News 4/9/25

Top News

The UK government and the Wellcome Trust will invest $767 million to create a Health Data Research Service, which will offer researchers a single access point to NHS data.

The Wellcome charity will contribute $128 million of the cost, while the UK government will provide up to $639 million.

The service will go live by the end of 2026.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I fully funded several DonorsChoose teacher grant requests using donations from Volpara Health, which contributed an amount for each response to a recent survey I ran. Their gift, combined with matching funds from my Anonymous Vendor Executive and others, supported these projects, with more to come:

• Math as art activity books and supplies for Ms. H’s high school class in Byhalia, MS.
• A presentation stand and clock for Ms. M’s second grade class in Roma, TX.
• STEM activity kits for Ms. A’s elementary school class in Rio Grande City, TX.
• STEM and engineering kits for Ms. S’s elementary school class in Thermal, CA.
• STEM books for Mr. K’s middle school class in Olathe, CO.
• Science books for Mr. A’s middle school class in Penitas, TX.
• STEM activities for Ms. M’s first grade class in Naples, FL.
• Robotics and STEM kits for Ms. M’s middle school class in Orrville, AL.
• Uniform shirts for Ms. E’s high school class in Camden, NJ.
• Group collaboration corner furnishings for Mr. K’s high school class in Trenton, NJ.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Therapy Brands, which offers software and services to rehab therapists, mental and behavioral healthcare professionals, and health IT developers, rebrands to Ensora Health.

Transcarent completes its $621 million acquisition of Accolade.

Sales

• Lake Norman Regional Medical Center (NC) will transition to Epic as a part of its acquisition by Duke Health.
• Six hospitals in Eastern Ontario will join the Atlas Alliance of hospitals and implement Epic by the fall of 2026.

People

Bharath Perugu, MBA (Office Practicum) joins Surgimate as chief product and technology officer.

CVS Health names Amy Compton-Phillips, MD (Press Ganey) EVP / chief medical officer.

Aaron Mann (KeyCare) joins Veeva Systems as VP commercial site solutions.

Solarity hires Kevin Hidenfelter as chief growth officer.

Brian Blackwell, MA (Point32Health) joins Healthcare Systems of America as VP of applications.

Prealize Health hires Jarret English (Sandata Technologies) as SVP of sales.

Announcements and Implementations

The Choctaw Nation Health Services Authority (OK) implements Epic.

McLaren Flint hospital (MI) implements Volpara Health’s Risk Pathways software for breast cancer risk assessment and care management.

Sponsor Updates

• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “A New Approach to Colorectal Cancer (CRC) Screening, with Geneoscopy.”
• Optimum Healthcare IT launches a podcast titled “Visionary Voices,” with its first episode airing on April 21, 2025.
• CereCore publishes a new case study featuring Jupiter Medical Center, “EHR Agnostic IT Support Leads to Provider and Patient Satisfaction.”
• The Röntgen Domus radiology center in Iceland implements Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging platform.
• Altera Digital Health announces that Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has added its Clinical Health Psychology team to the trust’s Sunrise EPR from Altera.
• New Black Book Research survey findings indicate that France’s EHR sector is undergoing significant transformation.
• CHIME honors Censinet founder and CEO Ed Gaudet with its 2025 Baldrige Foundation Leadership Award.
• The “Speaking Health Law” podcast features Clearwater Director of Consulting Services Hal Porter in an episode titled “How Have Cybersecurity Expectations for Health Tech Vendors Changed Over the Past 12 Months?”
• Clinical Architecture joins the CommonWell Health Alliance Marketplace.
• WEDI’s “The Collective Voice of Health IT” podcast features CliniComp SVP of Client Services Sandra Johnson in an episode titled “Clean Data, AI, and Interoperability to Eliminate ‘Pajama Time.’”
• Divurgent publishes a new success story titled “Concierge Scheduling of Physician EHR Personalization.”

