Monday Morning Update 8/4/25

Top News

Digital physical therapy vendor Sword Health launches an AI division.

Sword Intelligence will have its own dedicated team and go-to-market strategy in operating outside of the company’s care delivery business. It will sell solutions to health systems, governments, and payers.

Sword Health’s June 2025 funding event valued the company at $4 billion.

Reader Comments

From Doc Martin: “Re: Sol Health rebrand. I thought this email notice was a joke at first. At least they named themselves after the most frequent response to mental healthcare needs nowadays.” The company renamed itself Sol Mental Health in 2023 as a reference to the sun. A hyped up rebrand evangelist decided it would be much cooler to shout it out in ALL CAPS, which turned the solar-themed company name into a version that starts with a vulgarity and ends with “out of luck.” HIStalk don’t play that — I capitalize the first letter even if the company doesn’t (Athenahealth), excise gimmicky symbols (M*Modal), and lowercase everything but the first letter unless it’s a clear initialism (KONZA Network is fine, SOL Health is not). Pedantic grammar note: an initialism is an abbreviation where each letter is pronounced (EHR), while an acronym is pronounced as a word (FHIR). Long-timers will recall the annual conference when HIMSS told its staff to turn the name into an initialism, forcing them to perform lingual gymnastics to sound it out as H-I-M-S-S to justifiably puzzled looks.

From Yardbird: “Re: LLMs. They might encourage generalists to manage specific conditions instead of sending the patient to a specialist if judgment rather than a procedure is involved.” That could happen and fits the cognitive displacement theory in which LLMs will replace people whose jobs involve recalling obscure facts, following a checklist, or reformatting information into a desired format such as a legal brief or a prescription. You could argue that non-procedural specialists often rely on pattern recognition to make a blink diagnosis that an LLM could replicate, with a generalist present to meet legal requirements or apply minimal judgment. Medicine changes so fast that the most valuable thing a specialist might offer is the focused-factory advantage of volume-bred expertise.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

About half of health system IT leaders expect their next budget to be less than the current one.

New poll to your right or here: How much will HHS’s “Make Health Tech Great Again” voluntary campaign improve healthcare?

I got some $10 AirPod knockoffs from Temu that are surprisingly good. Similar-looking versions go for as little as $5. I rarely use earbuds, so I was startled by the clarity and volume when I queued up some R.E.M. I’m sure the Apple product is fine, but not worth $200 to me.

I’m using Substack to create a solo hobby-style newsletter-website. It’s free unless you charge subscribers (that’s why I’m using it instead of the not-free Beehiiv) and definitely worth $100 or so to hire a Fiverr freelancer to tweak the CSS for formatting changes that the Substack UI doesn’t allow.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Waystar reports Q2 results: revenue up 15%, EPS $0.36 versus $0.26, beating analyst expectations for both. WAY shares are up 72% since their June 2024 IPO, valuing the company at $6.2 billion.

Visage Imaging’s parent company Pro Medicus invests $10 million in lung function technology vendor 4DMedical.

Government and Politics

I was surprised to see NantHealth as a participant in HHS’s “Make Health Tech Great Again” event. I’m actually even more surprised that the company remains in business — shares are down 99.99% to just over a penny since the company’s much-touted IPO in June 2016, its market cap has been flat for years at less than $500,000, and the company’s top institutional shareholder owns less than $1 worth. It’s one of 11 Nant-named companies that were spawned off by billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD under the NantWorks label.

Other

A study finds that most ED patients who had a high mortality risk did not have their advance directive and treatment goals recorded in their EHR. The authors checked for healthcare proxy, power of attorney, living will, advance care plans, and physician orders for life-sustaining treatment.

Epic consulting firm Anura Connect posts on LinkedIn that some third-party EHR consultants are quietly double-dipping by working two full-time jobs at once and being paid by multiple health systems. The company says it’s easier to pull off now with loosely supervised remote work and a lack of vetting when hiring. It warns consulting firms that their reputation and long-term relationships could suffer when a client finds out, while the consultant themself could be blacklisted, at least until the next desperate recruiter calls.

Sponsor Updates

• SmarterDx donates $10,000 to Children’s Hospital Colorado.
• Black Book Research highlights Waystar in its latest report on the prior authorization technology landscape.
• Linus Health partners with consumer experience software vendor League to make online cognitive screening and care available to consumers through private health plans.
• Arcadia will provide its customers with a streamlined pathway into the CMS Aligned Network Strategy.
• Inovalon’s Converged Quality solution achieves NCQA HEDIS Measure Certification for HEDIS Measurement Year 2025.
• Ellkay, Surescripts, and TruBridge announce their support for the CMS Digital Health Ecosystem and Interoperability Framework.
• Nym names Sasha Ben David software engineer, Noa Landau coding specialist, Victoria Fitzgibbon and Kim Langner medical coding and compliance auditors, and Maya Enoch product manager.
• Symplr will present at AHRMM 2025 August 5 in Denver.
• Waystar will exhibit at the Mid America Summer Institute August 4-8 in Omaha, NE.
• CereCore releases a new podcast episode titled “The Value of Leadership and Optimization: A CNO to CEO Story.”

Blog Posts

• Iredell Health Sees Major Benefits from an Outsourced SOC (Fortified Health Security)
• Thriving through digital change: the critical role of nurse leaders (Meditech)
• 5 key takeaways on the EHR experience in 2025 (Nordic)
• Navigating the Shift to Modern Infrastructure (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Getting to ‘Yes’ with Hospital IT in a No-Spend Environment (Redox)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 8/1/25

Top News

Several dozen health tech companies pledge at a White House-sponsored HHS event Wednesday titled “Make Health Tech Great Again,” to collaborate on interoperability and develop consumer-facing health tools in a patient-centric ecosystem. Thirty companies will build apps, 11 provider organizations will support adoption, and seven EHR vendors will promote data sharing and help “kill the clipboard” by reducing paper intake forms.

CMS says it will launch a digital health app library on Medicare.gov. It also outlined several related efforts:

• Enhancing the Medicare Plan Finder tool.
• Expanding the National Provider Directory.
• Adding digital IDs to Medicare.gov.
• Issuing FHIR-based digital insurance cards to improve access to Blue Button data.
• Launching the CMS Aligned Network to respond to patient and provider data queries.

The goals of the CMS Interoperability Framework include giving patients access to their medical and payer information using digital credentials and allowing providers to use their choice of technologies to obtain treatment access. It sets a July 4, 2026 date for participating networks to offer FHIR API access to chart notes, clinical documents, and encounter notifications.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor LiveData. Hospitals and ASCs come to LiveData for tools that improve surgical revenue, margin, and patient safety. Its PeriOp Manager is a modular, real-time “system of engagement” integrated across the complete patient journey – pre-op case scheduling, block optimization, day-of awareness, OR safety, and retrospective analytics. It serves the perioperative suite and services procedure service lines as well. The company’s OR-Dashboard with Active Time Out module was recognized as a Joint Commission Leading Practice, thanks to its impact on improving safe surgery checklist compliance. The PeriOp Planner module has been shown on average to increase block utilization by 34%, decrease cancellations by 54%, and increase case volume by 4-6%. Surgery departments using LiveData modules have documented other improvements in KPIs like case scheduling accuracy, first-case-on-time-starts, and OR turnover speed. LiveData helps its clients realize fast financial and strategic gains in competitive environments. Thanks to LiveData for supporting HIStalk.

Here’s a LiveData explainer video.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Blackstone will acquire revenue cycle management firm AGS Health for $1.1 billion. Blackstone was rumored to be the leading bidder in late May.

Cybersecurity startup Axonius acquires medical device security technology vendor Cynerio for $100 million.

Clinisys acquires lab system competitor Orchard Software from Francisco Partners, which acquired the company in 2019.

People

Highmark Health hires Alistair Erskine, MD, MBA (Emory Healthcare) as chief information and digital officer.

Jared Allen, MBA (Premier) joins Sonifi Health as SVP of healthcare sales.

Medical University of South Carolina names Amar Nagaram (Indiana University Health) as enterprise CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

England’s NHS pilots an AI-powered virtual physical therapy clinic, using Flok Health, which offers same-day automated video visits. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust reduced waiting times by 44%.

CVS-owned Aetna enhances its app with Aetna Care Paths, which gives members a personalized view of their benefits and provides AI-supported personalized health and wellness programs.

Clearwater launches an Enterprise Cyber Risk Management solution.

Government and Politics

ASTP/ONC submits a prescription drug cost transparency rule that addresses using EHRs to submit prior authorizations, choose drugs that are consistent with the patient’s insurance, and exchange prescription information electronically with pharmacies and insurers.

Other

An editorial in Radiology recommends separating the roles of radiologists and AI in diagnostic workflows, challenging the prevailing view that they should collaborate directly. It proposes that AI systems first generate a clinical summary from patient data, which radiologists then use to interpret images and produce the final report. The authors say that this division allows radiologists to focus on critical thinking and image interpretation while leveraging AI’s strengths in pattern recognition and data synthesis.

Sponsor Updates

• Konza Health pledges its support for the CMS Digital Health Ecosystem and Interoperability Framework.
• Black Book Research’s latest survey highlights a growing divide over AI regulation in US healthcare.
• Ellkay supports Ochsner Health (LA) in decommissioning its Cerner system.
• FinThrive will present at Mid America Summer Institute August 5 in Omaha, NE.
• A new Five9 study finds that its Intelligent CX Platform delivered $14.5 million in business value and a 212% ROI through automation and growth.
• Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “QuickHITs” podcast titled “Building the Nest: Rebecca Woods on Community, Mentorship, and Showing Up Authentically.”
• Healthcare IT Leaders offers a new report titled “The State of Oracle Health in 2025.”
• Impact Advisors releases a new episode of its “Impactful AI” podcast titled “The AI-Powered Clinician.”
• Infinx publishes a new case study titled “How a Regional Hospital Reclaimed 30,000 Clinical Hours With Automated Prior Authorization Workflows.”
• Linus Health expands the availability of its Anywhere cognitive assessment platform to payers, pharmaceutical companies, wellness providers, and consumers.
• Med Tech Solutions publishes a new case study featuring Dayspring Health titled “Rural FQHC Migrates to the Cloud and Installs Technology Pieces to Modernize Service and Minimize Downtime.”
• The “Health Stealth Radio” podcast features MRO Chief Interoperability Officer Anthony Murray in an episode titled “TEFCA truth and interoperability tactics.”

