News 9/5/25

Top News

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says that the agency will increase resources to enforce healthcare information blocking, which the HHS announcement says “was not a priority under the Biden Administration.”

ASTP says it is reviewing reports involving certified health IT developers. ASTP and HHS OIG will “take an active enforcement stance against health care entities that restrict patients’ engagement in their care by blocking the access, exchange, and use of electronic health information.” 

Reader Comments

From Unashamed Cerner: “Re: Oracle Health layoffs. It’s tough being walked out, but remember that what you did here matters, whether it was for Cerner, Oracle Health, or an acquired company. Larry Ellison seems intent to prove that the most effective way to ‘disrupt’ healthcare is to simply fire everyone who knows how it works.” 

Sponsored Events and Resources

Online Event: September 16 (Tuesday) 11:30 a.m. ET. “Waystar Innovation Showcase: Activating Advanced Automation + AI to Transform Healthcare RCM.” Join us for Waystar’s Fall Innovation Showcase  to see the tools and tactics that are transforming healthcare payments and driving real, measurable results, like a 36% boost in workforce efficiency. In just one hour, we’ll reveal major advancements helping teams streamline processes, ensure accuracy, and speed reimbursement with AI + less manual work.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The local press profiles Dallas-based Scribematic, a 15-employee firm that sells a white-labeled ambient documentation system to mid-sized and specialty EHR vendors. Owner and CEO Calvin Carter says Epic’s launch of its own AI scribing tools threatens smaller vendors with customer losses and warns them that building a competing product is risky and difficult.

A Kansas City TV station confirms Oracle Health layoffs, adding that the company’s KC headcount has dropped from 11,000 during its Cerner days to 6,000 now. Online discussion was extensive.

Online weight loss prescription vendor Remedy Meds will acquire Thirty Madison for $500 million in stock. Thirty Madison runs online prescribers Nurx (birth control), Cove (migraine), and Keeps (men’s hair loss). The companies report annual revenue of $450 million for Remedy and $220 million for Thirty Madison.

The new private equity owner of Walgreens will split the company into five standalone businesses — Walgreens (US drugstores), The Boots Group (international pharmacies), Shields Health Solutions (specialty pharmacy), CareCentrix (home health), and VillageMD (primary care).

Federal contractor GovCIO acquires SoldierPoint Digital Health, which holds a seven-year, $2 billion VA contract for telehealth and connected care solutions in the Connected Care Integrated Network. 

Digital health vendor HealthLynked will conduct a reverse split on its shares, which at the current price of under $0.03 value the company at $7 million.

WellSpan Health elevates its three-year collaboration with General Catalyst’s HATCo — which combines innovation, investment, and ownership of the Summa Health health system — to become its first Transformation Partner. It will co‑develop AI solutions that it expects to save 400,000 clinical hours annually and boost operational performance over the next five years.

Sales

• FQHC Primary Health Solutions will deploy call center voice agents from SoundHound AI.
• Hamilton Health Sciences implements the Philips Capsule Medical Device Integration system to provide Epic with continuous data from ventilators; intra-aortic balloon pumps; cardiac monitors; continuous renal replacement therapy; and ECMO.
• Comanche County Memorial Hospital (OK) will implement Meditech Expanse.

People

Trimedx hires Srilekha Akula (Alto Pharmacy) as chief data and AI officer.

Justin Neece, MBA (Azara Healthcare) joins MedeAnalytics as chief growth officer.

Announcements and Implementations

TigerConnect launches an interfacility transfer coordination product.

A new KLAS report looks at enterprise imaging, specifically vendor-neutral archive and universal viewer. It notes that radiology and cardiology are the most widely stored and viewed image types, with growth in some areas, but few organizations are storing POCUS (wound care and dermatology images) and little progress has been made in digital pathology usage.

Government and Politics

HHS will restore health and sciences webpages and data it had deleted as settlement terms of a lawsuit that was brought by the Washington State Medical Association. HHS had deleted information on pregnancy risks, opioid-use disorder, and AIDS under the White House’s order to stop using the term “gender.”

Other

New York City hospitals say that FDNY’s new policy that requires ambulance crews to take patients to the computer-chosen closest hospital – regardless of physician privileges, patient preferences, or condition – is endangering patients. FDNY’s commissioner disagrees, saying that “We’re not the Uber business or Lyft business to take people where they want to go” and that the change was needed to reduce 911 response times.

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore releases a new episode of its podcast titled “The Value of Advocacy in Rural Health: A CFO’s Perspective.”
• Agfa HealthCare will exhibit at ASE 2025 September 5-7 in Nashville.
• Artera publishes a new report titled “Trends in Patient Engagement.”
• AvaSure will integrate Ascom’s Healthcare Platform Suite and Myco devices with its Virtual Care Platform.
• Consensus Health Solutions will exhibit at the National Tribal Health Conference September 7-12 in Chandler, AZ.
• DrFirst; TrustCommerce, a Sphere company; and First Databank will sponsor the New England Epic-users Collaborative Fall Summit October 27 in Waltham, MA.

Blog Posts

• Beyond Spreadsheets: Unlocking the Power of Advanced Analytics in Healthcare RCM (AGS Health)
• Master Your NG8 Upgrade with a Fully Customizable Support Solution (Med Tech Solutions)
• Protecting Patient Privacy in the Age of Information Sharing (Netsmart)
• AI isn’t coming for your job: It’s coming for your workflow (Nordic)
• What Healthcare Leaders Need to Know About Autonomous Medical Coding (Nym)
• 5 most unproductive touches in the healthcare RCM process (Waystar)
• How to Demonstrate Patient Safety Under the PSSM Program (CereCore)
• Rural hospitals, we hear you: Ambient listening AI is here (Altera Digital Health)
• Self-service in health IT: More than a fancy kiosk (Cardamom)
• AI Prompt Injection in Healthcare: The Real Cyber Risk Hiding in Plain Sight (Clearwater)
• What If You Had the Right Partner to Get There? (CloudWave)
• Why Eliminating Per-Agent Licensing Is a Game Changer for Healthcare Communication (CTG)
• How Can Data Positively Impact Social Determinants of Health? (Dimensional Insight)
• Lessons In Selflessness: A Reflection for International Overdose Awareness Day (First Databank)
• Choose with Confidence: Your Social Care Platform Guide (Findhelp)
• Artera Celebrates Industry Recognitions and Leadership Promotions (Artera)
• Closing the CX Gap: What Business Leaders Get Wrong—and How to Fix It (Five9)
• Leveling Up Healthcare Cybersecurity Teams From “Overwhelmed to Elite” (Fortified Health Security)
• 4 Things to Know About the Future of Epic & AI (Healthcare IT Leaders)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Sponsorship information.
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News 9/3/25

Top News

AI-powered medical records retrieval and insights startup Predoc raises $30 million in seed and Series A funding.

Reader Comments

From We’re All Gonna Get Laid (Off): “Re: Oracle Health. RIFfed a reported 20% of its remaining health division employees this morning.” The percentage is unverified, but the human capital liquidation – which was ironically timed just after Labor Day — is not.

From Joe Schneider, MD: “Re: vaccine recommendations in CDS. It’s fascinating to watch the silence of the big EHR companies as they ponder whether to support the AAP and ACOG COVID vaccination recommendations in their Clinical Decision Support tools. The recommendations of the groups differ, most importantly from the reconstituted ACIP by recommending COVID coverage for children 6-23 months and for pregnant women. Having seen newborn babies and new moms struggling with COVID and the damage it does, I hope Epic, Cerner, and the others have the guts to take a stand. The AAP thinks this is just the first salvo of a broader attack on vaccinations. Sue Kressly is the president and she just did a podcast on this. It’s got some ads in the beginning, but the wait is worth it. It also has good vaccination advice at the end.” Thanks. The podcast is here.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The most common needs of the minority of poll respondents who used online services from unfamiliar clinicians were primary or urgent care, weight loss, and mental health.

New poll to your right or here: How hard will Medicaid cuts and higher ACA premiums hit health systems by increasing the number of uninsured patients? Medicaid’s “unwinding” will disenroll a lot of people, and ACA plans will become even less affordable because of rising premiums and the possibility that existing tax credits will be allowed to expire. Hospitals in rural areas and non-expansion states will see the biggest impact.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare AI governance and risk management startup Alignmt AI announces $6.5 million in seed funding.

Digi International will incorporate newly-acquired Jolt Software’s operations technologies into its SmartSense business, which offers operational intelligence and compliance automation software for healthcare and other verticals.

Prescription routing and affordability solutions vendor Eversana acquires Waltz Health, which provides software-powered drug marketplaces.

Stat reports that AI scribe vendor Abridge met with hospital customers late last week to reassure them after Epic announced its development of potentially competing Microsoft/Nuance-powered products.

Sales

• Connecticut Children’s Care Network will implement data activation, population health analytics, and quality reporting solutions from Innovaccer.

People

ReferWell names Imad Ahmed (Universal Health Services) as COO and chief product officer, and Glen Olson (Shearwater Health) as SVP of sales.

Cris Ross, MBA (Mayo Clinic) and John Driscoll (Walgreens Boots Alliance) join health tech venture studio Aegis Ventures as venture partners.

Announcements and Implementations

Logan Health’s Shelby campus (MT) goes live on Oracle Health as part of a systemwide implementation.

