective RCM in 2026 (FinThrive)
• EHR build sprawl: Why “just in case” is costing you more than you think (Cardamom)
• Meditech staff lead holiday giving for local families (Meditech)
• Leveraging Your EHR to Maximize Reimbursements (Med Tech Solutions)

Contacts

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

News 12/17/25

Top News

FDA updates its policy to accept de-identified real-world evidence to support drug and device application reviews. This change allows use of registries, insurance claims, and EHR data that were previously excluded because they lacked patient-level confidential information.

FDA says it intends to review the same policy change in its guidance for drug and biologics.

Reader Comments

From Dr.SickandTiredHIT: “Re: Texas versus Epic. Can we all just say the quiet part out loud? A conservative politician, who is running for statewide office and is looking to make a splash, is suing a company led by a liberal in a liberal city. The Texas v. Epic suit is nonsense beyond a politician trying to score points. Why can’t Epic say that?”

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Virtual cardiology company Auxira Health raises $7.8 million in seed funding. Auxira offers cardiology practices remote services that include access to advanced practice providers, care coordination, patient engagement, medication management, and system integration. MedStar Health (MD) launched Auxira in May through a collaboration with Abundant Venture Partners.

Healthcare technology, analytics, and services vendor Sentact acquires event and incident management company Performance Health Partners and Vizient’s Patient Safety Organization. Performance Health Partners founder and CEO Heidi Raines will join Sentact as chief strategy officer.

Lin Health announces $11 million in Series A funding. The company offers an app-based treatment program for the management of chronic pain.

The private equity owners of Netsmart will reportedly seek a buyer for the company for the second time.

Medify Health, which offers remote patient monitoring and chronic care management services for Medicare beneficiaries, shuts down.

Sales

• WellSpan Health will expand its use of Aidoc’s clinical AI beyond radiology to include its nine hospitals and 250 outpatient facilities.
• The Tampa General Hospital Cancer Institute (FL) selects Reimagine Care’s virtual cancer care services.
• Mt. San Rafael Hospital and Clinics (CO) will implement Oracle Health, apparently replacing Medhost in the 25-bed hospital.
• Berlin, Germany-based Charité, which is Europe’s largest university hospital at 3,000 beds, will implement Epic in a $235 million project.

People

Rakshay Jain, MBA (Innovaccer) joins DexCare as chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Tebra incorporates DrFirst’s RxInform prescription notification tool into its EHR+ for private practices.

South Gippsland Hospital in Australia implements Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise EHR.

Children’s Minnesota will outsource its revenue cycle management to Ensemble Health Partners.

Manifest MedEx will provide the California Mental Health Services Authority with ADT notifications for people who are being seen by county behavioral health organizations.

Health insurer Fallon Community Health plan sues Innovaccer, alleging that the company’s software was worthless, didn’t improve risk adjustment revenue as promised, and was sold under fraudulent misrepresentation.

Government and Politics

PenRad Technologies will pay $530,000 to settle federal allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by inadvertently causing providers to bill Medicare and MassHealth for medically unnecessary breast cancer screenings due to an overlooked software setting. Intelerad Medical Systems acquired PenRad in 2022.

Members of the House Veterans’ Affairs Technology Modernization Subcommittee voice concern over the soaring cost of the VA’s Oracle Health–based EHR Modernization program. The estimate has grown from an initial $10 billion to $37 billion, and the Institute for Defense Analyses projects at least $50 billion. Thirteen facilities are slated to go live next year, with full deployment expected by 2031. Subcommittee chair Tom Barrett (R-MI), a US Army veteran, has a personal stake in the rollout because four Michigan facilities that he uses for care will be the first to adopt the system since the 2023 pause.

An ASTP blog post outlines the similarities and differences between TEFCA and CMS-Aligned Networks.

Other

University of California researchers find that automated outreach to patients offering help with advance care planning significantly increases the number of patients who complete ACP documentation.

Sponsor Updates

• CloudWave names Maria Graham business development manager.
• WellSky and UMed partner to expand home-based patient access to national clinical research registries.
• Wolters Kluwer Health releases a new report titled “Future Forecast: The Growing Impact of PAs in the Healthcare System.”
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of “The Informonster Podcast” titled “Inside Informatics with John D’Amore.”
• Linus Health names Julie Wood, MD, MPH senior medical director, clinician engagement.

Blog Posts

• AI Clinical Assistant from AdvancedMD: AI Innovation to Help Healthcare Providers Prioritize Patient Care over Paperwork (AdvancedMD)
• Climbing higher together: A look inside our 2025 client successes (Altera Digital Health)
• 28 Healthcare analytics companies fueling insights in 2026 (Arcadia)
• Patients Save Over 88% with Real-Time Prescription Benefit (Arrive Health)
• AI in Healthcare Compliance: How Artera is Setting the Standard (Artera)
• The Cyber Risks of Legacy Applications for EHRs and Why Action Cannot Wait (CTG)
• How Healthcare Organizations Use Analytics to Improve Outcomes (Dimensional Insight)
• Survey reveals challenges physician assistants face: AI, insurance, and technology (Wolters Kluwer Health)

Contacts

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