Blog Posts

• Trust Is the True Test for AI in Healthcare (Medicomp Systems)
• Decisions, decisions: Things to consider when choosing an AI vendor (Altera Digital Health)
• A Strategic Guide to the Rural Health Transformation Fund (Findhelp)
• Proven Ways to Strengthen Active Directory Security (Fortified Health Security)
• No More Guesswork: Regional One Health Transforms Patient Safety (Inovalon)
• Hope and Healing: How EHRs Can Drive Suicide Prevention Across Care Settings (Meditech)
• The Strategic Value of Clinician EHR Coaching in Healthcare (Med Tech Solutions)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 7/30/25

Top News

Ambience Healthcare raises $243 million in a Series C funding round.

The company offers AI-based clinical documentation, coding, and workflow support.

Reader Comments

From Eulalia: “Re: USCDI Version 6. Removes name to use, pronouns, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex parameter for clinical use. I don’t understand this. Healthcare organizations exist to serve patients who come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, colors, and even sexual orientations. To force ALL people into either a male or female definition does a disservice to the patients we serve. Why do the feds get to dictate this? What clinical or administrative purposes does it serve? Also, name to use has nothing to do with sexual orientation as people often use a name other than their legal name and would prefer to be called by that name. Ask my Aunt Eulalia.”

From Former Epic Employee: “Re: ICE. Has issued an RFI for an EHR. Who on earth would be willing to bid for this PR nightmare?” An RFI attachment says that ICE Health Service Corps uses EClinicalWorks for its EHR and dental systems and Fusion Health for pharmacy and MAR. The new system must integrate with other DHS platforms, which raises potential HIPAA flags. It also includes an “optional surge support” requirement, presumably to support spikes in detainee count. Vendors may balk that the government gets unlimited rights to their source code.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Release-of-information services vendor HealthMark Group announces new funding from private equity firm TA Associates.

Risk-based contracting software vendor Arbital Health raises $31 million in a Series B funding round.

Sales

• ChristianaCare (DE) will offer pregnant and postpartum patients mental healthcare support and educational resources using technology from NeuroFlow.
• HealtheConnections will use technology from PointClickCare to provide Statewide Encounter Alerts for the Statewide Health Information Network for New York.

People

Matthew Tuck, MBA (NextGen Healthcare) joins Candescent as SVP of digital strategy management.

Suki names Kevin Wang, MD (Apree Health) chief medical officer, and Vikram Khanna, PhD (Innovaccer) chief customer officer.

Aaron Gani, MS, MBA (RealizedCare) joins Centene as SVP of enterprise technology platforms and technology advancement.

Announcements and Implementations

A new KLAS report finds that healthcare organizations are viewing nurse and staff scheduling tools as keys to employee satisfaction.

Government and Politics

Australia’s TGA, the country’s counterpart to the US’s FDA, will evaluate whether AI-powered medical scribes qualify as regulated medical devices, citing their potential to suggest diagnoses or treatments rather than simply summarize visits.

Sponsor Updates

• The American Telemedicine Association releases a new episode of its “Health. Virtually. Uncensored.” podcast featuring AvaSure Chief Clinical Officer Lisbeth Votruba, RN.
• CTG publishes a new client success story titled “CTG Legacy Application Support Accelerates Health System’s Migration to Epic Beaker.”
• AdvancedMD adds EirSystems to its integration marketplace.

Blog Posts

• Avoiding High-Risk Coding Errors to Ensure Proper Reimbursement (AGS Health)
• Redox + TEFCA: Another Easy Button to Nationwide Interoperability (Redox)
• Navigating the Shift to Modern Infrastructure (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Health literacy: What we all need to know (Altera Digital Health)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 7/28/25

Top News

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz will reportedly meet with tech executives Wednesday to seek vendor support for patient data sharing.

Reader Comments

From Oracle of Delphi: “Re: Oracle Health. A Redditor posted a screen shot of this comment from SVP Suhas Uliyar.” Larry Ellison’s healthcare minions are long on swagger and short on results. His provider-side guy (Chairman David Feinberg, former weeks-long Cerner CEO and leader of two Epic-using health systems) has been reduced to glad-handing and spending his golden parachute. Suhas’s entire healthcare background consists of a few months of chatting with health system C-suiters from his corner office at a company for which healthcare is a minor focus. Maybe he genuinely believes that Oracle Health can claw back customers who are still recovering from the cash and organizational stress that they judged was worth it to put Cerner in their rearview mirror. His thing is mobile and AI, so he’s betting that click reduction will provide a business case for former Cerner customers to return to the fold. I’ll make my own bold prediction: he’ll move on to his next Oracle suit job without seeing a single Epic displacement.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents aren’t convinced that pharma-sponsored telehealth doctors should issue prescriptions without reviewing the medical records of patients they have never met.

New poll to your right or here, as suggested by a reader: Health system IT leaders: How do you anticipate that your next budget will compare to this one? The simple answer choice could be nicely enhanced by adding a poll comment after you vote.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

People

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

Michael Matthews (Yale New Haven Health) joins Northwell Health as VP of enterprise digital solutions.

John K. Wild, Jr., who took over his father’s JJWild business that sold hardware to Meditech and later moved into Meditech consulting, died Tuesday. He was 80.

Government and Politics

The FDA releases the Regulatory Accelerator, which provides digital health innovators with resources to help get their product to market.

Sponsor Updates

• WellSky’s summer interns volunteer at Kansas City Hospice House.
• FinThrive releases a new infographic outlining the timeline and impact of key healthcare policy provisions included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
• Altera Digital Health makes Sunrise 25.1 generally available to the UK healthcare market.
• A new Black Book Research study finds that clinicians benchmark AI tools on diagnostic accuracy, workflow support, and patient communication effectiveness.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast episode featuring Brandy Parker.
• Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the backdoor” podcast titled “A Bitter Pill – How Ransomware is Crippling Hospitals.”
• The ACHE “Healthcare Executive” podcast features RLDatix President of Patient Experience Solutions Ty Allen.
• Sonifi Health releases a new e-book titled “Trusted technology for new construction.”
• Symplr announces its first academic partnership with University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Blog Posts

• The One Big Beautiful Bill Act: A Seismic Shift in Healthcare Policy and What It Means for Revenue Strategy (FinThrive)
• Generative Engine Optimization: Why Data is Your New SEO Superpower (Kyruus Health)
• See What’s New with GEHRIMED PALTC Software (Netsmart)
• EHR Integration: PerfectServe Messaging for Epic & Oracle Health (PerfectServe)
• The One Big Beautiful Wake-Up Call: Experience Orchestration Is Now Essential (Praia Health)
• Inside Redox’s Journey to Empower IT and Data Teams Through Self-Service (Redox)
• The Quadruple Aim in Action: How Surescripts Is Advancing Healthcare’s Most Ambitious Goals (Surescripts)
• Maximize your investment in AI software for healthcare RCM: 5 initiatives for healthcare leaders (Waystar)
• UpToDate user survey: Shifting care team dynamics and added complexities show the need for clinical decision support (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• If You’re Connected to Carequality, September is Going to Affect You: What You Need to Know About Delegation of Authority (Zen Healthcare IT)

Contacts

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

News 7/25/25

Top News

Healthcare payments software vendor Waystar will acquire Iodine Software, which offers mid-revenue cycle solutions, for $1.25 billion.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

We helped Praia Health put on a strong webinar this week titled “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” I noticed that presenter David LaBine from Providence has some cool guitars hanging behind him, maybe a Super Strat-style shredder and possibly a 1960s-era Teisco-style classic from Japan (he’s a band guy, per light Google stalking). All of the presenters held my attention, which is saying something. Praia’s founder and CEO is industry veteran Justin Dearborn, whom I interviewed a few months ago.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Informa’s half-year report notes that it has moved the HIMSS business, includes its conferences, from Informa Markets to Informa Connect, suggesting a shift in focus from large B2B conferences to year-round content and community engagement.

Sales

• Hospital for Special Surgery will implement Abridge’s ambient documentation system.

People

Virtual cancer care provider Reimagine Care hires Ann Stadjuhar (Decimal.health) as chief growth officer.

Avel ECare hires Martainn Lenhardt, MBA (Lyric) as CFO.

Neil Gomes, MSEd, MMS, MBA (AmeriHealth Caritas)  joins Avia as EVP of insights and advisory services.

Announcements and Implementations

Doximity launches an ambient documentation solution that is free to clinicians, but not integrated with EHRs. 

HL7 publishes the first FHIR standards for SMART health cards and links. Sample use cases are:

• Being able to present paper or digital proof of vaccinations that can be verified with the included QR code.
• Sending a member ID to a provider.
• Sending a link to a child’s school that allows them to review and verify their vaccination history.
• Providing a ticket to allow retrieving lab results.
• Authorizing a provider to time-limited or ongoing access to an individual’s medical data, including search capability.
• Scanning a prescription container to retrieve details.

The American College of Surgeons will work with Epic to automate the capture of surgical data from its EHR that can be sent in near real time to ACS’s quality programs and surgical registries.

ASTP/ONC releases USCDI v6. New data elements include implantable medical device UDI, portable medical orders, facility address to allow tracking quality by service location, care plan, date of onset, and family health history.

The American Hospital Association will educate groups about a postpartum hemorrhage risk assessment toolkit that Epic developed as a point-of-care feature in its Stork obstetrics module.

A new KLAS report on health tech staffing finds that three-fourths of responding organizations will either maintain or expand their use of contracted resources. The highest staffing need is for EHR projects and implementations. The chart above shows the 10 most commonly reported go-to firms.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders sponsors and the Boston Children’s Hospital Corporate Cup.
• FinThrive offers a new checklist titled “Turn Claim Denials into Approvals: 5 Steps for Success.”
• DrFirst shares the results of a new survey on advance care planning.
• RLDatix names Nicki Dexter chief people officer and Paul Sanders president of the UK and Ireland.
• Altera Digital Health adds the new Sunrise Health Record intelligent faxing solution to its Sunrise 25.1 EHR.
• Cardamom will host an Epic UGM networking event August 19 in Madison, WI.
• Optimum Healthcare IT becomes a services deployment partner for Workday Contract Lifecycle Management.
• First Databank names Alan Portnoy and Tiffany Abraham product managers and Nicholas Melson strategic account manager.
• Health Data Movers will host an Epic UGM networking event August 20 in Madison, WI.
• Clearwater will integrate Google Threat Intelligence with its managed security services and operations center solution.
• Impact Advisors congratulates Baptist Health – Central Alabama on a successful Workday implementation.
• Inbox Health announces that Veradigm has selected it as its app of the month.
• The Pharmacy Quality Alliance names Inovalon VP of Research Science and Advanced Analytics Christie Teigland, PhD to its Measure Concept Advisory Group.
• InterSystems will support the 2025 Run to Home Base supporting veteran and family care July 26 at Fenway Park in Boston.
• Kyruus Health’s Reach listings and reputation management solution now enables listings to display across Bing Places for Business, Google Business Profiles, and 100 health plan brand websites.