Government and Politics

HHS develops a public dashboard that offers insight into organ donations, including those that occur out of order and cases where organs aren’t used. The launch is part of the government’s overhaul of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, which has faced criticism for increased cases of “skipping the line” and organ procurement organizations ignoring signs of life that are incompatible with donation.

Privacy and Security

University of Iowa Health Care and affiliate UI Community HomeCare notify 211,000 patients and employees of a July 3 data breach. The hacker was able to view and take copies of files from within HomeCare’s computer system, which prompted both organizations to take their shared systems offline for one day.

Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center recovers from an outage that began during a system upgrade last Friday. The hospital reverted to downtime and diversion procedures over the weekend.

Other

Oracle Health lists the former Malvern, PA campus of Cerner-acquired SMS / Siemens at 51 Valley Stream Parkway for sale.

Clinics in South Australia report surging abuse from patients who are unable to get appointments after several practices stopped taking new patients. One clinic logged 15 incidents in a single day, with front desk staff berated by visitors shouting “If I die, it’ll be your fault” and slamming doors when told that no GPs in the state’s second-largest city are accepting new patients. Some patients have turned to ChatGPT and TikTok for medical advice, but attempts to redirect them to telehealth services have mostly failed.

A Utah judge awards $1 billion to the family of a newborn girl who was left permanently disabled during delivery at Steward-owned Jordan Valley Medical Center (UT). The mother, who was visiting Utah briefly, was attended by newly trained nurses and a doctor who reportedly dismissed concerns about the developing complications and went back to bed in the on-call room. Judge Patrick Corum remarked that the mother “would have been better off delivering this baby at the bathroom of a gas station, or in a hut somewhere in Africa.” Lawyers say Steward’s bankruptcy makes full collection unlikely, but they hope to secure the $500 million in punitive damages.

Sponsor Updates

• Symplr employees assemble hygiene products during volunteer time with Giving the Basics.
• Arcadia publishes a new report titled “ Scaling Smarter: The Data Strategies Powering High-Performing Health Plans.”
• Wolters Kluwer Health adds an AI Article Summary feature to its Ovid platform for medical researchers.
• Vyne Medical publishes a new case study titled “How Automation is Shaping the Future of Document Management at VHC Health.”
• KLAS Research names Nym a top performer in a new report titled “Autonomous Coding 2025: A Promising Start for an Early Market.”
• PerfectServe will exhibit at the MGMA Leaders Conference September 28-October 1 in Orlando.
• Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the backdoor” podcast titled “The Quiet Disruptor – Inside an Intern’s AI Innovation.”
• ReferWell names Annette Betancur, PhD, MBA, RN strategic account manager.
• TruBridge will exhibit at the TORCH/TARCH Annual Fall Conference September 8-11 in Round Rock, TX.
• WellSky submits a comment letter to CMS on the CY2026 Home Health Proposed Payment Rule.

Blog Posts

• Reducing Administrative Burden for Physician Practices (Med Tech Solutions)
• Evaluate Your EVV Solution by Asking These Questions (Netsmart)
• Why healthcare IT managed services should be in your 2026 budget (Nordic)
• Bringing SDOH into Focus: The Role of Coding in Advancing Health Equity (Nym)
• 3 Ways ‘Data with Purpose’ Is Shaping Patient Care (Surescripts)
• AI in healthcare payments: 300+ leaders reveal what’s working + where they’ll invest next (Waystar)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Sponsorship information.
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News 8/29/25

Top News

ChatGPT maker OpenAI will reportedly build its own healthcare applications. 

The company has hired former health tech executives from Doximity and the investment community.

Business Insider reports that OpenAI is considering developing both consumer-facing and enterprise tools, including clinical triage, clinical documentation, and patient engagement.

Reader Comments

From Alabaster: “Re: Dr. Jayne’s concerns about OpenEvidence. What risks do you see for physician users?” I’m not an attorney, but my cursory review of the company’s Terms of Use and Business Associate Agreement suggests some areas of concern that, to be fair, are true of many clinician-targeted applications and services:

• The company can sell de-identified data and use records of detailed user interactions to train its models or for commercial purposes. That de-identified data may still contain enough specificity to allow re-identification of patients, especially in rare or unusual cases that are described in user prompts and are more likely when using a tool like this to find information.
• The BAA does not restrict the use of non-PHI or tracking technologies for ad targeting, which likely aligns with the company’s intent to sell ads to drug companies.
• The platform is labeled as educational only, leaving physicians fully liable for any clinical decisions it suggests or patient harm that results. The company caps its own liability at $100.
• Physicians may not be able to reproduce the AI’s previous outputs in a legal defense since the tool doesn’t guarantee version control or output retention.
• Doctors who submit patient-specific information without a signed institutional BAA could violate employer policy and HIPAA. The Terms of Use prohibit use on behalf of a hospital without legal authorization, and the tool may bypass hospital IT controls that were designed to ensure compliance. Using the product without institutional review and approval puts the risk squarely on the physician, with no guarantee of support in what could be a high-profile case given the trendy AI angle.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Alphabet’s Verily business shuts down its medical device division and doubles down on “precision health, AI, and data,” according to an internal memo obtained by media.

Sales

• Cleveland Clinic will implement Dyania Health’s AI-powered clinical trial matching tool.

People

Suresh Krishnan (Cone Health) joins Memorial Health (IL) as SVP/CIO.  

Announcements and Implementations

Providence evaluates Nuance DAX ambient documentation for family medicine physicians who were identified in Epic as working after hours or taking over a week to close notes. Burnout dropped from 57% to 27%, documentation frustration fell from 89% to 39%, and more doctors reported better patient connection. After-hours “pajama time” decreased from 107 minutes to 81. Note: the study group was tiny.

France-based HeartFocus launches FDA-cleared heart exam software in the US on Butterfly Network’s handheld ultrasound devices. The AI-powered tool enables any clinician to perform heart scans for early detection.

West Virginia University scientists develop AI models that detect signs of heart failure from ECGs rather than less-available echocardiography by incorporating local socioeconomic and environmental factors.

Altera Digital Health integrates Medicomp’s Quippe Clinical Intelligence Engine into its new ambient documentation solution for the TouchWorks EHR.

Artisight says that its smart hospital platform is the first that can autonomously document OR activity in the EHR using AI and computer vision. The system records patient entry and exit and procedure start and end time. It also prompts staff to complete next steps in their workflow.

Government and Politics

CMS opens a research challenge to identify innovative solutions that can detect Medicare fraud using claims data.

Drug companies launch a lobbyist-sponsored watchdog group whose goal is to limit Medicare drug price negotiations by requiring analysis of CMS data. A spokesperson for one of the lobbying firms says, “The vast majority of our effort is focused on the analytics, and we didn’t see anybody, including CMS, publicly reporting at this level of granularity. This data is hard to work with, so we are investing in this kind of information.”

HHS shifts enforcement of substance use records confidentiality from SAMHSA to the Office for Civil Rights, which also handles HIPAA enforcement. Observers worry that OCR, which was already stretched thin by staffing and budget cuts, won’t be able to complete investigations in a timely manner.

Privacy and Security

Mount Sinai Health System will pay $5.3 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit that accused it of using pixel tracking tools to send patient portal and website visitor information to Facebook.

Sponsor Updates

• Capital Rx staff volunteer at a back-to-school event with the New York City Football Club and Niño de la Caridad Foundation.
• The Medicomp Systems “Tell Me Where IT Hurts” podcast releases a new episode titled “The Evolution of FDB” with FDB Executive Chairman Charles Tuchinda, MD.
• Artera announces that it has been named the named the 2025 Frost & Sullivan Technology Innovation Leader in the patient engagement platforms and solutions industry.
• Inovalon will work with Google Cloud to develop an AI-powered prior authorization solution for its Inovalon One Platform.
• Healthcare Growth Partners advises EVideon during its sale to TigerConnect.
• Health Data Movers releases a new episode of its “Quick HITs” podcast titled “Shaping the Future of Pediatric Healthcare IT, with Dr. Anita Harris-Brown.”
• Healthcare IT Leaders will exhibit and present at Workday Rising September 15-18 in San Francisco.
• Infinx releases a new episode of its “Revenue Cycle Optimized” podcast titled “Building a Strong Foundation in Soft Collections & Patient Services.”
• Navina will present at Hospitalogy’s VBC Retreat September 18 in Austin, TX.

Blog Posts

• What If You Could Secure Every Layer—And Prove It? (CloudWave)
• Amazon Connect: The No-Brainer Choice for Healthcare Business Continuity (CTG)
• Tailoring the Findhelp Social Care Network for Your Community: A How-To Guide (Findhelp)
• Seamless Patient Care Starts with Smarter Integration (Five9)
• Why a Risk Assessment is the First Step Toward Cyber Resilience in Healthcare (Fortified Health Security)
• Smarter Screening, Better Care: How Regional One Health Found At-Risk Patients Faster (Inovalon)
• Provider Data Management: AI, Interoperability, and the Future of Member Experience (Kyruus Health)
• Innovate and connect: Your invitation to Meditech Live25 (Meditech)
• Five Ways EHR Consulting Can Help Your Healthcare Facility Run Smoother (Med Tech Solutions)
• How to Design Your Clinical Data Registry for Maximum Value (MRO)

Sponsor Spotlight

This week, healthcare technology company RLDatix announced the launch of Smart Entry, a new AI-enabled feature designed to streamline documentation for safety event reporting. Proven to give time back to frontline staff, RLDatix’s Smart Entry is reducing event reporting time by up to 70%. RLDatix will be exhibiting with an immersive booth experience related to its Safety & Risk Management module, which houses Smart Entry, at the upcoming ASHRM 2025 conference from September 28-30, 2025. (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 8/27/25

Top News

PE firm Advent International acquires PatientPoint, which sells point-of-care advertising to pharma companies and online marketing services to providers.