Blog Posts

• High-Risk Medical Coding: Debridement Coding, Documentation Challenges, and Insights (AGS Health)
• How Rules-Based Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare is Reshaping Pharmacy Surveillance (Inovalon)
• 5 Ways to Break Down Silos and Deliver Whole-Person Care (Netsmart)
• The journey ahead: Altera’s dedication to empowering patients with innovative solutions (Altera Digital Health)
• 5 forces disrupting healthcare performance today — and how to navigate them (Arcadia)
• Exploring the Impact of Automated Patient Messaging on Medication Adherence and Clinical Trials (Artera)
• Key Takeaways from Health Care Value Week: The Future of ACOs & Specialty Value-Based Care (Conduce Health)
• The State of Telehealth in 2025 (Dimensional Insight)
• Healthcare Themes for 2025: The Realities of AI, Smarter Medication Management, and the Changing Regulatory Landscape (DrFirst)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 4/7/25

Top News

Hinge Health is reportedly considering postponing its much-anticipated IPO due to stock market volatility.

The company filed IPO plans last month. Its most recent funding round in October 2021 valued the company at $6 billion.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Respondents see little patient benefit to cloud migration. Some might argue that it’s not intended to impact patients directly, but others could reasonably ask, then what’s the point?

New poll to your right or here: What most limits your long-term career satisfaction in health system IT?

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Rite Aid is reportedly considering another bankruptcy filing less than a year after the drugstore chain exited Chapter 11, retreating from markets where it trails Walgreens and CVS to focus on regions where it’s the second-largest player.

Sales

• Good Shepherd Health System chooses Mednition’s Kate AI.

People

Door County Medical Center promotes Erick Schrier, MBA from CIO / compliance officer to chief administrative officer.

Government and Politics

The federal government files a False Claims Act complaint against Vohra Wound Physicians, alleging that it built an EHR system that automatically billed routine wound care as surgical debridement regardless of clinical justification. The company is also accused of setting revenue-driven debridement quotas and hiring inexperienced physicians who were misled during training about Medicare billing rules.

Hospital price transparency data remains mostly inaccessible and unhelpful to consumers due to complexity and inconsistent reporting, a KFF Health News report concludes. The White House plans to step up enforcement of a mostly ignored executive order from six years ago even though consumers haven’t found the cost data to be immediately useful – since it doesn’t reflect their actual out-of-pocket costs – and could encourage hospitals to raise prices if they learn that competitors charge more. 

Other

Penn Medicine News profiles SVP of Data and Technology Solutions Mitchell Schnall, MD, PhD.

Sponsor Updates

• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Healthcare Sector Update & Outlook, with Bloomberg Intelligence’s Jonathan Palmer.”
• Ellkay offers a new success story featuring WakeMed Health.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Mark Mabus, MD.
• Nym names Tal Shmuel junior backend engineer, Rashad Kanaaneh and Mark Kapilyan software engineers, Idan Bressler NLP research engineer, and Roee Mey-Tal and Hadar Dikstein medical data analysts.
• Praia Health celebrates its first anniversary.
• The AONL Foundation for Nursing Research and Education recognizes Symplr as its 2025 Friend of the Year Award honoree.
• Tegria will present at the IPMI Healthcare Finance Institute April 7 in Orlando.
• Wolters Kluwer Health adds conversational AI to vrClinicals for Nursing.

Blog Posts

• The Nurse Scheduling Dilemma: Why Open Shifts Stay Open (And What We Can Do About It) (Inovalon)
• A Smarter Path to Care: How Outreach Unified Telehealth, AI and Analytics to Improve Outcomes (Netsmart)
• The question every health system leader should be asking when it comes to cybersecurity (Nordic)
• How IT Service Management Drives Healthcare’s Digital Transformation (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• ICYMI: Heard at HIMSS25 (Surescripts)
• Implementing AI in healthcare RCM: How 1 organization built a structure for success (Waystar)
• Five ways long-term care administrators can foster healthy stress management (WellSky)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 4/4/25

Top News

Leaders from the Senate and House Veterans’ Affairs and Appropriations Committees ask the VA to submit an updated schedule and cost estimate for its Oracle Health EHR Modernization program. by September 30, 2025.

The group’s letter notes that “compliance with these laws, directives, and GAO recommendations is a critical step to ensuring EHRM’s success and accountability.”