Blog Posts

• The hidden cost of inaction: How hospitals can prevent adverse events with better patient engagement (Altera Digital Health)
• Building the Backbone for Compliance: Using a CLRS for the New Medicaid Community Engagement Mandate (Findhelp)
• Top 5 KPIs for Managed Care Success (FinThrive)
• Respond and Remediate: A CISO’s Guide to the SharePoint Zero-Day Vulnerabilities (Fortified Health Security)
• Expanding value-based care to specialists: What the 2026 Ambulatory Specialty Model means for the future of Medicare (Healthmonix)
• Kyruus Builds a Generative AI Provider Matching Solution on AWS (Kyruus Health)
• How Amazon Connect Is Transforming Healthcare Contact Centers (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) harnesses technology to enhance the patient and provider experience (Meditech)
• The hidden costs of low-cost staff augmentation: Why value beats volume every time (Cardamom)
• 2025 DIY Guide to MSSP ACO eCQM Reporting: From Clinical Data Chaos to Submission Success (MRO)
• Making prospective risk adjustment work for you (Navina)

Sponsor Spotlight

Effective cybersecurity demands not only visibility into threats, but also the ability to tap into the intelligence around these threats to understand and derive the best course of action in real time when they are detected. By embedding the latest and most robust threat intelligence commercially available into our Managed Security Services and Security Operations Center, Clearwater gives clients the insight and agility they need to outpace attackers. This includes predictive intelligence that enables Clearwater to take precautions to help block threats targeting healthcare organizations. Learn more about Clearwater’s Enhanced Threat Intelligence Service. (Sponsor Spotlight is free for HIStalk Platinum sponsors).

Contacts

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

News 7/23/25

Top News

The Senate Appropriations Committee approves a bill that allocates $3.5 billion to the VA to restart its Oracle Health implementation.

The committee also approved $5.9 billion for the VA’s ongoing IT costs.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

People

Laizer Kornwasser, MBA (Teladoc Health) joins DrFirst as CEO.

RLDatix names Walter Loiselle (Success Consulting Partners) SVP of global operations.

Ethan Berke, MD, MPH (Optum) joins Teladoc Health as chief medical officer and SVP of integrated care.

Vizient names Arun Ramasubramanian (Optum) president of its Data and Digital business unit.

Alera Health promotes Jose Castillo, MBA to CIO and Deb Aldridge, RN to chief network officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Campbell County Health (WY) goes live on Epic. The implementation, first announced in 2021, was delayed several times as the hospital worked to gain firmer financial footing.

Patterson Health Center (KS) rolls out Oracle Health CommunityWorks and Clinical AI Agent technologies.

Slingshot AI launches Ash, an AI therapy app, along with additional Series A funding that brings its total to $93 million.

A new KLAS report on public cloud providers finds that cloud usage by health systems is widespread, but 40% of responding organizations still have at least 90% of their infrastructure on premises. Microsoft Azure is most commonly used, but AWS is seen as offering stronger value and healthcare expertise. The chief use case is EHR migration, primarily Epic.

Government and Politics

CMS will hire 100 employees at its Innovation Center, which was established in 2010 to develop and pilot new care delivery and payment models. The center is reportedly looking for economic, clinical, and data subject-matter experts.

Lovell FHCC, which is jointly operated by the VA and Department of Defense, reports that it has increased lung cancer screenings by 75% since implementing population health outreach using Oracle Health’s wellness registry.

Other

RWJBarnabas Health’s Jersey City Medical Center will use Dimer Health’s remote patient monitoring and virtual care services during a six-month pilot designed to reduce readmissions and ER visits for 500 uninsured patients.

This is one of the lamer uses of ChatGPT that I’ve seen.

Sponsor Updates

• FinThrive publishes a new master claims denial checklist for patient access leaders.
• “The Harry Glorikian Show” podcast features Arrive Health CEO Kyle Kiser in an episode titled “Kyle Kiser is Using AI to Make Your Patient Experience Better.”
• Black Book Research identifies 14 federal policy shifts threatening US health systems in the coming year.
• Capital Rx names Zachary Brunko formulary operations clinical pharmacist.
• Altera Digital Health launches Sunrise Health Record, an intelligent faxing solution to support HIM deficiency management.
• Linus Health will present at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Toronto July 27-31 and will demonstrate its AI-powered digital cognitive assessment solutions.
• Censinet releases a new episode of its “Risk Never Sleeps” podcast titled “The Code to Care: The CISO Will See You Now, with Anahi Santiago, Chief Information Security Officer at ChristianaCare.”
• The “CISO Core Podcast” features Clearwater VCISO Michiel de Bruin in an episode titled “Bridging the Gap between CISOs and Business People.”
• Direct Recruiters promotes Ben Shamis to managing director and Danny Myeroff to managing partner.

Blog Posts

• Optimizing Patient Access with Technology and Partnerships (AGS Health)
• The AI Data Pipeline: How Your Health System Fuels Conversational Search (Kyruus Health)
• Integrating AI and Population Health to Revolutionize Behavioral Health Care (Netsmart)
• Meditech As A Service (MaaS): Best Practices and Real-World Challenges (CereCore)
• It’s time to activate patients as trusted members of the care team (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Patient Portals, Telehealth and Beyond: The Healthcare Technology Solutions Driving Improved Patient Outcomes (AdvancedMD)
• Low-risk, high-value: Seven AI use cases benefiting community hospitals (Altera Digital Health)
• Has your workflow hit a wall? Here’s how to move forward (Philips Capsule)
• It Seems Like Every Product is a Platform Now (Divurgent)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 7/21/25

Top News

Humana integrates its health plan information with Epic, which allows patients to track deductibles and access health plan resources from their provider’s MyChart.

Reader Comments

From Guillermo: “Re: pharma telehealth. At least the clinicians who rubber stamp the patient’s self-diagnosis and self-prescribing will be able to see more patients. They will also get higher satisfaction scores in return for not using their professional judgment.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents would prefer that the federal government stay out of patient records in the absence of patient complaints, quality reviews, or illegal activities.

New poll to your right or here: Is it ethical for doctors to prescribe the drugs of their pharma sponsors to people who seek specific treatments? Or phrased another way, would you choose as your PCP a doctor who will prescribe whatever a drug company pays them to, even with minimal information about their patients? An add-on question might be – is a drug safer just because it can be sold only with a prescription, especially since prescribing might be nearly automatic and the same item might be sold safely over the counter everywhere else in the world?

I was thinking as I set up the new poll. Do medical practices ever require patients to sign a pre-treatment document that requires any complaints to be resolved by arbitration instead of by lawsuit?

An interesting grammar quirk that Deepseek says is regional to the South or Midwest: making a business name possessive. I’m shopping at Target’s. I reckon I might go have lunch at Weinerschnitzel’s. Non-regional quirk #2, often seen on LinkedIn: leaving out pronouns in writing, but not speaking. Example: “Humbled to get the award. Appreciate the recognition. ”

Sponsored Events and Resources

July 22 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” Sponsor: Praia Health. Presenters: Ryan Howells, principal, Leavitt Partners and program manager, The CARIN Alliance; David LaBine, VP of software engineering, Providence Digital Innovation Group; Robin Monks, CTO, Praia Health; Kristen Valdes, CEO, b.well. As healthcare faces rising consumer expectations and tighter regulations, the high cost of maintaining fragmented, proprietary systems is no longer sustainable. While patient data access has improved, the lack of open standards continues to hinder innovation, drive up integration costs, and limit the potential of digital health beyond the EHR. This webinar will discuss how open standards like OIDC,  HL7 FHIR, and open technology requirements are essential for reducing integration burdens, accelerating development, and lowering maintenance costs. Panelists will describe how every closed integration represents a lost opportunity and will offer practical strategies for leveraging open technology as a competitive advantage that improves efficiency, ensures compliance, and strengthens patient trust.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Bankrupt Steward Health Care System sues its former executives for $1.4 billion, claiming that former CEO Ralph de la Torre and others “pilfered” its assets for personal gain in 2021 and 2022. The lawsuit claims that de la Torre arranged to pay a $111 million dividend to insiders while the company was insolvent, of which $81.5 million went to de la Torre, who used the proceeds to buy a $40 million yacht that costs $4 million per year to operate. His other yacht is worth $15 million.

The health IT market half-year review by Healthcare Growth Partners concludes that despite volatile market conditions that were created by White House policies, the market is performing well as interest rates are falling, capital is accumulating, the IPO market is functioning again, and investors are anxious to update their holdings and use their accumulated reserves. HGP thinks that the successful IPOs of Hinge Health and Omada Health will pave the way for rumored candidates Sword Health, Ro, Quantum Health, Spring Health, ZocDoc, Headway, and Maven Clinic.

Sales

• Peterson Health (TX) will implement Medaptus Charge Pro.

People

Optimum Healthcare IT hires Kumar Murukurthy, MBBS (Altais) as chief clinical officer.

Announcements and Implementations

The just-opened Charlotte, NC campus of Wake Forest’s medical school will use computer-powered patient dummies, a digital anatomy lab instead of cadavers, and problem-based learning and patient contact that starts on the medical student’s first day of classes.

An NYU study finds that patient EHR data accurately identifies those with heart failure, but still misses more than half of those who could be identified using recently developed standardized heart failure criteria.

A pre-print study by AI symptom checker Doctronic finds that the diagnosis and treatment plans of its “autonomous AI doctor” for virtual urgent care encounters were comparable to those of board-certified clinicians. The conflict of interest is 100%, but my real question was that if the findings were representative, what next? Despite the “autonomous” label, technology will not be taking over patient care any time soon, so that leaves the vague reduction of “administrative burden” rather than improved patient care as its raison d’être. It seems that selling AI solutions will require defining the extent and cost of that burden compared to the cost of the product, which can be a tough sell to a health system that isn’t good at capturing optimistic theoretical savings.