Advent’s portfolio includes Iodine Software and Definitive Healthcare.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Thanks to AMIA for referencing Dr. Jayne’s concerns about the compliance risks of using free online tools in its Informatics SmartBrief.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “Healthcare Data Strategies: Retire, Retain, and Ready for AI.” Sponsor: Triyam, an Access Company. Presenters: Sudhakar Mohanraj, founder and CTO, Triyam; Benjamin Cassity, director of research and strategy, KLAS; Jamie Greenstein, senior marketing manager, Access. The presenters deliver practical tactics to help IT leaders manage exploding data volumes — how to clean up legacy systems, craft smarter retention policies, and prepare historical data for analytics and AI.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Ambulatory-focused health IT vendor CareCloud acquires Medsphere, giving it a foothold in the rural and small hospital IT market. Medsphere’s solutions include CareVue, Wellsoft, ChartLogic, and Phoenix and Systeem IT managed services.

Post-acute care transition AI software startup Cascala Health announces $8.6 million in seed funding.

Sales

• Barry University School of Podiatric Medicine (FL) selects ModMed’s podiatry-focused software.
• The Australian Digital Health Agency chooses Telstra Health to upgrade its My Health Record interoperability technology from Clinical Document Architecture to FHIR standards that will allow real-time information exchange.

People

Censinet appoints James Foster (IronCircle) as chairman of the board.

The Medical University of South Carolina names Marylyn Ritchie, PhD (University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine) as chief AI officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Tampa General Hospital (FL) integrates Clear’s identity verification software with its identity access management platform.

Hammond-Henry Hospital (IL) will switch from Meditech to Epic through an Epic Community Connect collaboration with UnityPoint Health.

Government and Politics

Industry veteran and DOGE Acting Administrator Amy Gleason pens an LA Times opinion piece that calls for companies to join the federal government’s data sharing efforts.

Other

TEFCA Recognized Coordinating Entity The Sequoia Project seeks TEFCA experts who are interested in sharing their experiences via recently established TEFCA workstreams. Applications are due September 4.

OSF HealthCare Saint Elizabeth Medical Center (IL) offers virtual ER care to eligible patients.

Sponsor Updates

• Arrive Health staff create tie blankets for UPMC Hillman Cancer Center patients during the company’s community give-back day.
• Altera Digital Health publishes a new client story titled “Worcestershire Hospitals adopts new quality-assured EPR optimisation model.”
• Gartner features Clearsense in a new report titled “Case Study: Trinity Health Drives IT Cost Optimization with Legacy Decommissioning.”
• Artera is now listed on the FedRamp Marketplace.
• Zen Healthcare IT will host its virtual August Interop Workshop August 27 at 1pm CT featuring Liz Lewis from CommonWell Health Alliance.
• Consensus Cloud Solutions will exhibit at the Defense Health Information Technology Symposium through August 28 in Nashville.
• Waystar announces that it has earned multiple Gold Stevie Awards in the 2025 International Business Awards, including Healthcare Company of the Year and Top-ranked AI Software Platform.
• ReferWell publishes a new white paper titled “Transforming Member Engagement to Drive CAHPS Excellence.”
• Ellkay, Waystar, Crossings Healthcare Solutions, Fortified Health Security, Nordic, Artera, Healthcare IT Leaders, Impact Advisors, and Surescripts will exhibit at the Oracle Health & Life Sciences Summit September 9-11 in Orlando.
• Black Book Research details the compliance, technology, and operational challenges providers will face when Medicare telehealth flexibilities expire on September 30.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Capital Equilibrium, a New Level-Funded Pharmacy Plan, with Mike Miele, FSA, MAAA.”

Blog Posts

• Navigating Utilization Review in Healthcare (AGS Health)
• Rationalization to Archiving: Make the Right Data Move Now (CereCore)
• GLP-1 Persistence: What the Data Reveals About Who Stays on Treatment (Arcadia)
• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): More Than a Pesky Alert (Clearwater)
• What If You Could Stress-Test Your Defenses—Before an Attacker Did? (CloudWave)
• Turning Tech Investments into Business Value: How to Solve the Talent Gap (CTG)
• Top of the Class: How Clinical-Grade AI Is Making Medication Management Smarter (DrFirst)
• Securing ePrescribing: Why Redundancy and Resilience Matter (First Databank)

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 8/25/25

Top News

RTLS vendor Sonitor will merge with Tagnos, which offers asset management and clinical workflow software.

Its platform supports asset tracking, patient flow optimization, staff safety and efficiency, infection control, and environmental monitoring.

Reader Comments

From Dee Lorean: “Re: AI use cases. Replacing much of the EHR user interface seems likely.” Ambient documentation is now table stakes, with the differentiator mostly being EHR integration. AI tools could shift vendor work from tweaking screens and forms to building an AI layer that intelligently summarizes information, supports voice navigation, makes real-time recommendations, and manages the logistics of visit prep and follow-up. Success will hinge on stability, change management, and ease of user education compared to standard app development. Since vendors don’t want to rewrite their EHRs, AI may offer a way to improve UI, workflow, and connectivity without heavy reprogramming. Oracle Health’s approach seems sound for refreshing Millennium without a rewrite, while Epic’s seems more ambitious in addressing research data, patient involvement, and clinical decision support. After decades of obsessing over native screen designs, the real power move will probably be the lessened importance of them as AI becomes more of the UI. 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents receive appointment text messages from their providers and are satisfied, although many agree with Dr. Jayne that they get too many.

New poll to your right or here: Which services have you received in the past year from an online clinician you’ve never met? It’s “none of these” for me, so enlighten me with a poll comment after voting. 

DonorsChoose was matching all classroom project donations last week, so I applied reader donations and matching money from my Anonymous Vendor Executive to fund several projects:

• Digital writing tablets for Ms. B’s high school class in Lynchburg, VA.
• Math books for Ms. M’s kindergarten class in Clearlake, CA.
• Headphones for Ms. B’s elementary school class in Stockton, VA.
• Headphones and computer speaker for Mr. K’s elementary school class in Philadelphia, PA.
• Headphones and a document camera for Ms. B’s elementary school class in Dallas, TX.

Ms. B sent a note:  “Because of you, my students will now have the resources they need to learn, grow, and thrive. Your contribution is making a real difference—not only in our classroom today, but in the confidence and curiosity my students will carry into the future. We are so excited to put these materials to use, and I know my students will be thrilled to see how many people believe in them and their potential. Your support reminds us that education is a community effort, and we are truly grateful to have you as part of ours.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “Healthcare Data Strategies: Retire, Retain, and Ready for AI.” Sponsor: Triyam, an Access Company. Presenters: Sudhakar Mohanraj, founder and CTO, Triyam; Benjamin Cassity, director of research and strategy, KLAS; Jamie Greenstein, senior marketing manager, Access. The presenters deliver practical tactics to help IT leaders manage exploding data volumes — how to clean up legacy systems, craft smarter retention policies, and prepare historical data for analytics and AI.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Sleep solution vendor Eight Sleep raises $100 million in new funding. The company, whose biometric-powered system adjusts temperature, bed elevation, and sleep routines, will use the funds to accelerate its AI roadmap. The company will develop AI solutions for menopausal sleep and sleep apnea and will seek FDA approval for medical sleep challenges. Its package costs $3,000 to $5,000 and its top-end app and monitoring package runs $33 per month.

People

IDX co-founder Rich Tarrant has died at 83. Search Vince’s HIS-tory to for more on his legacy.

Announcements and Implementations

Tampa General Hospital goes live with Epic’s MyChart enhancement that allows patients to register as organ donors. So did UK HealthCare, which implemented the registration feature that was the result of a collaboration between Epic and Donate Life America.

The state of Tennessee goes live with the Findhelp-powered Tennessee Community Compass, which allows care teams to identify health-related social needs, refer and authorize services, track outcomes, and pay community organizations for the services they provide.

Researchers develop a machine learning tool that detects heart failure decompensation with 98% accuracy from the patient’s self-reported daily weight, blood pressure, heart rate, and symptoms.

Athena Security introduces an IPad-powered hospital visitor management system that offers check-in and check-out,  badge printing, and offline operation if connectivity is lost.

Other

Former Google AI expert and startup founder Jad Tarifi, PhD, advises people who are considering earning a PhD in AI should skip it and instead spend those years working in a relevant job instead since the field will outpace their studies before they finish. He adds that medicine and law education are especially vulnerable, as both rely heavily on memorization and knowledge that quickly becomes obsolete.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic Global releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Mukul Mehra, MD.
• Optimum Healthcare IT becomes the first healthcare IT consulting firm to integrate Clear for workforce identity verification.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Rx Retro: An Approach to Safe & Effective Deprescribing, with Lauren Carroll, PharmD.”
• Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the backdoor” podcast titled “A Hacker Summer Camp – Inside DEFCON 2025.”
• Wolters Kluwer Health will exhibit at Rise West August 25-27 in Las Vegas.