Reader Comments

From HS CIO: “Re: Oracle breaches. Our Oracle Health rep said there was a call Monday evening where it was stated that the breach impacted legacy databases that were involved with migrations (I’m guessing Epic or the OCI instance of the EHR). On the cloud breach, the rep said that the message they were given is that no databases were breached, which seems to leave the door open. Wondering if you’ve heard anything similar from Oracle Health customers?” I invite those on the front lines to let me know what’s going on. Oracle has defended its claim that Oracle Cloud wasn’t breached because the incident apparently involved an older platform called Oracle Cloud Classic, although that is also an Oracle-managed cloud service. Meanwhile, a federal lawsuit that seeks class action status was filed against Oracle on Monday that involved both the cloud and Oracle Health breaches, accusing the company of violating Texas breach notification laws by not informing the alleged victims of the breach within the required 60 days. 

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Business Insider profiles the 29-year-old executives who are leading Palantir’s healthcare business, neither of whom has prior healthcare experience.

People

PeaceHealth hires Julie Eastman, MBA (UCI Health) as SVP/CIO.

Healthcare IT Leaders hires Paul Cannon (5plus2) as CTO.

Trimedx hires Neil de Crescenzo, MBA (Optum Insight) as CEO.

Apree Health, which was formed in the 2022 merger of Castlight Health and Vera Whole Health, promotes Jonathan Porter to CEO and restores the Castlight and Vera brands.

Advocate Health promotes Andy Crowder to SVP/chief digital officer.

Announcements and Implementations

A Stoltenberg Consulting survey of healthcare CIO members of CHIME finds:

• The top priorities for 2025 are improving clinical workflows, improving the patient experience, and optimizing EHRs.
• The #1 investment area is cybersecurity, privacy, and risk management.
• Getting the most out of existing technology reached an all-time high of 62% of votes.
• Clinician burnout rates are continuing their steady drop.
• The top IT support frustration involves lack of training.
• The biggest challenges are staff shortages, inadequate budgets, and EHR optimization.
• More than half are exploring or using AI tools in areas such as revenue cycle management, clinical documentation improvement, and predictive analytics.
• Health systems will continue to use hybrid or fully remote IT staffing.
• IT budgets are flat or declining in 61% of respondent organizations.

Privacy and Security

The Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council Cybersecurity Working Group urges the White House to launch a one-year consultative process with healthcare leaders instead of proceeding with the planned HIPAA Security Rule update.

Other

A class action lawsuit accuses a University of Maryland Medical Center pharmacist of installing webcam-activating software on at least 400 hospital computers over a 10-year period to spy on young female doctors and residents as they undressed or pumped breast milk. The six plaintiffs also allege that he installed keystroke logging software to steal their passwords, then accessed their home computers to watch them via webcam and to steal information from their cloud accounts. They are suing the hospital, who has fired the pharmacist, for negligence.

Sponsor Updates

• Medicomp Systems releases a new “Tell Me Where IT Hurts” podcast titled “Live From HIMSS25 in Fabulous Las Vegas!”
• AGS Health CEO Patrice Wolfe joins Verisma’s board.
• CereCore publishes a new case study titled “Virtual CISOs Bring New Hope to Orgs Without Security Officials.”
• A new analysis from Black Book Research identifies top global growth opportunities for OpenEHR adoption in 2025.
• Symplr will accept nominations for its new Karlene Kerfoot Nursing Leadership in Technology Education Grant, named in honor of its late CNO, beginning June 1.
• Clearwater announces the publication of its “Cyber Risk Benchmark Trend Report for Healthcare Vulnerability Management.”
• WellSky announces CarePort Care Transitions Dashboard Suite.
• The “Vanguards of Health Care” podcast features Capital Rx in an episode titled “How Capital Rx is Fixing America’s Broken Drug Pricing.”
• Inovalon announces that its Safety Management solution is now available on the PointClickCare Marketplace.
• Redox joins the CommonWell Health Alliance.
• Ellkay will incorporate Dymo’s labeling solutions into its LKOrbit platform.
• First Databank names Kelly Marino regional sales manager, and Thomas Pugh and Joseph Kuruvila software engineers.
• FinThrive will present at the IPMI Healthcare Financial Institute April 7 in Orlando.
• Infinx offers a new case study titled “New York Hospital Solves Prior Authorization & Scheduling Overflow With Tech-Enabled Patient Access Solution.”
• WEDI’s “The Collective Voice of Health IT Podcast” features Linus Health Chief Strategy Officer John Showalter, MD.