Government and Politics

HHS gives the Department of Homeland Security’s ICE agents access to the names and addresses of 79 million Medicaid recipients that will be used to track down those who are living in the US illegally. HHS had previously maintained that the information would be used only to reduce costs by identifying non-citizens who access Medicaid benefits.

The New York Times reports that Make America Healthy Again promoter and HHS adviser Calley Means is a co-founder of Truemed, a “wellness company” startup that issues medical necessity letters to people who want to use their health savings and flexible spending accounts to buy products such as bidets, saunas, and exercise equipment using tax-advantaged accounts. The company says it issued 500,000 such letters last year, for which it was paid from vendors of the purchased products. Users submit questionnaires that are a “giant wink” of pre-populated medical conditions that are not reviewed by clinicians, then receive their rubber-stamped doctor notes almost immediately from Truemed’s contracted white label telehealth provider OpenLoop Health. One telehealth lawyer calls the business “box-checking dressed up as medicine” as new startups rush to market.

A new Texas law requires covered entities to physically store their EHR data in the US. Also in the law:

• Providers may not store patient credit scores or voter registration status in the EHR.
• Clinicians may use AI provided they review its recommendations.
• Parents of minors must be granted access to the EHR records of their children.
• The EHR must support entry of biological sex as either male or female only.
• The EHR must restrict providers from changing a patient’s biological sex data except to correct a clerical error or from a documented disorder.
• Civil penalties up to $250,000 per violation for non-compliance can be assessed.

Other

A man dies after entering the MRI room where his wife was undergoing a procedure and was pulled into the machine when the magnet attracted his 20-pound metallic exercise necklace.

Sponsor Updates

• FinThrive will sponsor the HFMA Southern California Chapter’s Women’s Disruptive Leadership Summit July 24 in Long Beach, CA.
• Black Book Research’s latest survey results reveal major advances in EHR usability and clinician satisfaction.
• DrFirst promotes Erin Hall to director of event strategy and experience.
• Clearsense appoints recently retired AdventHealth president and CEO Terry Shaw to its Board of Directors.
• Nym names Daniel Masvidal EVP of customer operations and hires Nir Cohen as medical data analyst, Nadav Poran as backend developer, Grace Hejnal as medical coding and compliance auditor, Dimple Patel as director of strategic accounts, and Ben Shmueli as software engineer.
• Symplr achieves HITRUST certification and re-certification for several solutions.

Blog Posts

• How Health First Improved DKA Care With Pharmacy Surveillance Software (Inovalon)
• Actionable Strategies for Generative Experience Optimization (GEO) in Local Patient Search (Kyruus Health)
• Balancing data privacy in healthcare with the need for care personalization (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Whole-Person Care in Action: How Integrated Platforms Are Transforming Addiction Recovery (Netsmart)
• Tech doesn’t work: Implementation does (Nordic)
• Why Health System Apps Haven’t Delivered (and What Needs to Change) (Praia Health)
• Redox Now Supports CDS Hooks: Smarter Decision Support, Seamlessly Delivered (Redox)
• Where Interoperability Strategy Falls Short—And How to Fix It (Rhapsody)
• Healthcare Data and the Longest Movie Ever Made (Surescripts)
• Fueling Financial Performance: A Step-by-Step KPI Guide (Tegria)
• The CEO Signal: The DNA of a Company Begins with its Founders (VitalChat)
• Learnings from the front lines: AI and home health care (WellSky)
• If You’re Connected to Carequality, September is Going to Affect You: What You Need to Know About Delegation of Authority (Zen Healthcare IT)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 7/18/25

Top News

A Senate investigation finds that direct-to-consumer telehealth platforms that are operated by drug companies steer patients toward their own drugs.

Up to 85% of those patients receive a prescription from hand-picked telehealth providers, with some platforms allowing patients to pre-select the drug they want before the visit.

The report likens pharma-sponsored DTC telehealth to “an Amazon shopping experience” where patients can self-diagnose and pick their drug with a few clicks.

Some telehealth companies don’t use video visits, meaning that their providers are prescribing without seeing the patient. They also do not have access to the patient’s medical records, so they rely solely on patient-completed questionnaires.

The probe found that the drug companies paid their telehealth partners from $510,000 to $2.45 million each over their three-year contracts, but they did not violate anti-kickback laws by paying bonuses for generating more prescriptions.

Reader Comments

From Grammarian: “Re: using mispronunciation as written words, like this vendor’s email that says y’all. Hate it.” Mispronouncing you all as y’all conveys at least a small amount of regional charm. Replicating that mispronunciation as a misspelling seems odd. I blocked some Southern food social media sites because people were expressing their culinary nostalgia by writing taters, okrie, and kilt lettuce as the menu items they “fixed” for “supper.” They also fail to notice that the forum’s creator and moderator isn’t from the South unless you count South Sudan, which is obvious by the misspellings and odd phrasing that those admins use when describing the online photos that they have clearly stolen.

Sponsored Events and Resources

July 22 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” Sponsor: Praia Health. Presenters: Ryan Howells, principal, Leavitt Partners and program manager, The CARIN Alliance; David LaBine, VP of software engineering, Providence Digital Innovation Group; Robin Monks, CTO, Praia Health; Kristen Valdes, CEO, b.well. As healthcare faces rising consumer expectations and tighter regulations, the high cost of maintaining fragmented, proprietary systems is no longer sustainable. While patient data access has improved, the lack of open standards continues to hinder innovation, drive up integration costs, and limit the potential of digital health beyond the EHR. This webinar will discuss how open standards like OIDC,  HL7 FHIR, and open technology requirements are essential for reducing integration burdens, accelerating development, and lowering maintenance costs. Panelists will describe how every closed integration represents a lost opportunity and will offer practical strategies for leveraging open technology as a competitive advantage that improves efficiency, ensures compliance, and strengthens patient trust.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Bloomberg reports that UnitedHealth Group sold stakes in some of its businesses last year to private equity firms, then booked the resulting $3.3 billion as operating profit to offset losses from higher medical costs. Analysts say that it is unusual and potentially misleading for companies to selectively disclose asset sales, also noting that the deals appear to require UnitedHealth to repurchase the investments at a higher price after several years. UnitedHealth insisted to those involved that the deals should not be publicly disclosed.

Sales

• Royal Devon NHS implements Wolters Kluwer Health’s UpToDate Enterprise Edition as the first Trust to do so.

Announcements and Implementations

CareCloud launches a dermatology EHR with AI-powered charting.

Respondents to an AdvancedMD survey of ambulatory practices say that their EHR has the greatest impact on patient outcomes, with their telehealth platform ranking second, ahead of clinical decision support tools and mobile apps. Two-thirds report that patients schedule their appointments most commonly via a phone call.

Inbox Health releases a patient-facing AI chatbot assistant that is integrated with its billing platform.

Kyruus Health expands its Reach digital provider listing and reputation management solution to improve patient access and drive higher appointment conversions through platforms like Bing, Google, and the websites of 100 health plans.

A CIO survey by CliniComp and CHIME Foundation finds that 81% place the automation of administrative tasks as one of their top three AI strategies, which also include enhancing clinical decision support and improving RCM processes.

Other

Epic SVP of R&D Seth Hain, MS shares his thoughts about AI in healthcare:

• More than 75% of Epic’s health system customers are using generative AI.
• The term EHR no longer reflects its role as a digital colleague that shares insights and guidance with users.
• Epic can embed AI agents into its workflows because it is a single, integrated system rather than one assembled from parts.
• Health systems need to consider dynamic AI governance as the distinction between AI and broader technologies will be irrelevant.
• The technology that has already been invented has enough potential to last for years.

Sponsor Updates

• Impact Advisors staff donate school supplies and stuff them in over 200 backpacks to share with the Family Services team at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “How Low Cost Alternative Programs Can & Should Work, with Jackie Lolos, PharmD, and Haleh Campbell, PharmD.”
• Ellkay will host its virtual user group meeting August 5-6.
• Elsevier releases its “Clinician of the Future 2025 Report.”
• FinThrive offers a Mastering Key Revenue Cycle Metrics checklist.
• Fortified Health Security publishes its “2025 Mid-Year Healthcare Cybersecurity Report.”
• Lincata will exhibit at Epic UGM August 18-21 in Verona, WI.
• Meditech shares highlights from its 2025 Clinical Informatics Symposium.

Blog Posts

• AI and the Big Beautiful Bill: Why Health Systems Cannot Wait to Automate (Get-to-Market Health)
• How Larry H. Miller Senior Health Achieved RCM Clarity, Speed, and Peace of Mind With Inovalon (Inovalon)
• The AI Data Pipeline: How Your Health System Fuels Conversational Search (Kyruus Health)
• 5 Essential Workflow Automation Functions of Outpatient Rehab Software (Netsmart)
• Partnering in pursuit of excellence (Altera Digital Health)
• Nurses are evolving. Now it’s time for healthcare leaders to leverage our growth (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Patient Portals, Telehealth and Beyond: The Healthcare Technology Solutions Driving Improved Patient Outcomes (AdvancedMD)
• How Counties Drive Impact with Findhelp Data & Infrastructure (Findhelp)
• 7 Essential Characteristics of Seamless Claims Management (FinThrive)
• 5 Oracle Health AI Features to Watch in 2025 (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• MRO Advances Data Exchange for Disability Determination Services (MRO)
• Understanding Retrospective vs. Prospective Risk Adjustment (Navina)

Contacts

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

News 7/16/25

Top News

University of Maryland Medical System launches supply chain technology vendor Gallion Health.

It is the first spinoff from UMMS’s innovation center.

Sponsored Events and Resources

July 22 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” Sponsor: Praia Health. Presenters: Ryan Howells, principal, Leavitt Partners and program manager, The CARIN Alliance; David LaBine, VP of software engineering, Providence Digital Innovation Group; Robin Monks, CTO, Praia Health; Kristen Valdes, CEO, b.well. As healthcare faces rising consumer expectations and tighter regulations, the high cost of maintaining fragmented, proprietary systems is no longer sustainable. While patient data access has improved, the lack of open standards continues to hinder innovation, drive up integration costs, and limit the potential of digital health beyond the EHR. This webinar will discuss how open standards like OIDC,  HL7 FHIR, and open technology requirements are essential for reducing integration burdens, accelerating development, and lowering maintenance costs. Panelists will describe how every closed integration represents a lost opportunity and will offer practical strategies for leveraging open technology as a competitive advantage that improves efficiency, ensures compliance, and strengthens patient trust.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The private equity owner of Abacus Group and Medicus IT will merge the managed services providers into a new company.