Blog Posts

• How to Achieve Reimbursement Wins Under the Fiscal Year 2026 IPPS Final Rule (CereCore)
• AI Safety in Healthcare: Applying the ASL Framework to Responsible Innovation (Netsmart)
• Seamless Patient Care Starts with Smarter Integration (Five9)
• The Hidden Costs of Ignoring Legacy Systems (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Older Adults, New Expectations: What Providers Need to Know About Digital Payments (TrustCommerce, a Sphere company)

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 8/22/25

Top News

Epic CEO Judy Faulkner tells UGM attendees that the company has 200 AI features in development.

It is a testing a much-anticipated AI charting tool that it developed with Microsoft’s Dragon technology.

Epic is also studying the use of AI to mine its Cosmos research database.

Oracle Health was reportedly in attendance.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “Healthcare Data Strategies: Retire, Retain, and Ready for AI.” Sponsor: Triyam, an Access Company. Presenters: Sudhakar Mohanraj, founder and CTO, Triyam; Benjamin Cassity, director of research and strategy, KLAS; Jamie Greenstein, senior marketing manager, Access. The presenters deliver practical tactics to help IT leaders manage exploding data volumes — how to clean up legacy systems, craft smarter retention policies, and prepare historical data for analytics and AI.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare technology services and consulting firm CitiusTech acquires Health Data Movers, which offers data and application services.

Healthcare investor and services provider HGM Limited acquires coding solutions vendor Aideo Technologies.

Availity will triple headcount at its technical center in India by the end of 2026.

AliseAI, which offers conversational AI agents for housing and medical practices, raises $250 million in a Series E funding round.

A former Emory Healthcare finance employee files a proposed class action lawsuit, alleging that the health system violated the WARN Act by terminating 540 finance employees without giving them the required 60 days’ notice. Emory says it outsourced 232 coding jobs on August 12. An HIStalk reader noted in a June 9 comment that Emory had recently parted ways with nearly all of its IT executives.

Sales

• Med Center Health will implement Epic.
• CHE Behavioral Health Services implements Inbox Health’s digital-first patient billing solution.

People

Kristin Weir (MacroHealth) joins Inovalon as SVP of product.

NeuroTrax hires Robert Pepper, MBA (Medicept) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

HL7 publishes version 1.0.0 of “Patient Request for Corrections Implementation Guide,” which supports the patient’s right under HIPAA and GDPR to ask that their medical records be corrected. 

Behavioral health documentation technology vendor Eleos launches the OBBBA (One Big Beautiful Bill Act) AI scanner, an AI scribing tool that detects events that could trigger a reduction in a patient’s Medicaid coverage due to new federal restrictions.  

A new KLAS report summarizes the experience of former Cerner customers three years Oracle’s acquisition:

• Oracle Health has made big promises that have had minimal customer impact.
• Company communication and partnership activity have declined.
• The company has lost 57 health system customers, 12 of them with over 1,000 beds, and new wins are increasingly rare.
• Half of the responding health systems say they wouldn’t buy the product again.
• Oracle’s AI work has raised interest, but customers still don’t understand the company’s roadmap.
• Customers are concerned that the company’s resources have been redirected to its federal work, the lack of integration between Fusion and Millennium, and the layoff of senior employees.
• A CIO summarizes what Oracle needs to do: “Oracle Health needs to deliver on four priorities. One is revenue cycle feature and functions. Second is a revised, modern consumer experience for our patients and their family members as they engage with us digitally. Third, we need to see them continue to invest in the core components of the EHR to modernize that. It has been years since they have fundamentally changed that. Fourth, they need to not screw up the move to OCI.”

Government and Politics

Australian physician and journalist Norman Swan, MBChB questions the country’s $1.3 billion My Health Record digital health record platform project: “So, $2 billion on a My Health Record that is still PDFs? It’s shameful. Is the universal medical record for the system, as well as the consumers, My Health Record? And if so, we’re in deep shit.” A government spokesperson responded that they hope to transition from PDFs to FHIR-based data capture in the next 12 months

Privacy and Security

The Department of Justice issues a subpoena demanding that Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia provide complete medical records for children for whom it provided gender-related treatments.

EHR vendor MDLand notifies 23,000 patients that a May 2025 ransomware attack exposed their information. The company says that data entries from April 1 to May 1, 2025 were irrecoverably deleted and clients will need to re-enter them. MDLand reported a breach in November 2024 that affected 63,000 people.

Pharma contract research organization Inotiv says in an SEC filing that an August 8 ransomware attack continues to disrupt its operations.

Other

Paging Dr. Jayne …

Sponsor Updates

• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “How Fast is the Way Consumers Search for Care Evolving? Almost Beyond Comprehension, with Carrie Liken.”
• First Databank will present at the NCPDP August 2025 Work Group Meetings August 13 in Spokane, WA.
• Fortified Health Security releases the first episode of its new “Cyber Survivor” podcast titled “A Former FBI Agent’s Deep Dive into Digital Defense with Scott Augenbaum.”
• LiveData will sponsor the Kentucky Hospital Association’s Mid-South Critical Access & Rural Hospital Conference August 20-22 in Louisville.
• Meditech announces that it is committed to the pledge to implement the CMS Interoperability Framework and enable the participation of its provider customers in CMS Aligned Networks.
• Navina will present at the AMGA Fall Council + AI Summit September 9-11 in Nashville.

Blog Posts

• 4 Areas Where a CFO-CIO Partnership is a Strategic Imperative in Healthcare (CereCore)
• From Paperwork to Profit: How School Districts Get Paid with Medicaid Billing (Findhelp)
• Beyond the Call: How AI Task Automation Boosts Agent Productivity (Five9)
• Real EHR Service Desk Support Comes From Partners, Not Just Providers. (HCTec)
• Performing Comprehensive Root Cause Analysis for EHR Speed & Reliability (Goliath Technologies)
• A comprehensive guide to thriving in the MIPS Cost category for emergency medicine: Subgroups, risk adjustment, and strategic action for success (Healthmonix)
• Bridging Intelligence and Impact: Why UI Design Is Critical for Healthcare AI (Impact Advisors)

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 8/20/25

Top News

The Carlyle Group will acquire a majority stake in RCM vendor Knack Global for $500 million.

Blackstone acquired competitor AGS Health last month for $1.1 billion.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “Healthcare Data Strategies: Retire, Retain, and Ready for AI.” Sponsor: Triyam, an Access Company. Presenters: Sudhakar Mohanraj, founder and CTO, Triyam; Benjamin Cassity, director of research and strategy, KLAS; Jamie Greenstein, senior marketing manager, Access. The presenters deliver practical tactics to help IT leaders manage exploding data volumes — how to clean up legacy systems, craft smarter retention policies, and prepare historical data for analytics and AI.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Provider credentialing company Medallion announces $43 million in new funding, bringing its total raised to $130 million. It has launched its CredAlliance credentialing clearinghouse to streamline provider onboarding across participating payers.

TigerConnect acquires smart room system vendor EVideon. 

Sales

• Johns Hopkins Health System (MD) selects Talkdesk’s Healthcare Experience Cloud contact center technology.

People

Rebecca Whaley (Altera Digital Health) joins Nordic Global as SVP of marketing.

Nebraska Medicine names Michael Hasselberg, PhD (University of Rochester Medical Center) chief transformation and digital officer.

The University at Buffalo (NY) appoints Asim Khan, PhD (Allegheny Health Network) health sciences chief data and information officer.

Don Trigg (Apree Health) joins Veradigm as CEO.

Access TeleCare names Josh DeTillio (Nutex Health) CEO. Founder and former CEO Chris Gallagher, MD moves to chief strategy officer.

Healwell AI names James Lee (Orion Health) CEO and Brad Porter (Orion Health) chief commercial officer. Former CEO Alexander Dobranowski, MD has taken on the role of president. Healwell acquired Orion Health earlier this year.

Johns Hopkins Hospital promotes Khyzer Aziz, MD to CMIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Epic mentions several new capabilities at UGM via X:

Emmie is a patient-facing Ai tool that explains test results and enables easy access to recommended next actions.

Art creates patient summaries for physicians, answers questions, and executes actions such as queueing orders into a shopping cart for end-of-visit approval. This is Epic’s previously rumored ambient documentation tool, which runs on Microsoft / Nuance speech recognition.

The upcoming MyChart Central will allow patients to use a single Epic-issued ID to connect to their MyChart records from multiple providers.

RLDatix adds AI-powered conversational documentation for entering event details into its to its safety and risk management system.

SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium goes live on Meditech Expanse with help from Nordic Global.

Ozarks Healthcare (MO) rolls out Luma Health’s Patient Success Platform.

FirstHealth of the Carolinas goes live with EvidenceCare’s AdmissionCare admission assessment and documentation software across its four hospitals.

Ambience Healthcare announces Chart Chat, an AI copilot for Epic that offers chart retrieval, risk scoring, and access to medical literature.

Government and Politics

A federal judge in California issues a temporary order prohibiting HHS from sharing the personal data of Medicaid beneficiaries in 20 states with the Department of Homeland Security’s ICE agents.