Blog Posts

• How Do You Solve a Problem Like Bad Data – and Other HIMSS and ViVE Reflections (Medicomp Systems)
• A Guide to EHR Activation Readiness Assessments (CTG)
• MIPS Cost scores are coming — what to know for 2024 and prepping for 2025 (Healthmonix)
• Capital Rx 2025 Partner Summit Highlights: The Future of Claim Administration & Benefit Management (Capital Rx)
• Sites of care delivery shift from traditional hospital settings to alternative settings (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Meeting the Mandates: Powering California HRSN Service Delivery (Findhelp)
• Don’t Let Self-Scheduling Practices Result in “Selfish Scheduling” (Impact Advisors)
• 6 technologies your medical practice needs now to weather financial uncertainty (Inbox Health)
• What If Your Revenue Cycle Felt Like a Continuous Stream? (Inovalon)
• Choosing the right EHR: Keys to long-term sustainability (Meditech)
• Leveraging AI at MRO (MRO)
• Letter from our CEO: Why our partnership with Goldman Sachs matters (Navina)

Contacts

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

News 4/2/25

Top News

The VA names nine facilities that will go live on the department’s Oracle Health-based EHR next year.

Medical centers and associated clinics in Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio will join four locations in Michigan as part of the VA’s accelerated deployment plan.

The VA expects to complete full implementation at all VA facilities nationwide as early as 2031.

Reader Comments

From Tressa: “Re: Oracle. It seems strange for the cloud and the legacy databases to be compromised at the same time. Also, I hadn’t heard if our data was affected and texted our CMIO with the information you posted. He contacted our Cerner account executive, who claimed to know nothing about it. It seems bizarre for the account execs to not be made aware of something that has been publicly reported on.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Virtual care company AvaSure acquires Nurse Disrupted, which offers virtual nursing services for hospital and home-based care. Nurse Disrupted founder and CEO Bre Loughlin, MS, RN will join AvaSure as executive director of virtual care innovation.

Well Health Technologies will take control of Healwell AI as Healwell acquires New Zealand’s Orion Health. Well Health, which invested in Toronto-based Healwell and bought its clinical assets in 2023, saw its shares drop 30% Monday after it disclosed a US federal investigation into billing practices at its subsidiary Circle Medical Technologies that will delay its fiscal year reporting. WELL.TO shares rose 19% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $1 billion.

Automated chart review startup Layer Health raises $21 million in a Series A funding round.

ATA Action, the advocacy group of the American Telemedicine Association, acquires the Digital Therapeutics Alliance and creates Advancing Digital Health Coalition.

Sales

• Ballad Health (TN) selects specialty pharmacy analytics software from Loopback Analytics.
• Providence Swedish (WA) implements remote patient monitoring software and services from Starlight Health as part of a new post-discharge pilot program at its First Hill hospital.
• Columbus Public Health will implement Epic through an arrangement with Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

People

ReferWell names Kevin Healy (Chicago Pacific Founders) CEO.

Dale Sanders joins Unite Us as chief product and technology officer.

Hippocratic AI names Hollie Vugrinovich (Notable) chief growth officer and Brij Aswani, MBA (MD Clarity) VP of sales.

California health data network Manifest Medex hires three executive directors: Eva Williams, PhD (Centene), Southern Inland region; Ednann Naz, MD, MPH, MBA (ProNexus Advisory), Central and Northern region; and Erin Henke (Engaging Solutions), Bay region.

Risant Health hires Jessica Bartell, MD, MS, MBA (UnitedHealthcare) as CMIO. 

Announcements and Implementations

Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children opens a staffed virtual urgent care kiosk in a shopping mall to ease ED wait times. Families can connect with the ED team, print documents, or be referred to a nearby hospital. The site, which is open daily, includes a private room for virtual consults and live interpreter access. It targets low-income areas to address gaps in technology and privacy.