Sales

• Memorial Hospital Biloxi (MS) selects virtual sitting technology from CareView Communications.
• Cleveland Clinic will pilot virtual dementia care from Remo Health as part of its ACO program for Medicare patients.
• Allina Health (MN) will implement Evidently’s AI chart summarization and documentation software across its care settings.
• Hendrick Health (TX) selects remote patient monitoring and chronic and transitional care management services from CareAtlas.
• The Massachusetts Health Data Consortium will use ZeOmega’s HealthUnity software to help participating providers and payers automate prior authorization processes.

People

Harmony Healthcare IT promotes Brian Liddell to president and CFO.

Bronson Healthcare promotes CMIO Todd Bennett, DO, MBA to VP of medical affairs / chief medical officer.

Joe Kozon, director of clinical applications at Health Choice Network, died Sunday at 40. He previously worked at Health Data Movers and Cumberland Consulting Group. Funeral information and a fundraiser for his daughter are available here.

Announcements and Implementations

Rush University System for Health (IL) launches on-demand and subscription-based, AI-powered, virtual care services using technology from Fabric.

Government and Politics

CMS seeks comment on its 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule, which could simplify the process of making select services available via telehealth and expand payment policies for digital mental health treatments.

The VA’s Million Veteran Program, which holds the DNA records of more than one million retired military service members, is threatened by grants cutbacks and potential loss of access to supercomputing systems from the Energy Department.

Other

Atrium Health (NC) will use Duke Endowment grant money to implement virtual nursing capabilities at its Stanly hospital, study the effects of a recently implemented AI translation tool, and develop an app and online platform for improved communication between the health system and its virtual clinics in local schools. The virtual nursing program is expected to create up to 50 jobs.

Forbes profiles OpenEvidence co-founder and CEO Daniel Nadler, PhD, whose 60% share of the company is worth $2 billion based on its most recent valuation. The company has signed up 40% of US doctors for its advertising-based, AI-powered medical literature review platform that was launched from Mayo Clinic’s incubator. He previously started a financial analysis software company whose sale to S&P netted him $350 million.

Sponsor Updates

• Crossings Healthcare will sponsor the Oracle Health and Life Sciences Summit in Orlando September 9-11, where it will demonstrate its Oracle EHR-integrated behavioral health software module.
• Consensus Cloud Solutions offers a complimentary plan of its eFax digital cloud fax solution to support those impacted by the recent flash floods in Texas.
• Arrive Health offers a new white paper titled “From Obstacles to Opportunities: Advancements in Prior Authorization Technology.”
• The Oregon Council for Behavioral Health will offer its members solutions and services from Netsmart’s CareFabric platform.
• Censinet releases a new episode of its “Risk Never Sleeps” podcast titled “The Startup Prescription for Healthcare IT – Part II, with Elevsis Delgadillo, SVP of Customer Success at KeenStack.”
• Optimum Healthcare IT releases an episode of its “Visionary Voices” podcast featuring an interview with Advocate Health SVP/Chief Digital Officer Andy Crowder.
• Clearsense releases a new case study, “Trinity Health Drives IT Cost Optimization With Legacy Decommissioning.”

Blog Posts

• How Interim HealthCare Cut Claims Denials by 75% (Inovalon)
• The Invisible Engine: How Data Powers Patient Access in the AI Era (Kyruus Health)
• 4 Ways AI is Optimizing Healthcare Processes (Netsmart)
• The Multi-Million Dollar Transformation Opportunity Healthcare Loves to Hate: Application Rationalization (CereCore)
• From zoomers to boomers: Technology and the patient experience (Altera Digital Health)
• 10 leading chronic care management software picks of 2025 (Arcadia)
• 5 Reasons Healthcare Contact Centers Should Invest in AI Agents (Artera)
• Beyond the Basic Checklist: Why Healthcare Cybersecurity Can’t Stop at HIPAA (CloudWave)
• Sift Through the Spam: Find Quality Candidates with an IT Staffing Solutions Company (CTG)
• Innovations Moving the Healthcare Industry Forward (Dimensional Insights)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 7/14/25

Top News

Johns Hopkins Health System launches Illustra Health, which applies analytics and Hopkins best practices to population health management.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents aren’t convinced that insurers will voluntarily streamline prior authorization

New poll to your right or here: Do you support the federal government subpoenaing the medical records of minors who have had gender-related care?

Sponsored Events and Resources

July 22 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” Sponsor: Praia Health. Presenters: Ryan Howells, principal, Leavitt Partners and program manager, The CARIN Alliance; David LaBine, VP of software engineering, Providence Digital Innovation Group; Robin Monks, CTO, Praia Health; Kristen Valdes, CEO, b.well. As healthcare faces rising consumer expectations and tighter regulations, the high cost of maintaining fragmented, proprietary systems is no longer sustainable. While patient data access has improved, the lack of open standards continues to hinder innovation, drive up integration costs, and limit the potential of digital health beyond the EHR. This webinar will discuss how open standards like OIDC,  HL7 FHIR, and open technology requirements are essential for reducing integration burdens, accelerating development, and lowering maintenance costs. Panelists will describe how every closed integration represents a lost opportunity and will offer practical strategies for leveraging open technology as a competitive advantage that improves efficiency, ensures compliance, and strengthens patient trust.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

KVC Health Systems implements WellSky’s behavioral health platform.

Announcements and Implementations

Samsung will roll out a beta version of an AI-powered health coach chatbot in the US by the end of the year. The company says the AI coach will alert users to potential health warning signs.

Government and Politics

The Justice Department subpoenas 20 doctors and hospitals, demanding the medical records of minors who have received gender-related care. The subpoenas were issued by the consumer protection group in an apparent attempt to sidestep patient confidentiality protections.

Other

AdventHealth Shawnee Mission sues BCBS of Kansas City, claiming that the insurer withheld $2 million in payments using Apixio’s AI chart review technology, which flagged “clinically invalid” physician diagnoses. The hospital says that the denials violate its contract as well as state and federal laws. Apixio says that its software finds faulty or unsupported diagnoses in 60% of inpatient stays.

I see few LinkedIn posts that go beyond AI-overwrought self-promotion posing as “wisdom,” but I enjoyed this one by Bland AI co-founder and CEO Isaiah Granet. A healthcare-applicable snippet that describes why McKinsey’s $500 per hour PowerPoints won’t be displaced by AI:

The paradox makes sense once you realize what companies actually buy. It’s not the deck. It’s the permission to fire 10,000 people that comes from hearing it from someone in a $3,000 suit who went to Wharton with your board member.
Every industry has these relationship premiums hidden in plain sight. Sommeliers exist because wine descriptions need to come from someone French. Executive recruiters charge 30% of first-year comp to introduce people who are already connected on LinkedIn. Investment bankers take 2% to blessing deals that were decided on the golf course. These jobs survive automation because they were never about the output. They’re about the human need to buy from humans we trust.

Sponsor Updates

• Symplr sponsors the PeaceHealth St. John Golf Classic.
• Medicomp Systems releases a new episode of its “Tell Me Where IT Hurts” podcast featuring Medicomp CEO Dave Lareau.
• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new episode of its “Leader to Leader” podcast titled “Getting the Foundations Right: Lessons from MultiCare on AI, Innovation, and Authentic Leadership.”
• Navina announces a partnership with ABW Medical, an Athenahealth-focused RCM vendor.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Christian Pulcini, MD.
• Praia Health secures a third patent for seamless patient experiences through account orchestration.
• Redox welcomes Rhythm Express to the Redox Connection Network.
• SmarterDx and Tegria will exhibit at the AHA Leadership Summit July 20-22 in Nashville.

Blog Posts

• Successful Installation of NeuroBlate MRI Laser Technology (Health Data Movers)
• Revenue Clarity and Control: How MatrixCare Simplified Claims for Better Results (Inovalon)
• The AI-Optimized Provider Profile: Beyond the Surface (Kyruus Health)
• Connect, exchange, care: Why I’m counting down to Meditech Live25 (Meditech)
• Cyberinsurance Tips for Healthcare (Med Tech Solutions)
• Smarter QA Starts with AI: How Augmentation Is Transforming Behavioral Health Documentation (Netsmart)
• From Innovation to Impact: Honoring Leaders in E-Prescription Accuracy (Surescripts)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 7/11/25

Top News

Canopy Health drops its May 2025 lawsuit against Commure and will take over customer management of Commure’s Strongline Pro panic button system.

Canopy had alleged that Commure used its insider knowledge as a Canopy reseller to develop a competing product.

In mid-May, a federal court ordered Commure to stop marketing and selling Strongline Pro until the case was resolved.

Sponsored Events and Resources

July 22 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” Sponsor: Praia Health. Presenters: Ryan Howells, principal, Leavitt Partners and program manager, The CARIN Alliance; David LaBine, VP of software engineering, Providence Digital Innovation Group; Robin Monks, CTO, Praia Health; Kristen Valdes, CEO, b.well. As healthcare faces rising consumer expectations and tighter regulations, the high cost of maintaining fragmented, proprietary systems is no longer sustainable. While patient data access has improved, the lack of open standards continues to hinder innovation, drive up integration costs, and limit the potential of digital health beyond the EHR. This webinar will discuss how open standards like OIDC,  HL7 FHIR, and open technology requirements are essential for reducing integration burdens, accelerating development, and lowering maintenance costs. Panelists will describe how every closed integration represents a lost opportunity and will offer practical strategies for leveraging open technology as a competitive advantage that improves efficiency, ensures compliance, and strengthens patient trust.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Hearst-owned QGenda acquires New Innovations, which offers medical residency management software.

Palantir EVP Louis Mosley criticizes British doctors who oppose the NHS’s use of the company’s software, saying “our software is going to make lives better” and accusing dissenting physicians of “choosing ideology over patient interest.” The British Medical Association passed a motion last month that opposed the NHS’s decision to award Palantir a $450 million contract to provide its Federated Data Platform.

Diligent Robotics, which sells the Moxi hospital robot, hires two executives from a robotaxi firm as it moves into other industries.

Sales

• Hackensack Meridian Health integrates DrFirst’s AI tools with Epic to give clinicians faster access to patient medication histories and insurance coverage details.

People

Population health management software vendor Zyter TruCare hires Sundar Subramanian, MBA, MS (Strategy&) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

HL7 launches an office that will establish healthcare AI standards. Daniel Vreeman, PT, DPT, MS, the organization’s chief standards development officer, will serve as chief AI officer.