ASTP issues a draft TEFCA GBD Exchange Purpose, which allows government entities at the federal, state, local, or tribal level to determine an individual’s eligibility for non-healthcare government benefits.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research offers the results of its latest survey in a brief titled “A New Set of Red Flags: What Really Disrupts Deals in 2025?”
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “What Health Systems Need [From a PBM]: A Blend of Tech, Transparency, and Understanding, with Lindsey Butler, PharmD, and Chris England.”
• Consensus Cloud Solutions will exhibit at Hyland Community Live August 25-28 in Las Vegas.
• Optimum Healthcare IT becomes the first healthcare IT consulting firm to use Clear’s identity verification system to vet consultants.
• Divurgent names Chad Laberge director of client service.

Blog Posts

• Fueling Financial Performance: A Step-by-Step KPI Guide (Tegria)
• Hydrate your cloud environment with Redox’s new Cloud Connectivity Tools (Redox)
• The New Standard for Electronic Benefit Verification (Surescripts)
• What Now? Rural Health’s IT Prerequisites And Prep Work Get Their Time To Shine (CereCore)
• Potentially “Topped-Out” Measures for 2026 (AdvancedMD)
• Agentic Automation and Why It’s Transforming Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management (AGS Health)
• The Hidden Costs of Ignoring Legacy Systems (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Maximizing EHR know-how in specialty care (Altera Digital Health)
• Beyond Resumes: How Mid-Market Leaders Are Winning the Talent War Through Skills-Based Hiring (CTG)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 8/18/25

Top News

Epic UGM kicks off Monday, with good weather and highs in the upper 70s. 

Attendees are welcome to send me interesting tidbits from the conference, including details about rumored company announcements.  

Happy birthday to CEO Judy Faulkner, who turned 82 last week.

Reader Comments

From Inside Trader: “Re: Oracle Health. Pre-announcing an aspirational product with disclaimers that they aren’t actually promising anything is just marketing fluff. It’s an obvious effort to slow down the Epic train right before UGM. All hype until a customer goes on record about their success using it.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents, probably similarly to ambient scribe vendors themselves, aren’t quite sure how Epic’s rumored release of its own product will affect the market. A couple of reader edited comments:

• Any good product manager know that watching the success of and then imitating cutting edge technologies is a great way to stretch the R&D budget. Epic has followed the market, seen the early successes, and now believes that there is something “there.” The Epic offering will be solid but not flashy. Their big advantage is that the solution is native technology and not a third-party integration. Plus, no one knows their customers’ workflow better than Epic, so expect to see those features that are actually useful and not a bunch of impractical bells and whistles. Nuance and Abridge, et al should double down on new, cutting edge feature / function and figure out a way to license it to Epic before Epic fast follows with their own version.
• The truth is painfully obvious but no one wants to admit it. Ambient is not a product, but a feature. If a company was built around ambient, it will now need to handle workflows. The painful truth is that the care workflow is called the EHR. Abridge has no option but to build an EHR, given the valuation they have raised on. Nuance is irrelevant.
• The Epic product has to be just accurate enough, just efficient enough, and just cheap enough to be worth the hype. If all else is equal, integrated Epic or Oracle products will get the nod based on fewer headaches in installation, contracting, and project management, which translates into lower costs.

New poll to your right or here, as inspired by Dr. Jayne: What should your providers do to improve their appointment reminder text messages?

Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “Healthcare Data Strategies: Retire, Retain, and Ready for AI.” Sponsor: Triyam, an Access Company. Presenters: Sudhakar Mohanraj, founder and CTO, Triyam; Benjamin Cassity, director of research and strategy, KLAS; Jamie Greenstein, senior marketing manager, Access. The presenters deliver practical tactics to help IT leaders manage exploding data volumes — how to clean up legacy systems, craft smarter retention policies, and prepare historical data for analytics and AI.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Teladoc Health acquires Telecare, an Australia-based operator of virtual care clinics.

People

Terri Couts, RN (The Guthrie Clinic) joins Sharp HealthCare as chief digital information officer.

Carol-Lynn Lloyd, MBChB (Servita) joins Altera Digital Health as chief medical officer. 

Announcements and Implementations

Five9 launches Fusion for Epic, which embeds advanced contact center capabilities into Epic.

Apple restores blood oxygen monitoring to the Watch, taking advantage of a US Customs ruling in its Masimo patent dispute that had forced its removal in 2023. 

Other

Fortune profiles the turnaround of NYU Langone, crediting its data-first approach and high-powered board members with growing it into sprawling system with $14 billion in annual revenue that delivers high quality with below-market prices. A key part of its operation is an 800-metric data dashboard that is its single source of truth. A quote from the well-written article:

Even as I marveled at the data available, I wondered if the dashboard-driven culture — part Moneyball, part panopticon — might feel oppressive to some. “It’s not for everyone,” Brotman later told me. “You’re on the hook 24/7, 365, and you’ve got this vulnerability and this expectation of accountability. If you don’t have the right disposition, it’s hard to deal with.”  

I felt awkward simply being in the room for moments of the “Snapshot Review,” a meeting where the chairs of clinical departments filed onstage for dashboard-informed questioning from administrators. The review sessions, in an airy conference room overlooking the East River, varied considerably in tone and substance. Some involved praise and practical problem-solving; others, discussions of “low-performing faculty members”; and another — featuring a relatively new leader who clearly hadn’t found his footing — the feel of a man pleading for mercy.

Sponsor Updates

• ReferWell staff prep 90 breakfast bags for The Food Bank of Lower Fairfield County.
• Surescripts will exhibit and present at NACDS TSE August 23-25 in San Diego.
• Black Book Research’s latest survey reveals that a majority of global respondents have funded, active cloud programs scheduled for enterprise deployment within the next 18-24 months.
• The latest survey from TrustCommerce, a Sphere company, finds that nearly 60% of older consumers are at least somewhat comfortable using digital payments for healthcare.
• Conduce Health co-founder and Executive Chairman Eric Rosow joins the ArcheHealth advisory board.
• Artera announces that its virtual agents have automated 42 million patient sessions, 94% of them with no staff intervention needed.
• Netsmart will present at the Florida Behavioral Health Association’s 2025 conference August 20 in Orlando.
• Optimum Healthcare IT releases a new episode of its “Visionary Voices” podcast titled “Finding an Inventive Path to Health IT.”
• Waystar will exhibit at the California Ambulance Association Annual Conference August 20-21 in Monterey.
• VisiQuate will exhibit at CAHAM 2025 September 2-5 in Newport Beach, CA.

Blog Posts

• Your Guide to Building a Proactive Healthcare Data Strategy (Tegria)
• Healthcare’s big challenge: how to foster a resilient, supported clinical workforce? (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Stop Waiting for Stale Data — Why Hospital Leaders Need Real-Time Surgical Metrics Now (LiveData)
• What’s New in Coding: July 2025 CMS Updates (What You Need to Know) (Nym)
• Health Consumerism Isn’t Dead. But Your Digital Strategy Might Be. (Praia Health)
• CMS Pledge Reflections: The future of interoperability is, and must be, plural (Redox)
• Clinician Survey Reveals the Path Forward for Prior Authorization Innovation (Surescripts)

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 8/15/25

Top News

Oracle releases its Oracle Health EHR for ambulatory providers in the US.

The company says it will add hospital functionality to the cloud-based, voice-first system in 2026.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Browser tip: If you need to log in to multiple accounts on the same website, or if you want to test your password without logging out or resetting it, open a Chrome window in incognito mode. It ignores your cached data, cookies, and stored autofill data so you start fresh. You can also use incognito mode to avoid dynamic pricing (where the site knows it’s you and prices accordingly) or to read articles on sites that limit free views before showing a paywall. Bonus: it also hides profile and web history when Googling and thus can’t target ads or customize search results.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “Healthcare Data Strategies: Retire, Retain, and Ready for AI.” Sponsor: Triyam, an Access Company. Presenters: Sudhakar Mohanraj, founder and CTO, Triyam; Benjamin Cassity, director of research and strategy, KLAS; Jamie Greenstein, senior marketing manager, Access. The presenters deliver practical tactics to help IT leaders manage exploding data volumes — how to clean up legacy systems, craft smarter retention policies, and prepare historical data for analytics and AI.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Abridge will use 80% of its available funds to expand beyond ambient documentation into claims, clinical decision support, and care management, with the remaining 20% reserved for acquisitions. Funding rounds in February and June 2025 value the company at over $5 billion.

Clearinghouse operator Stedi raises $70 million in a Series B funding round.

Personal health record vendor Citizen Health raises $30 million in Series A funding.

People

Adam Tallinger, RPh, MHA (Huron) joins Nordic as Epic managing director and practice lead.

Cotiviti hires Robert Kopanic (Oracle Health) as chief revenue officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Rhapsody announces GA of Image Director, an image orchestration solution that simplifies routing imaging data from CT, MRI, and X-ray to PACS, VNAs, AI models, and cloud archives. 

The FDA grants De Novo authorization for ArteraAI Prostate, making the AI-powered digital pathology tool an FDA-regulated Software as a Medical Device. It predicts long-term outcomes for patients with non-metastatic prostate cancer.

Humana will use DrFirst’s prescription orchestration platform to close care gaps, starting with identifying patients who could benefit from statins and sending their providers prescription recommendations that they can approve with one click.

Epic enhances its wound care module with computer vision AI that calculates wound surface area and volume from a photo.

Athenahealth adds AI capabilities to its cloud-based AthenaOne that will eventually include fax processing, managing patient information from external sources, providing clinical summaries, and answering questions using all available clinical data.