Vaco Holdings, whose brands include MorganFranklin Consulting, Pivot Point Consulting, Focus Search Partners, and Built, renames itself Highspring, with the talent solutions platform taking the name Vaco by Highspring. The company has 10,000 employees who work from 45 global offices and seven delivery centers.

Government and Politics

A federal judge in Florida sentences Colton Neal to two and a half years in prison for stealing a physician’s professional and digital health credentials that he used to issue 144 controlled substances prescriptions. He advertised on the dark web, used an EHR and telehealth service to issue the prescriptions, and collected payments via cryptocurrency.

Other

Epic’s April 1 announcements include an Epic Aerospace rocket launch, a telehealth bloopers TV series titled “America’s Funniest Video Visits”, a short-form video function for clinician notes called TikDoc, and a MyChart enhancement for lung training and hearing assessment named Care-oke.

Sponsor Updates

• AGS Health will exhibit at Healthcon 2025 April 6-9 in Orlando.
• Black Book Research survey-takers rank InteliChart as the top end-to-end patient engagement solution vendor.
• Healthmonix will exhibit at the NAACOS Spring 2025 Conference April 22-24 in Baltimore.
• CereCore releases a new podcast episode titled “CNO Day in the Life: Leading through Change.”
• Barwon Health in Australia will implement Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging Platform.
• The “HealthTech with Purpose” podcast features Arrive Health COO Christie Callahan.
• Capital Rx will exhibit at the AMCP Annual Meeting through April 3 in Houston.
• Censinet will sponsor the 2025 Health-ISAC Spring Americas Summit May 19-23 in Naples, FL.
• Clinical Architecture partners with Velox Health Metadata to help health plans navigate clinical data management.
• The “Health Innovation Matters” podcast features DrFirst CMO Colin Banas, MD, MHA.

Blog Posts

• Harnessing AI in Healthcare to Simplify Evidence Analysis (Symplr)
• Improving care management data analytics for whole-person health (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• The challenge of disparate systems in healthcare, and a promising solution (Altera Digital Health)
• Potential Oracle Cloud Breach (Clearwater)
• 5 Keys to Epic EHR Activation Success: A Practical Guide (CTG)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/31/25

Top News

A hacker has breached Oracle Health systems and stolen patient data with the intention of extorting providers, according to a customer communication from Oracle. The FBI is investigating.

Oracle says the intruder used a customer’s stolen credentials to access legacy Cerner servers that hadn’t yet been moved to Oracle’s cloud. The company didn’t say how one user’s credentials could have been used to access the information of other clients.

Oracle said it became aware of the breach on February 20, 2025. Customers learned of the breach only when they received notification from Oracle’s external law firm. Oracle reportedly told those hospitals that they, rather than Oracle, are responsible for determining whether the stolen data violates HIPAA, and if so, for notifying affected patients.

In related news, a hacker claims to have breached Oracle Cloud servers and is offering the login credentials of 6 million users for sale. Oracle denies the claims of the threat actor, who provided a sample of the stolen data that customers verified as belonging to them.

Reader Comments

From Redzenskyca: “Re: Baptist Health South Florida. Moving away from Cerner to Epic.” Unverified. Nothing new so far in job postings or UserWeb accounts.

From Jimmy the Greek: “Re: comments. I’ve commented on Dr. Jayne’s Curbside twice now, but the comments don’t appear. What gives?” I found your comments. They were sent to suspected spam because they included several links. I’ve activated them.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

About one-fourth of poll respondents say that their employer’s support for work-life balance has declined over the past two years. Two poll commenters say that theirs improved because they changed jobs for that reason.

New poll to your right or here: Which initiative is burning the most time and money while delivering little improvement to patients?