A new KLAS report on oncology systems finds that many independent oncology practices have been acquired by health systems. They have also increased their use of cloud technology.

Government and Politics

Curacao’s trade commission rules that an after-hours primary care group that holds a 70% market share abused its market position by requiring doctors to use a specific software system to use its services. The government will order the group to create and fund an open API connection to competing systems.

Sponsor Updates

• CTG staff volunteer with the United Way of Buffalo & Erie County during its Day of Caring at Buffalo River Fest Park.
• Altera Digital Health selects MedAllies as its QHIN partner for its Paragon Denali EHR.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “The Benefits You Probably Didn’t Know You Have, with Marsha Perry.”
• Black Book Research announces its 2025 rankings of RCM vendors serving physician practices, with HIStalk sponsors FinThrive and Waystar achieving top marks in several categories.
• Agfa HealthCare achieves HITRUST i1 Certification.
• Navina and Nabla partner to deliver real-time support across clinical encounters.
• “The Big Unlock” podcast features Arcadia Chief Strategy Officer Aneesh Chopra in an episode titled “Reimagining Healthcare From Meaningful Use of Data to AI-Driven Equity.”
• Censinet releases a new episode of the “Risk Never Sleeps” podcast titled “The Startup Prescription for Healthcare IT – Part 1, with Elevsis Delgadillo, SVP of Customer Success at KeenStack.”
• A new Black Book Research survey of inpatient EHR users reveals meaningful disparities in satisfaction across major inpatient EHR platforms.

Blog Posts

• Overcoming Patient Access Challenges: 4-Step Approach to Centralization (AGS Health)
• Recognizing Common HIPAA Violations and How to Prevent Them (AdvancedMD)
• Prioritizing patient–provider connections in a digital age (Altera Digital Health)
• Branded Messaging: The Secret to Greater Response Rates and Trust in Healthcare (Artera)
• Breaking Free! Scaling Virtual Nursing Beyond Pilots (AvaSure)
• MUSE 2025: Innovation, Connection, and Giving Back (Consensus Cloud Solutions)
• Cutting Through the Noise: How Healthcare Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Prioritizes What Matters (CloudWave) 
• Speed Matters: Why Companies Lose Top Talent—And How to Fix It (Direct Recruiters)
• Understand What Clinicians Actually Experience Using Epic Hyperdrive (Goliath Technologies)
• Live from New York: How SCNs Connect 1.5 Million Patients to HRSN Services (Findhelp)
• AI in UK Healthcare: Empowering Better Patient Experiences Through Digital Transformation (Five9)

Sponsor Spotlight

FDB (First Databank) delivers clinically robust, workflow-integrated drug knowledge that is patient-specific and actionable, enabling more precise medication decisions. Trusted for quality, clinical expertise, and collaboration, FDB helps improve patient safety, operations, and outcomes. FDB’s drug databases and medication decision support solutions power information systems used by the majority of hospitals, physician practices, pharmacies, payers, and beyond, impacting millions of clinicians, business associates, and patients every day. Follow FDB on LinkedIn. (Sponsor Spotlight is free for HIStalk Platinum sponsors).

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 7/10/25

Vytalize Health raises fresh $55M and eyes deals

Value-based care practice management company Vytalize Health reportedly raises $55 million, bringing its total funding to over $230 million.

HL7 International Launches AI Office to Set Global Standards for Healthcare’s AI Revolution

Open standards organization HL7 establishes an AI office to develop foundational standards for the use of AI in healthcare.

QGenda Announces Acquisition of New Innovations

Healthcare workforce management software vendor QGenda acquires residency management software company New Innovations.

News 7/9/25

Top News

Samsung Electronics will acquire digital health integration company Xealth.

Xealth announced an undisclosed amount of funding from Morningside Ventures earlier this year. The company spun out of Providence in 2017 to sell its platform that allows providers to prescribe digital health programs and tools.

Samsung says the acquisition will help it reach more health systems and digital partners through connected care.

Reader Comments

From Abacab: “Re: the VA. They posted an RFI on July 3 titled ‘Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) Systems Integration Support to the EHRM Integration Office.’ If they proceed, it most likely strips Oracle Health of the prime integration responsibility and shifts it to a traditional government systems integrator. Oracle has had notable failures with its Oracle Health rollout. Shifting it to an SI who has similar experience at least brings risk down substantially.”The RFI seeks input on selecting a system integrator to support the VA’s enterprise-wide rollout of Oracle Health, covering implementation, integration, management, and sustainment. My initial, non-expert assumption was that Oracle Health would remain the prime contractor, with funding and operational responsibility shifting to the integrator. Leidos seems to be a likely frontrunner given its role as prime contractor for the DoD’s Oracle Health rollout. However, a reader who has deep federal contracting experience believes that the VA may actually be looking to replace Oracle Health as the prime, not just add an integrator. They noted it never made sense for Cerner – who had never installed its system for the government and never served as prime contractor on a big federal project as far as I know — to receive a no-bid contract for both software and responsibility as prime, which of course let it keep most of the money.

From Dropsy: “Re: Becker’s Health IT & CIO Report. Amenities Health founder and CEO Aasim Saeed, MD, MPA rips them on LinkedIn for running an Epic blog post as its lead story.” I agree that it’s not real journalism to run a lead story that summarizes a vendor CEO’s company blog post. News is always sparse right after a holiday, but surely this was the most questionable choice from the 10 stories listed.

Sponsored Events and Resources

July 22 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” Sponsor: Praia Health. Presenters: Ryan Howells, principal, Leavitt Partners and program manager, The CARIN Alliance; David LaBine, VP of software engineering, Providence Digital Innovation Group; Robin Monks, CTO, Praia Health; Kristen Valdes, CEO, b.well. As healthcare faces rising consumer expectations and tighter regulations, the high cost of maintaining fragmented, proprietary systems is no longer sustainable. While patient data access has improved, the lack of open standards continues to hinder innovation, drive up integration costs, and limit the potential of digital health beyond the EHR. This webinar will discuss how open standards like OIDC, HL7 FHIR, and open technology requirements are essential for reducing integration burdens, accelerating development, and lowering maintenance costs. Panelists will describe how every closed integration represents a lost opportunity and will offer practical strategies for leveraging open technology as a competitive advantage that improves efficiency, ensures compliance, and strengthens patient trust.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health and human services technology company VitalHub acquires patient flow software vendor Novari Health for $32 million. Canada-based VitalHub’s recent acquisitions include Induction Healthcare (patient engagement and virtual care), MedCurrent (clinical decision support), and Strata Health (care coordination).

People

PointClickCare promotes James Yersh to president.

Kumar Murukurthy, MBBS (Altais) joins Optimum Healthcare IT as chief clinical officer.

Announcements and Implementations

La Paz Regional Hospital (AZ) goes live on Meditech Expanse.

Lifepoint Health and Community Health Systems implements Cadence’s new Proactive Care Engine for Advanced Primary Care Management of Medicare patients.

Hannibal Regional Healthcare System (MO) will go live on Epic this week.

Black Book Research surveys clinicians to measure how their input shapes AI product design, using eight qualitative KPIs that are tied to workflow fit, usability, and trust. Top-scoring vendors are Epic, Signal 1, Aidoc, Suki AI, Notable, and Viz.ai.

A new KLAS report on EHR clinical optimization names Nordic and Chartis as the top-performing firms.

Government and Politics

KLAS surveys 169 health system executives to understand how they are dealing with the uncertainty of federal policy, with the largest expected impact being cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. It concludes that financial pressures are forcing the organizations to “plan through the fog” by taking action now even without clear direction. A summary:

• Payment reforms are forcing organizations to reconfigure themselves, not just cut expenses, as they scale back services and expand high-margin service lines. This survival strategy creates implications for patient access.
• Most organizations plan to shift IT spending to vendor partnerships that offer quick ROI rather than cutting their IT budgets.
• Nearly 40% of the organizations are betting on AI as a way to reduce administration costs, but few have progressed beyond pilot projects.
• The organizations are reevaluating payer partnerships, Medicare Advantage growth, and contract performance. This is influencing broad organizational strategy.
• Smaller organizations are reacting similarly, but without the resources needed, leaving them with little margin for error in retooling their strategies.
• Few organizations are optimistic about government policy changes and are already being hit by financial policies and tariffs.

Other

The New Jersey Department of Health and Department of Human Services works with RWJBarnabas Health and the New Jersey Health Information Network on a pilot project that automates the filing and creation of birth certificates via data exchange between hospital EHRs and the state’s Vital Statistics Birth Registry.

Sponsor Updates

• Kyruus Health staff volunteer with Seeds of Hope in Portland.
• Healthcare IT Leaders publishes “The State of Oracle Health in 2025,” which analyzes Oracle Health’s platform and strategy using commentary from the company’s leadership and customers.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “A Look at What’s Really Driving Drug Spend, and How it Impacts Us, with IQVIA’s Michael Kleinrock.”
• The “HITea with Grace” podcast features First Databank SVP of strategy and product management Virginia Halsey in an episode titled “Virginia Halsey Spills the Tea on Smarter Medication Decision Support.”
• Fortified Health Security names Hannah Cook product manager for advisory services and Eli Herran security compliance analyst.
• Health Data Movers will sponsor the Northern Ohio HIMSS Charity Golf Classic & Collaboration Summit August 5-6 in Highland Heights.
• HIStalk sponsors Arcadia, TruBridge, Waystar, FinThrive, VisiQuate, and Infinx earn top rankings for AI-powered RCM applications based on Black Book Research’s latest survey.
• Impact Advisors partners with Montage Health on its Workday financial management and Workday supply chain management go live.
• Infinx releases a new episode of its “Revenue Cycle Optimized” podcast titled “RCM Insights – AI Agents Transform Claim Status Checks.”
• Linus Health advisors author a study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease titled “Precision neurocognition: An emerging diagnostic paradigm leveraging digital cognitive assessment technology.”
• Nordic collaborates with GoHealth Urgent Care in Atlanta on its Epic implementation.
• Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the Backdoor” podcast titled “The Healing Network – CISO Relationships in a Ransomware Era.”
• SmartSense by Digi will exhibit at the Association for Diagnostics and Laboratory Medicine’s annual conference July 27-31 in Chicago.
• The G2 Summer 2025 Grid reports recognize Symplr’s access, clinical communications, provider, talent management, and workforce solutions.