Altera Digital Health launches an ambient documentation solution for its TouchWorks EHR.

Other

An entrepreneur couple who bought telemarketer-pitched health insurance to avoid the high cost of ACA premiums spends $20,000 on coverage that paid almost none of their medical bills. The plans are sold by a shell company that secretly lists each customer as a limited partner to evade state insurance regulation, which provides an exemption for employer-provided plans. One Atlanta mailbox serves as the employer address for 30,000 such “workers.” Telemarketing firms used deepfake ads featuring Taylor Swift and Dr. Phil promising cash payouts to lure callers into insurance pitches.

Sponsor Updates

• Health Data Movers sponsors the Northern Ohio HIMSS Charity Golf Classic & Collaboration Summit.
• Medicomp Systems releases a new episode of its “Tell Me Where IT Hurts” podcast featuring Hearst Health EVP and COO and FDB Executive Chairman Chuck Tuchinda, MD, MBA.
• Nordic and Clear partner to offer healthcare organizations a seamless, secure way to manage EHR accounts.
• Wolters Kluwer Health enhances its Lippincott platform to streamline author workflow and expedite vital research dissemination.
• Surescripts releases a new data brief based on the results of its latest survey titled “Healthcare Professionals Highlight Medication Prior Authorization Challenges & Solutions.”
• Black Book Research offers a new report titled “Cloud Momentum in Healthcare: Adoption, Economics, and Vendor Performance.”
• Healthcare IT Leaders will sponsor Workday Rising September 15-18 in San Francisco.
• Inbox Health partners with Empower Healthcare & Compliance Partners to bring together patient billing technology and industry-leading compliance expertise.
• Infinx releases a new episode of its “Revenue Cycle Optimized” podcast titled “Medicare Fee for Service Meets Prior Authorization.”
• Inovalon releases a new episode of its “Inovators” podcast titled “What Individuals, Corporations, and the Healthcare System Can Do to Address Mental Health.”

Blog Posts

• Realizing AI’s Promise: How Data Governance Supports AI Success (Tegria)
• Completing the circle of success: Debunking common myths about denials (Altera Digital Health)
• Analyst Kate Guffey on navigating a career pivot into health IT (Cardamom)
• Improving Medication Adherence for CHF Patients in Rural Communities: Lessons From Magnolia Regional (DrFirst)
• The role of data quality in building a robust health tech ecosystem (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• How GEHRIMED Supports Promoting Interoperability Compliance (Netsmart)
• Employee Engagement in Healthcare: The Hidden Revenue Strategy Healthcare Leaders Are Overlooking (Vyne Medical)
• What the Forrester TEI Study Says About the Real ROI of the Intelligent CX Platform (Five9)
• August 2025 CISO Brief: Policy, Funding, and the Path Forward (Fortified Health Security)
• How to Create Effective Patient Access Solutions: A Practical 3-Step Guide (Kyruus Health)
• Identifying & Fixing The “True Root Cause” of Epic Hyperdrive Slowness (Goliath Technologies)
• Improving efficiency and patient care with analytics dashboards at Fulton County Health Center (Meditech)
• From Frustration to Functionality: Reducing Burnout Through EHR Optimization (Med Tech Solutions)

Contacts

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

HIStalk’s Guide to Epic UGM 2025

Cardamom

Contact: Adam Dial, chief customer officer
608.469.6154

Cardamom is a Madison-based health IT startup that brings together experts in data, analytics, AI, and applications to help healthcare organizations maximize the value of their technology investments. With a technology-forward mindset, Cardamom takes a team-driven, outcomes-focused approach to solving complex IT and operational challenges across the healthcare enterprise, from revenue cycle optimization to EHR application support, patient engagement, and beyond.

Cardamom is hosting its annual Sunset on the Square, sponsored by Snowflake, on Tuesday, Aug. 19 from 8-11 p.m. Join us on our terrace overlooking the stunning Wisconsin State Capitol building for delicious bites, refreshing cocktails, and fantastic conversations. Whether you’re looking to make new connections with the Cardamom and Snowflake teams, or simply unwind, this is an event you won’t want to miss. Event details: Date: Tuesday, August 19 Time: 8 – 11 p.m. Location: 1 S. Pinckney St., Madison. Make sure to register to reserve your spot.

Clearsense

Contact: Glenn Wirick, chief commercial officer
480.450.4424

As health systems migrate to Epic, their legacy applications create a bloated portfolio that causes costly tech debt. Recent federal legislation heightens financial pressures to reduce OpEx spend for improved profitability. Clearsense leads the industry in accelerated archiving and decommissioning. Our solutions more rapidly reduce costs while simplifying user access to unified legacy patient data—a proven approach with the largest and fastest projects in the industry. (According to KLAS and Gartner, Clearsense has delivered the largest, most rapid archive projects in the industry.) Talk to Clearsense to learn how you can accelerate application decommissioning and cost savings.

Clearsense is co-sponsoring the Nordic Summer Social Event. Date: August 18th, 2025 Doors Open: 6 p.m. Location: The Edgewater Hotel, Madison, WI. Register here.

Divurgent

Contact: William Marshall, head of marketing
william.marshall@gmail.com

Divurgent is a full-service, healthcare-focused HIT consulting firm led by people you actually want to work with. We’re one of the only firms out there that has your back for the whole journey. We can help you select an EHR or tool, implement it, staff it, bring you live, optimize it, and more. Three hundred sixty degrees. We’d love to treat you to a drink and hear about what you’re working on!

Divurgent is hosting a happy hour in Madison on August 20 at the AC Hotel Madison Downtown, in the AC Lounge. Details and RSVP.

DrFirst

Contact: Colin Banas, chief medical officer
804.677.0656

DrFirst has 25+ years innovating in medication management with end to end solutions from Med Rec to patient adherence through personalized engagement. We are integrated into over 80+ Epic Health Systems and growing!

The DrFirst team will be in Madison Sunday through Thursday for partner meetings, dinners, and drinks. The more the merrier – please contact me via email cbanas@drfirst.com or on LinkedIn.

Findhelp

Contact: Rachel Harris, director of business development
rharris@findhelp.com

Integrate clinical care and social care with Findhelp. Pop by our booth to explore the solar system of our tailored Epic integrations, and learn about success stories and best practices from customers like NYC Health + Hospitals, Eskenazi Health, Cooper University Healthcare, and more.

Come by any time Monday through Wednesday to enter our raffle for a “cool” prize, then join us on Wednesday and Thursday at 8am for quick presentations on the latest Findhelp + Epic workflows and the winner announcement! (Must be present to win). Learn more.

Five9

Contact: Roni Jamesmeyer, senior healthcare marketing manager
972.768.6554

Five9 is a HIPAA-compliant cloud contact center solution for healthcare, integrating with EHRs like Epic to orchestrate patient access, scheduling, and revenue cycle workflows. Powered by Agentic CX and Genius AI, intelligent AI Agents automate complex tasks with built-in trust and governance—enhancing productivity, reducing costs, and improving patient experiences through secure, real-time, and scalable digital engagement.

Five9 was recently accredited into Epic’s Toolbox program with an adapter for Epic that enables healthcare contact center agents to manage patient interactions directly within the Epic interface. This helps streamline workflows and reduce average handle time. By embedding the core Five9 contact center platform into Epic, we deliver a unified, efficient, and patient-centric communication experience.

Five9 is hosting two offsite events during UGM that we would like to invite attendees to. Monday 8/18 – State Line Distillery 6pm-9pm,  Wednesday 8/20 – The Statehouse 6pm – 9pm. Please register here. 

Health Data Movers

Contact: Brooke Foster, marketing coordinator
847.404.0326

Health Data Movers (HDM) is a healthcare technology services firm. We are trusted partners to healthcare organizations, biotechnology companies, and digital health enterprises through our Services – Data Management, Integration, Project Management, and Clinical & Business Applications – we are the smart choice for creating unique solutions that empower patients and providers by unleashing the potential of healthcare data and technology. We Make IT Happen! V

Join Health Data Movers for Pints of the Patio at the Great Dane Downtown on Wednesday, August 20, from 5:00 – 7:00 PM! RSVP to let us know you’re coming!

Lincata

Contact: Adam DeRocher, chief revenue officer
712.541.9132

LincTV by Lincata is an Epic Toolbox approved solution which makes existing TVs compatible with MyChart Bedside TV. LincTV’s flexible offering also supports connected workflows with virtual nursing, live TV content, third party streaming applications, and more. Please visit the Lincata booth in the UGM exhibit hall to learn more.

Nordic Global

Contact: Bryana Curry, social media and PR manager
323.706.4628

Nordic, a global healthcare consulting firm, will host its annual Summer Social on Monday, Aug. 18, at The Edgewater Hotel during Epic UGM week. The event will celebrate 15 years of Nordic partnering with more than 700 healthcare organizations worldwide to improve healthcare IT solutions.

This year’s celebration also marks the announcement of Nordic’s new partnership with CLEAR, the secure identity company. CLEAR joins Nordic’s trusted partners AWS, Clearsense, Fortified Health Security, and Premier Stanson Health in sponsoring this year’s Summer Social. Additionally, Nordic will donate $20 on behalf of each attendee who checks in, contributing funds to the Community Foundation of Texas Hill Country to assist communities impacted by the Texas floods.