There’s little health tech news happening, so let’s give you some free time after a brief musical mention. Listening: Postmodern Jukebox, a “rotating musical collective” that reimagines pop hits into retro-style covers that are weirdly compelling. Examples: “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love” as a 1960s girls group or “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” as Sam Cooke might have done it. In that same vein of interesting weirdness is Flaming Lips, a trippy, psychedelic musical art project that I regret not seeing when they played near me a while back.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Announcements and Implementations

Premier Health (OH) will end its transcription services since most providers have shifted to Dragon speech recognition and built-in Epic tools.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research publishes the “2025 Black Book of Patient Engagement and Healthcare Consumer Communications Technology.”
• The Alliance for Health Information Operations and Standards re-elects HealthMark Group CEO Bart Howe president and elects MRO CFO Nate Eastman treasurer.
• PerfectServe publishes “How to Reduce Missed Calls with an Effective Answering Service” featuring Women’s Health Associates (TX).
• Praia Health achieves SOC 2 Type 2 certification.
• RLDatix supports the ACHE Congress as a premier corporate partner.
• WellSky will present at the Minnesota Home Care Association Leadership Summit April 2 in Maple Grove.
• Vyne Medical publishes a paper titled “From Costly Paper Processes to Streamlined Operations: How Healthcare Can Build a Better Future.”

Blog Posts

• Five9 Wins 2025 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award (Five9)
• Top 5 ways for healthcare leaders to be successful right now! (Meditech)
• EHR optimization for CMS TEAM: Overcoming challenges and driving success (Nordic)
• The Revenue Cycle Leader’s Guide to Autonomous Medical Coding (Nym)
• 8 Keys to Effective ESM Deployment (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The Next Phase of Consumerization in Healthcare: Moving from Fragmentation to Orchestration (Praia Health)
• Phone Calls for Member Engagement Work! Here’s Why (ReferWell)
• HIMSS 2025 Highlights & Reflections (Symplr)
• Tegria at HIMSS25: Key Takeaways, Expert Insights, and What’s Next (Tegria)
• Top 6 trends in healthcare RCM: AI, ROI, data security + more (Waystar)

Contacts

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

News 3/28/25

Top News

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

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

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

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

Reader Comments

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

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

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

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

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

People

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

Announcements and Implementations

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

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

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

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

Government and Politics

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

Privacy and Security

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
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News 3/26/25

Top News

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

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

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

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

Reader Comments

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

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

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

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

Sales

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

People

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

Announcements and Implementations

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

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

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

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

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

Other

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

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

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/24/25

Top News

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

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

Reader Comments

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

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

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

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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

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

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

People

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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

News 3/21/25

Top News

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

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

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

Reader Comments

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

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

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

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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

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

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

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

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

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

Sales

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

People

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

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

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

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

Announcements and Implementations

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

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

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

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

Government and Politics

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

Other

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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

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News 3/19/25

Top News

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

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

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

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

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

HIStalk Executive Watercooler

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

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

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

People

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

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

Loyal names Nanette Oddo (Truveris) CEO.

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

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

Announcements and Implementations

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

Government and Politics

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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

HIStalk Reader Survey Results 2025

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

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

Some major points from the survey:

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

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

I extracted some respondent comments. Italicized comments are mine.

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

Monday Morning Update 3/17/25

Top News

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

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

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

Reader Comments

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

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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

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

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

People

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

Government and Politics

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

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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

News 3/14/25

Top News

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

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

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

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

Reader Comments

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

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

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

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

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

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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

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

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

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

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

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

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

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

Sales

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

People

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

Announcements and Implementations

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

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

Government and Politics

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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

News 3/12/25

Top News

Digital physical therapy provider Hinge Health files IPO paperwork.

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

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

Reader Comments

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

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

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

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

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

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

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

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

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

People

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

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

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

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

OptimizeRx promotes Steve Silvestro, MLA to CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

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

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

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

Government and Politics

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

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

Privacy and Security

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

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

Other

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

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/10/25

Top News

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

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

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

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

Reader Comments

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

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

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

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

Announcements and Implementations

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

Government and Politics

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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

News 3/7/25

Top News

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

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

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

Reader Comments

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

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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

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

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

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

Sales

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

People

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

Healthlink Advisors promotes Amber Olsen to VP of Epic services.

Announcements and Implementations

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

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

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

Government and Politics

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

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

Other

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

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

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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