Blog Posts

• The power of putting the patient on the care team (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Kansas City Social Care: Trusted Networks Support Community Wellbeing (Findhelp)
• HFMA Annual 2025: Exploring Bold Innovations in Healthcare Revenue Intelligence (FinThrive)
• Understanding and Managing Shrinkage in Contact Centers (Five9)
• Why IT Hardware Lifecycle Management is Critical for Ambulatory Clinics (HCTec)
• Medicaid Budget Cuts Test Risk Adjustment Program Readiness (Inovalon)
• The Critical Need for EHR Coaching: Ensuring Providers Can Maximize Their Systems (Med Tech Solutions)
• Leveraging FHIR and Interoperability to Transform CHRISTUS Health’s Revenue Cycle Operations (MRO)
• Digital health tech creating ‘connective tissue’ to link care settings, clinicians, and evidence (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Reducing Denials With Autonomous Medical Coding (Nym)
• Azure Virtual Desktop in Practice: What Healthcare IT Leaders Can Learn from Early Adopters (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Driving Change With Purpose: Key Takeaways From HFMA 2025 (Tegria)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 7/7/25

Top News

Symplr acquires the Smart Square staff scheduling system from AMN Healthcare for $75 million.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A majority of poll respondents attribute Best Buy’s exit from its Current Health business as being due to its underestimation of healthcare’s complexity.

New poll to your right or here: Will insurers follow through on their pledge to streamline prior authorization? My take: only if it makes them more money. What I expect:

• They will use FHIR to quickly render only those PA decisions that involve high-volume, inexpensive items since they get an immediate labor reduction payback.
• Complex but urgent items will still require review by their own clinicians, whose relevant credentials may be skimpy and whose job is more to say “no” than “yes.”
• Policies related to patient transitions between insurers will be loaded with exceptions.
• Note that insurers pledged to address PAs in 2018 by (a) reducing PA requirements for providers who have a good performance history and who demonstrably adhere to evidence-based medicine, and (b) automating the process using national standards.
• CMS issued a rule in January 2024 that required payers to publish a prior authorization API by January 1, 2027, although the insurers will be given three days to respond to urgent requests and seven calendar days for standard requests.

Sponsored Events and Resources

July 22 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Innovating the Consumer Experience Beyond the EMR with Open Standards.” Sponsor: Praia Health. Presenters: Ryan Howells, principal, Leavitt Partners and program manager, The CARIN Alliance; David LaBine, VP of software engineering, Providence Digital Innovation Group; Robin Monks, CTO, Praia Health; Kristen Valdes, CEO, b.well. As healthcare faces rising consumer expectations and tighter regulations, the high cost of maintaining fragmented, proprietary systems is no longer sustainable. While patient data access has improved, the lack of open standards continues to hinder innovation, drive up integration costs, and limit the potential of digital health beyond the EHR. This webinar will discuss how open standards like OIDC,  HL7 FHIR, and open technology requirements are essential for reducing integration burdens, accelerating development, and lowering maintenance costs. Panelists will describe how every closed integration represents a lost opportunity and will offer practical strategies for leveraging open technology as a competitive advantage that improves efficiency, ensures compliance, and strengthens patient trust.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

England-based healthcare software vendor Agilio acquires Blue Stream Academy, which offers healthcare e-learning services.

The Villages Health, which offers healthcare services to the 150,000 residents of The Villages retirement community in Florida, files Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will sell itself to Humana’s CenterWell health services business. TVH reportedly owes the federal government nearly $400 million in Medicare overpayments.

People

Franciscan Alliance promotes Joseph Schnecker, MD, MMM to CMIO.

I missed this earlier. Nebraska Medicine promotes Michael Ash, MD to CEO. Ash, who is also a pharmacist, was chief medical officer for Cerner for 11 years and chief transformation officer of the health system for eight years.

Announcements and Implementations

Researchers find that prescription costs for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries didn’t go down following implementation of a real-time prescription benefit tool.

Other

OpenAI hires a forensic psychiatrist to assess the emotional impact of ChatGPT use. Mental health experts have raised concerns about people relying on AI as a therapist, pointing to cases in which chatbots were linked to mental breakdowns and suicides.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 7/2/25

Top News

RCM technology vendor VisiQuate acquires Etyon, whose technology optimizes revenue cycle workflows.

Reader Comments

From Dark Daze: “Re: Sharp HealthCare. Cut 315 FTEs yesterday, 150 of them from IT, which is a 25% haircut.” Unverified, although the local TV station reports that IT was one of the departments affected and Redditors claim that IT was the hardest-hit area.

From Isthmus: “Re: Sharp HealthCare. Laid off most of their Epic IT staff with plans to have their Epic system supported by a third party.” Unverified.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Premier acquires IllumiCare, which adds a financial component to clinical decision support, and will market it under its Stanson Health brand.

Sales

• Valley Health System (NJ) will use technology and services from Inbound Health to launch a hospital-at-home program.
• Emory Healthcare (GA) selects Aidin’s post-acute care transitions software.

People

Ralph Porpora (Grand View Health) joins Deborah Heart and Lung Center (NJ) as VP of IS/CIO.

Pager Health names Ken Yamaguchi, MD (Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine) chief medical officer.

BayCare (FL) names Patrick Brown, MD (Centra Health) VP/CMIO and Philip Karp, MS (NYU Langone Health) VP/CTO.

Medical error prevention pioneer Lucian Leape, MD died Monday at 94. He was involved in the Harvard study that resulted in the landmark 1999 report “To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System.”

Announcements and Implementations

Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System (SC) implements precision medicine technologies from 2bPrecise.

Microsoft’s AI team claims that one of the company’s diagnostic tools can outperform physicians in solving the toughest cases, correctly identifying 85% of 304 real-world cases that had been published weekly in the New England Journal of Medicine, four times the success rate of doctors. This is an interesting test, with these caveats:

• The research involved published cases, so physicians were barred from using electronic medical records, care guidelines, textbooks, colleagues, and other LLMs that could have accessed the answers.
• NEJM cases are “pedagogically curated” rather than real-world examples.
• Nobody knows whether commercial LLMs were trained on the actual published case studies, which would have given them an unfair advantage.
• The physicians who were involved had a median experience of 12 years, but still diagnosed correctly just 20% of the time, raising questions of the validity of the hypothetical cases.
• The NEJM cases are created to be interesting, challenging, and pathology-focused. They may contain red herrings and often involve obscure diagnoses. They require the reader to make a diagnosis without having access to the patient’s medical record, without being able to examine the patient or ask them questions, and without the benefit of observational findings.
• The study is an interesting proof of concept, but should not be taken to mean that doctors can’t diagnose correctly 80% of the time or that AI can do a better job in clinical situations.

Government and Politics

CMS approves Eko Health’s Sensora digital stethoscopes cardiac algorithm for payment under the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment system.

The Washington Post provides details from court documents of the federal government’s Operation Gold Rush, a massive fraud takedown where Medicare was billed $10.6 billion for medical devices that were not medically necessary or actually delivered to patients:

• Prosecutors say the schemers used stolen identities of 1 million Americans to flood Medicare with bogus claims, including 1 billion urinary catheters.
• The fraud was funneled through 30 Medicare-approved medical supply companies that the perpetrators had quietly acquired.
• HHS and CMS teams blocked 99% of the attempted Medicare payments, signaling a shift from the traditional “pay and chase” model to one of proactive prevention.
• Despite that success, the scammers still collected $1 billion from Medicare supplemental insurers.
• Most of the accused reportedly never set foot in the United States.
• Medicare received 400,000 complaints from patients questioning why companies like Pretty In Pink Boutique were billing for catheters they neither needed nor received.

Privacy and Security

Central Maine Healthcare restores its IT systems and resumes normal operations after a June 1 cyberattack forced it to downtime procedures.

Other

In South Africa, the Gauteng health department denies reports that a hospital morgue was backed up with two weeks’ worth of bodies because it couldn’t print death certificates due to a shortage of printer cartridges.

Sponsor Updates

• A new analysis from Black Book Research reveals a sharp escalation in state-level legislative actions that are reshaping revenue cycle management frameworks.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health” podcast featuring UXonSpec founder and CUO Randolph Bias.
• CereCore releases a new podcast episode titled “Building Trust: From Expanse Rollout to High Reliability Organization.”
• Vyne Medical releases a new case study titled, “How Mayo Clinic Reduced Lab Data Entry Time by 50% While Increasing Data Volume.”
• AdvancedMD adds health insurance contracting and consulting services firm NGA Healthcare to its partner integration marketplace.
• Agfa HealthCare releases a new guide titled “Purchasing a Cloud-Hosted Enterprise Imaging Solution.”
• Clinical Architecture releases its “2025 Healthcare Data Quality Report.”

Blog Posts

• Enhancing Clinical and RCM Efficiency with Coding Automation (AGS Health)
• 4 Takeaways from Rooted in Purpose: Advancing Whole-Person Care for Individuals with IDD & Autism (Netsmart)
• New Nursing Charge Automation Adds $45K in Weekly Revenue (CereCore)
• EPRs at the heart of urgent and emergency treatment centres: Delivering safer, faster care (Altera Digital Health)
• How Vanderbilt University Hospital Tackled Readmission Rates By Leveraging Artera for Post-Discharge Communication (Artera)
• Set the foundation: How to prepare your data for AI transformation (Philips Capsule)
• From Texas to Wisconsin, Cardamom’s David Gibson shares his winding journey in health IT (Cardamom)
• MUSE 2025: Innovation, Connection, and Giving Back (Consensus Cloud Solutions)
• Why It’s Time to Rethink Prior Authorization—Especially for Specialty Medications (DrFirst)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 6/30/25

Top News

CMS announces a six-year pilot in six states to test tech-enabled prior authorization for traditional Medicare, which has traditionally avoided prior authorizations.

Participating organizations will be paid based on reducing inappropriate utilization. CMS is looking for companies that have implemented AI-powered PA programs for other payers.

CMS says that no new provider documentation will be required, but information must be submitted in advance.

CMS calls the program WISeR, the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction model.

Reader Comments

From Lou Lazuli: “Re: hospital sterilization methods. What’s your take on UVC light augmenting other methods for battling MRSA and VRE outbreaks? Is there a market need?” I’m far from an expert, but hospitals seem to be interested in using it to disinfect rooms after normal cleaning, where it reduces the transmission of superbugs. Hospitals are the target market due to the clinical and financial cost of hospital-acquired infections, which include CMS financial penalties. UVC robots like the one developed by Xenex might be an attractive offering if a business case can be made to offset the increased cycle time and capital investment that is required. It would be an easier sell if UVC replaced existing methods instead of augmenting them, but the expensive machines could be selectively deployed for use in vacated isolation rooms, surgery and procedure areas, and critical care units where any HAI could be especially disastrous.