Tegria

Contact: Berit Rhody, manager of events and engagement
608.210.4863

Tegria is a global healthcare consulting and services company created by healthcare for healthcare. We deliver customized, end-to-end solutions that deliver outcomes and drive transformation. We proudly partner with provider and payer organizations to advance care, improve performance, and address healthcare’s biggest challenges.

Get ready to Rock the Rooftop with Tegria in the heart of downtown Madison! Join us on Monday, Aug. 18, from 6:00-9:00 pm on the rooftop of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art for an evening of food, music, art, and networking. RSVP today. 

Wolters Kluwer Health

We providing trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions that engage clinicians, patients, researchers, and the next generation of healthcare providers in effective decision-making and outcomes across healthcare. We specialize in clinical effectiveness, learning, research, compliance, and data solutions.

Join the UpToDate team at The Edgewater after the Starlight Dinner for an evening of cocktails, conversation, and connection at the Starlight Soirée. Relax in a social atmosphere where you can network with peers and make stellar new connections. Reserve your spot today – space is limited.

News 8/13/25

Top News

The Russia-based Everest ransomware group posts samples of the data it allegedly stole from physician practice management company Pacific Healthworks and sister company La Perouse, though it does not mention a ransom demand or deadline.

Everest has taken credit for recent attacks on Mailchimp and Crumbl.

Pacific Healthworks provides management services to 1,200 hospital-based physician groups. The hackers claim to have the billing and patient data of 50 of them.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIStalk sponsors who are participating in Epic UGM – tell me about what you’re doing by Wednesday, August 13 and I’ll include it in an online guide.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “Healthcare Data Strategies: Retire, Retain, and Ready for AI.” Sponsor: Triyam, an Access Company. Presenters: Sudhakar Mohanraj, founder and CTO, Triyam; Benjamin Cassity, director of research and strategy, KLAS; Jamie Greenstein, senior marketing manager, Access. The presenters deliver practical tactics to help IT leaders manage exploding data volumes — how to clean up legacy systems, craft smarter retention policies, and prepare historical data for analytics and AI.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Sales

• Cambridge Memorial Hospital in Ontario selects Oracle Health’s Foundation EHR.

People

Divurgent promotes Wendy Hoffman, MHA to president and COO.

Announcements and Implementations

OU Health (OK) launches hybrid nursing in University of Oklahoma Medical Center’s neurology and neurosurgery unit using technology from Nexus Bedside. Virtual nurses will assist in-person nurses with patient education, care coordination, and medication management.

Highmark Health (PA) implements Abridge’s ambient clinical documentation software. Highmark’s payer business will work with Abridge to develop what it hopes will be nearly instantaneous, AI-powered prior authorization capabilities.

In Michigan, UP Health System’s Bell hospital will offer gastroenterology inpatients and their providers the ability to virtually connect with Henry Ford Health System specialists.

University Hospitals (OH) launches a remote care program at its Lake West Medical Center using virtual care technology from Vitalchat.

Reid Health (IN) deploys AI-enhanced virtual care technologies from Hellocare.ai, including virtual nursing and sitting, telehealth, and digital whiteboards and smart room signage.

Oura adds pregnancy and perimenopause symptom tracking capabilities to the app for its Ring wearable.

Other

Ascension Wisconsin will outsource ICU physician staffing at its hospitals to TeamHealth, which physicians worry could impact patient safety if the company switches to virtual care models during certain timeframes.

Sponsor Updates

• Meditech will bring healthcare leaders together to strategize and learn at Meditech Live, September 17-19 in Foxborough, MA.
• Black Book Research’s latest survey offers insight into the challenges healthcare organizations are facing due to a lack of cybersecurity talent.
• Agfa HealthCare partners with Powerteens to host an immersive hands-on STEM Day for girls in Orlando.
• Altera Digital Health offers a new client story titled “Latrobe Regional Health enhances surgical efficiency and patient visibility with Sunrise Surgical Care and Provation iPro.”
• Arcadia Chief Medical Officer Luke Hansen, MD joins “The Totally Adequate Podcast” in an episode titled “Insights and Strategies for Achieving High Quality Healthcare Provider Networks.”
• Nordic will offer Clear’s reusable identity management.
• Artera will exhibit at the CHI Community Health Conference & Expo August 17-19 in Chicago.
• AvaSure Chief Clinical Officer Lisbeth Votruba, RN joins the “Ed Talks” podcast.
• Memorial Healthcare System (FL) will launch a medication management program for a subset of diabetic patients using prescription fill data from DrFirst.
• Wolters Kluwer Health will exhibit at the 2025 Defense Health Information Technology Symposium August 26-28 in Nashville, TN.

Blog Posts

• CMS Publishes the 2026 IPPS Final Rule (AGS Health)
• Training for Tough Conversations: How Agentic AI Supports Healthcare Providers (Tegria)
• New for 2025 – That’s life in flow, Elevated. (Agfa HealthCare)
• The future of the EHR: A vision for clinical excellence (Altera Digital Health)
• Drowning in dashboards: Don’t let analytics sprawl hold you back (Cardamom)
• Improving Medication Adherence for CHF Patients in Rural Communities: Lessons From Magnolia Regional (DrFirst)
• The Risk Never Sleeps Podcast Chronicles Part I: People Themes from the Front Lines of Healthcare Cybersecurity (Censinet)
• Kill Your Zombie Apps (Clearsense)
• Taking a Closer Look at Healthcare Data Quality in 2025 (Clinical Architecture)
• What If You Could See Your Cyber Maturity in One Clear View? (CloudWave)
• When Patient Safety and Cybersecurity Collide: The Medical Device Security Challenge (CTG)
• Creating a Data Tracker in Healthcare (Dimensional Insight)
• AI Meets OCM: Empowering the Healthcare Workforce Through Human-Centered Transformation (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 8/11/25

Top News

Doximity acquires Pathway Medical, which offers a medical reference AI assistant, for up to $63 million.

Pathway has sold annual subscriptions to the service for $125 to $300.

Doximity’s co-founder and CEO is Jeff Tangney, who previously founded medical reference app vendor Epocrates, which Athenahealth acquired in 2013 for $293 million.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Less than 10% of poll respondents think HHS’s “Make Health Tech Great Again” campaign will improve healthcare. Some comment excerpts from those who voted: 

• What is this callback logic, referring to “Again?” When was this imagined Nirvana of greatness in healthcare tech? The truth is, now is the Nirvana! Despite all the problems and challenges, healthcare tech has never been so strong, so widespread, and so capable.
• I find it humorous when the Big Tech execs talk about these bold “new” visions that will “revolutionize healthcare.” Meanwhile, those that actually know the industry all know that Epic already provides many of these things that they talk about like they are some sort of innovative future state pipe dream. … How long are we going to keep pretending that ShareEverywhere doesn’t exist already? Or the 24 million records already exchanged daily via CareEverywhere, half with non-Epic orgs?
• If the participating organizations feel so enthusiastically as their press releases and social media posts suggest, that this will be a game-changer for healthcare, they should have some financial skin in the game. Let them put in $100 to $100,000 each, based on annual revenue. If the goals of the initiative (which, from what I can surmise, are neither clear nor measurable) are achieved, everyone gets their money back. If they aren’t, the funds go towards paying off a minuscule slice of the national debt.
• Groundhog Day. It shouldn’t take some stupid slogan to bring the healthcare tech companies together and it’s embarrassing for the companies who have already taken millions of dollars out of providers pockets promising what was “contrived” at this summit.
• Very easy to smile and nod for the photo op and then do nothing. This will join the tall heap of other well-intended but failed HIT initiatives that will “transform healthcare”. Anyone remember PHRs? No? Me either.

New poll to your right or here:  How will AI scribe vendors like Nuance and Abridge react if Epic announces its own product as rumored? It’s a hot, investor-pumped market out there and much of the potential business, especially the high-dollar contracts, will involve Epic users. Maybe the rumor won’t pan out, but it’s fun to speculate anyway. This would test some theories:

• AI scribing is a commodity market with low switching costs.
• The real value-add is integration, where Epic can’t lose.
• Agile first-mover companies that have already established customer relationships should be able to dominate the more broadly focused Epic.
• Epic will always win even if their product starts out with minimal functionality because health systems prefer “one throat to choke” and Epic’s history involves rapidly improving a MVP-type offering.
• Epic will dominate because it can use its own massive data stores to train an AI scribe and can better integrate its output.

HIStalk sponsors who are participating in Epic UGM – tell me about what you’re doing by Wednesday, August 13 and I’ll include it in an online guide.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Instant Access Webinar: “Healthcare Data Strategies: Retire, Retain, and Ready for AI.” Sponsor: Triyam, an Access Company. Presenters: Sudhakar Mohanraj, founder and CTO, Triyam; Benjamin Cassity, director of research and strategy, KLAS; Jamie Greenstein, senior marketing manager, Access. The presenters deliver practical tactics to help IT leaders manage exploding data volumes — how to clean up legacy systems, craft smarter retention policies, and prepare historical data for analytics and AI.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Heartflow shares jump 51% on their first day of trading Friday, valuing the coronary artery disease technology company at $2.3 billion.

Announcements and Implementations

NASA and Google are developing “earth-independent” medical procedures for long-duration space missions, including a Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant to help astronauts diagnose and treat symptoms without a doctor or contact with Earth. NASA plans to incorporate medical device data and adapt the system for space-specific conditions such as microgravity. Google says that lessons learned could benefit terrestrial healthcare but was vague on commercialization plans.