From Chart Thief: “Re: VA scheduling and Oracle Health. It’s a management failure, not a tech problem, if the VA can’t implement the system it bought and instead continues to run legacy ones.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents aren’t too worried about AI encroaching on their employment.

New poll to your right or here: What is the remote patient monitoring takeaway of Best Buy’s divestiture of Current Health?

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Sales

• Trinity Health (ND) will implement Epic, replacing Oracle Health.
• QHIO SacValley MedShare joins the KONZA Health QHIN.

Announcements and Implementations

Optum launches an AI marketplace of products developed by the company and its third-party partners.

Former grocery store bagger turned self-styled medical entrepreneur and disruptor Ryan Egypt El-Hosseiny asserts that he has resurrected the lab testing firm Theranos after validating the fraudulent claims of former CEO and federal inmate Elizabeth Holmes. He made the announcement at a Miami nightclub, where he was flanked by rappers, fake cops, and a Holmes impersonator wearing an orange jumpsuit. El-Hosseiny, who is pushing RFK Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again platform and lobbying for President Trump to pardon Holmes, calls himself “the Steve Jobs of medical labs” and is among the Grade D actors who appear in his cringeworthy YouTube film titled “Just Blood: The United States vs. Elizabeth Holmes,” where his fake mustache appears to be summiting his external nares and his fellow thespians are repeatedly caught by the camera trying to suppress grins of participatory embarrassment. Records indicate that the Theranos trademark was abandoned when the company dissolved in 2018, so I assume he’s a squatter.

A new KLAS – Arch Collaborative report finds that ambient speech is improving provider EHR satisfaction and allowing more face-to-face interaction with patients. It is also boosting the EHR experience metrics of Epic-using ambulatory care providers. However, most users say that they aren’t willing to squeeze in more patient visits to justify the technology’s cost, preferring instead to improve patient care or their own work-life balance.

Government and Politics

Federal prosecutors indict 11 members of a Russia-based crime ring who allegedly used stolen information from 1 million Americans to bill Medicare $11 billion for medical equipment that was never ordered or delivered, netting $300 million.

Other

SCAN Health Plan President and CEO Sachin Jain, MD, MBA describes what he calls the “value-based delusion”:

Every conference deck, consulting proposal, and startup pitch has claimed to be “bringing value to healthcare.” But let’s be honest: in most cases, very little has actually changed in how care is delivered. Instead of reimagining the patient experience, many organizations have simply reengineered their revenue models. Networks get narrowed. Risk gets shifted. Coding intensity rises. But does care feel more human, more seamless, more dignified for patients? Too often, the answer is no.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research announces a revamped RCM KPI framework that incorporates critical areas like AI integration, transparency, and automation.
• Surescripts VP of information security and CISO Judy Molenaar joins the DirectTrust Board of Directors.
• Nordic announces its ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems certification in Europe.
• Nym names Aya Weinstein VP of product, Amir Cohen senior software engineer, Alvera Abouseif customer success manager, Michal Attias bookkeeper, and Debra Whitley senior manager of product and coding compliance operations.
• Redox welcomes Ferry Health to the Redox Connection Network.
• Rhapsody Health offers a new customer story titled “Qventus achieves 10X performance and reduces customer onboarding time by 50%.”
• VitalChat announces the availability of a ProConnections Conversion Kit for those providers left with unsupported virtual care infrastructure following the closure of tele-ICU vendor ProConnections.

Blog Posts

• Spotting the Red Flags in Your Analytics and How to Fix Them (FinThrive)
• How Mobile Scheduling Software Solves Healthcare Staffing Chaos (Inovalon)
• From Pilot to Practice: 10 Keys to AI Adoption in Behavioral Health (Netsmart)
• Simple, obvious, ignored: The real work of improving patient experience (Nordic)
• Preparing Your Staff for a Cerner-to-Epic Conversion in 5 Key Steps (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• For patient education, place evidence at the center of care (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• When Not to Automate: Lessons from the Front Lines (VisiQuate)
• Healthcare Integration for Startups: A Scalable Guide to EHR Interoperability (Zen Healthcare IT)

Contacts

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

News 6/27/25

Top News

Best Buy sells remote patient monitoring technology company Current Health back to its co-founder and CEO Christopher McGhee (formerly known as Christopher McCann). 

Best Buy acquired the company in October 2021 for $400 million and has struggled with its in-home healthcare business since, including taking two write-downs totaling nearly $600 million this year.

McGhee left Best Buy in March 2024. I interviewed him in April 2022. Several former Current executives will return to the company with him.

Best Buy’s CEO said in its most recent earnings call that hospital-at-home solutions business was advancing more slowly than it had expected.

Reader Comments

From Blew Button: “Re: AI strategy. Everyone is pushing for faster adoption. How are health systems balancing that with validation, integration, and project priorities? We can’t skip the hard parts just because execs and the board are believing the AI hype.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Microsoft’s retirement of Skype pushed me to use Teams instead for my weekly English sessions with my Ukrainian student. Teams has been unreliable, slow, and maddening (why can’t I test my camera and microphone without connecting to a meeting?) Teams repeatedly froze the connection this week, so we tried WhatsApp, which had better quality and reliability for at least those few minutes. I will confirm next week after we try our full-hour session on WhatsApp.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Mandolin, which uses AI agents to manage specialty drug intake, benefits, prior authorizations, and RCM, raises $40 million in seed and Series A funding.

Veradigm reaffirms its intention to have its shares relisted in 2026. The company said in its earnings call that it is gaining new provider business in specialty practices, value-based care, and especially in revenue cycle. Revenue is flat as the company expected, however, and it continues to see attrition among larger clients.

Provider data management vendor Certify raises $40 million in a Series B funding round. Founder and CEO Anshul Rathi, MS started the company in 2021 after managing network data for Oscar Health.

Arine, which offers an AI-powered medication optimization platform, raises $30 million in a Series C funding round. CEO Yoona Kim, PharmD, PhD worked in pharma and at Proteus Digital Health before she co-founded the company in 2017.

People

Evidently hires Chris Cowart (Xsolis) as head of growth.

Tony Murdoch (Bamboo Health) joins Zus Health as VP of business development and partnerships.

Announcements and Implementations

Altera Digital Health launches Sunrise CarePath, a mobile patient engagement platform that is integrated with its Sunrise EHR. It offers secure messaging, self-scheduling, patient notifications and appointment reminders, and billing integration.

Researchers describe ECGFounder, an ECG foundation model that was trained on 11 million ECGs and their cardiologist notations. They theorize that its expert-level diagnostic performance could provide useful in analyzing ECG data from wearables.

KLAS surveys C-level health system executives about their technology vendor expectations. Recommendations to companies:

• CEO: address big-picture value of the platform; back up claims with real-world metrics from other health systems; be prepared to pitch at a board level.
• CFO: provide contracting transparency; be flexible in negotiations; show line-item cost implications; partner to perform post-implementation financial impact reviews.
• CDO: provide integration playbooks; provide change management toolkits; partner in developing data governance frameworks.
• CIO: address how the solution fits into the broad IT strategy; provide proactive support from implementation through optimization; partner on rationalizing legacy technology and vendor sprawl.
• CISO: provide risk documentation and real-world threat models; provide easily deployed security tools; include advisory services in the engagement model.
• COO: provide turnkey dashboards that integrate operations, finance, and quality; provide industry benchmarks and advisory services; provide quick-win use cases and tactical automation.
• CTO: provide architecture diagrams, threat models, and deployment recipes; include stakeholders in roadmap previews, especially when dependencies or APIs will change; share reference implementations and provide a sandbox to prove extensibility claims.
• CMO/CMIO: involve them in roadmap development; showcase measured clinical outcomes and provider satisfaction benchmarks; provide tools to help build consensus with clinical leaders.
• CNO/CNIO: shadow nurses to map workflows; provide real-time, around-the-clock support; get nurses involved in roadmap designs using clinical councils or pilots.

Government and Politics

Digital health companies Whoop, CoachCare, and Epic testify before the House Ways and Means health subcommittee about the benefits of wearables and remote patient monitoring. Their timing was ideal given HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s recent call for every American to wear a device within four years, but less so given lawmakers’ focus on a proposed reconciliation bill that would strip coverage from 16 million people through Medicaid and ACA coverage cuts.

Privacy and Security

King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust tells a patient’s family that a cyberattack contributed to his death. Pathology provider Synnovis was hit by a ransomware attack on June 3, delaying the patient’s critical test result.

Other

Microsoft profiles how 365 Copilot is used by the chief digital officer of a hospital in Brazil. He says it helped him improve his no-nonsense email style to be more polite and “really cute.” He adds that it has reduced his email management time by 70% and allows quicker decision-making by summarizing long email threads.

Sponsor Updates

• An unnamed Southern health system selects Vyne Medical’s Trace Platform to process inbound orders in its patient access department.
• Black Book Research poll-takers name the leading EHR-native patient accounting systems for 2025, including HIStalk sponsors Meditech and TruBridge.
• CereCore earns a five-star rating and “Best Practice” designation as an Infrastructure as a Service provider by Securance Consulting.
• Findhelp welcomes new customers City of Kansas City, MO; DSR Public Health Foundation; and Careforth.
• Five9 releases a new customer success book titled “Aeroflow Health Improves Efficiency with Automation.”
• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new “Leader to Leader” podcast episode titled “From Technical Debt to Transformation: The Cloud Journey Healthcare Needs.”
• Meditech releases a new customer success story titled “Sierra View Medical Center Unleashes the Power of Data with Meditech’s Analytics Solution.”

Blog Posts

• How We Did IT: Oracle Health EHR Speed & Reliability Score Increased 17% (Goliath Technologies)
• Recent Enforcement in Healthcare Price Transparency: What You Need to Know (FinThrive)
• How Managed XDR Strengthened Cyber Defense at a Vermont Hospital (Fortified Health Security)
• Simplifying chronic care: What you need to know about APCM codes and MIPS MVP reporting (Healthmonix)
• 5 Strategies to Build a Motivated Healthcare Workforce (Inovalon)
• Advancing Data Integrity: DAV Cohort 10 Reflects KONZA’s Continued Leadership (Konza)
• How Orthopedic Practices Are Streamlining Patient Disability and FMLA Form Management with MRO (MRO)
• 5 key takeaways from our VBC initiatives roundtable (Navina)

Contacts

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