Government and Politics

A VA OIG review finds that VA facilities sometimes fail to retrieve and import community care medical records into veterans’ EHRs on time, with inconsistent use of tracking tools, unclear policies, and outdated technology contributing to delays that could impact care. The OIG made 10 recommendations to improve processes, oversight, and technology, all of which VHA agreed to implement. Veterans can obtain care in their community if they live more than a 30-minute drive from a VA facility, after which the community provider has 30 days to send records to the VA, which then has another week to scan the records and import them into the EHR.

Health wearables vendor Whoop says that it will continue selling its devices that include the capability to estimate blood pressure despite the FDA’s warning that it has not approved the technology.

Privacy and Security

Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center fires 15 nurses for allegedly improperly accessing the electronic records of a 12-year-old inpatient who died by suicide, citing HIPAA violations. The nurses have filed a union grievance claiming that the terminations were retaliation for speaking to the media.

Other

Doximity’s 2025 physician compensation report confirms the saying that the smaller the patient, the smaller the paycheck. Six surgical specialties top the list with annual compensation greater than $600,000, while 10 of the 13 lowest-earning specialties involve pediatrics and earnings of below $300,000.

A South African hospital halts a deceased patient’s funeral to demand that the family return the body for an autopsy, citing disagreement among a panel of doctors about the cause of death. National law allows remains to be released to a funeral home only with the stipulation that they be returned if authorities determine that a post-mortem is needed.

Sponsor Updates

• WellSky staff wrap thousands of diapers for HappyBottoms during the company’s quarterly volunteer day.
• Black Book Research announces the top-performing supply chain management technology vendors in US healthcare for 2025.
• AWS recognizes Netsmart with its 2025 AWS Champions Award for its Bells Virtual Scribe solution.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Minal Shah, MD.
• Waystar will exhibit at the MedInformatix Summit August 12-14 in Austin, TX.

Blog Posts

• Benefits of Operational Optimization Prior to Epic Implementation (Impact Advisors)
• From Manual to Modern: Transforming Novel Influenza A Detection at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital (Inovalon)
• Beat healthcare burnout with future-forward tech that empowers patients as care team members (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Your EHR support model is undermining everything (and you don’t even know it) (Nordic)
• What do nurses think of digital whiteboards? (Sonifi Health)
• OBBBA’s Impact on Hospitals & Health Systems (Symplr)
• Understanding the AR Process in Medical Billing (TruBridge)

Contacts

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

Top News

Epic will launch an ambient scribe tool at UGM, August 18-21, according to insiders who spoke to Politico.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIStalk sponsors who are participating in Epic UGM – tell me about what you’re doing by next Wednesday, August 13 and I’ll include it in an online guide.

I was experimenting with some long ChatGPT prompts that were a pain to retype every time but not appropriate for storing in long-term memory. The fix: AText, which lets you create text snippets that can be pasted via keyboard shortcuts. I’ve used Macro Scheduler for years and could have scripted the same result, but you have to be careful because it basically takes over your keyboard and thus requires very careful macro design. I know this because one of my macros deleted an entire HIStalk post years ago because I was unwisely triggering actions based on the location of the cursor and on-screen objects whose consistency I had overestimated.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Hinge Health reports Q2 results: revenue up 55%, EPS –$13.10 versus –$0.96, beating Wall Street expectations for revenue but falling short on earnings. The $581 million loss was mostly due to stock-based compensation, but non-GAAP reporting otherwise showed a swing to profitability. Hinge shares jumped sharply on the news and are up 61% since its May 2025 IPO, valuing the digital physical therapy company at nearly $5 billion.

Telehealth vendor LifeMD reports Q2 results: revenue up 23%, EPS –$0.06 versus –$0.19, missing analyst expectations for both and sending shares down 45%. The company’s weight loss guarantee resulted in higher than expected patient refunds in a highly competitive GLP-1 market. The company’s market cap is $294 million.

Sales

• Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre will implement Oracle Health’s EHR, with go-live expected in 2027. I believe their current system is the homegrown SunnyCare, but I don’t know much about it or what they will be implementing from Oracle Health.
• Duke Health will implement growth planning analytics from Trilliant Health.

People

Roche-owned Flatiron Health promotes Nathan Hubbard to CEO. He replaces Carolyn Starrett, who will transition to senior advisor. Drugmaker Roche was rumored last year to be seeking a buyer for the cancer software company, which it acquired in 2018 for $1.9 billion.

UPerform hires Stephanie Lahr, MD (Artisight) as chief medical officer.

Meera Atkins, MD, MBA (Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota) joins Lyric as chief medical officer.

Industry veteran and recruiting firm owner Mark Fidler died on July 29 at age 72.

Announcements and Implementations

OpenAI releases GPT-5 to all users of ChatGPT as its flagship model. The company says that among its broad improvements, GPT-5 provides more accurate answers to health questions and hallucinates less than 2% of the time.

Ascension creates an innovation institute that will vet and implement technologies and innovations that can improve patient care and the clinician experience.

First Databank launches Meducation Bedside Solution, which allows bedside nurses to provide patients with first-dose education using the information in the electronic medication administration record.

Rhapsody announces GA of Envoy, a platform for managing integrations operations.

The AMA approves a new CPT code for body composition analysis, which will allow the US Army’s Armed Forces Wellness Center to record the discrete results of air displacement plethysmography into the EHR to better monitor body composition and prevent obesity-related conditions.

Pieces Technologies debuts a phone-based personal assistant that creates an inpatient EHR note from a physician’s voice memo.

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart announces that it has been recognized as a Qualified Health Information Network.
• CliniComp expands its EHR Solution Suite at the VA Hampton Health Care System to the MedSurg unit in just one month.
• Hospitals under 50 beds indicate an urgency to transition to next-generation EHR replacements, according to Black Book Research, whose latest study highlights HIStalk sponsors Meditech and Altera Digital Health as top future-ready EHR vendors for smaller facilities.
• The Consulting Report includes Nordic in its “Top Consulting Firms of 2025” list.
• Health Data Movers sponsors the Northern Ohio HIMSS Charity Golf Classic & Collaboration Summit.
• Infinx will present at the Idaho HFMA 2025 Summer Conference August 13-15 in McCall.
• Meditech announces that it has been recognized as a Representative Vendor in the “Gartner Market Guide for Enterprise Electronic Health Records.”

Blog Posts

• Hallucination vs. confabulation: Why the difference matters in healthcare AI (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Securing ePrescribing: Why Redundancy and Resilience Matter (First Databank)
• AI-Powered Customer Service Is Here, And It’s Changing Everything (Five9)
• In Honor of Kevin Mitnick: What Healthcare Must Learn About Social Engineering (Fortified Health Security)
• What the 2026 PFS Proposed Rule means for MIPS: Impact and opportunities for provider (Healthmonix)
• Don’t Let Your Legacy Systems Jeopardize Your Go-Live (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Lessons from Sanford Health: How to Create a Scalable Data Strategy that Works (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• 8 Proven Strategies to Optimize Revenue Cycle Workqueues in Healthcare (Impact Advisors)
• Faster Alerts Help PIH Health Transform Infection Prevention (Inovalon)
• Harnessing data to drive precision medicine in South Africa and Namibia (Meditech)
• Why EHR Vendors Must Partner with a CMS-Approved QR/QCDR for MIPS 2025 (MRO)

Contacts

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

News 8/6/25

Top News

The Rhysida ransomware group posts data that it claims to have stolen in a July 13 ransomware attack on Cookeville Regional Medical Center (TN).

According to the post, the hospital has until August 6 to pay the demanded ransom. Otherwise, the hackers say they will sell the data for $1 million.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare workforce technology company HealthStream reports Q2 results: revenue up 4%, EPS $0.18 vs. $0.14, meeting Wall Street’s expectations for revenue and exceeding those for earnings.

Hims & Hers Health reports Q2 results: revenue up 73%, EPS $0.17 versus $0.06. Revenue dropped substantially as the company complied with FDA requirements to stop selling compounded versions of GLP-1 weight loss drugs in doses that are sold by the patent holder.

Supply chain technology vendor Capsa Healthcare acquires competitor BlueBin.

Sales

• Jackson Parish Hospital (LA) will implement TruBridge’s Complete Business Office financial operations software.

People

Experity names Bobby Ghoshal, MBA (ResMed) president and COO.

Christopher Kodama, MD, MBA (Embright) joins Milliman MedInsight as chief medical officer.

GLP-1 digital program vendor EMed Population Health hires Linda Yaccarino (X) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

The DoD extends Amwell’s contract for virtual care technology under the Leidos-led Digital Front Door initiative of MHS Genesis.

Epic offers a conference on integrating with its products for vendor and provider developers September 25 in Verona.

Government and Politics

The California State Treasurer’s Office approves Adventist Health’s issuance of up to $1 billion in tax-exempt bonds to fund its Epic implementation. The 27-hospital health system began posting job notices for the project on LinkedIn last summer.

ASTP/ONC releases the HTI-4 final rule for certified EHRs, which includes updated criteria for electronic prior authorization, electronic prescribing, and real-time prescription benefit information.

Privacy and Security

A California class action lawsuit jury finds that Meta violated the state’s Invasion of Privacy Act  by using data from Flo’s menstrual period tracking app to target ads.

Other

A study of 28,000 inpatient visits across two hospitals finds that virtual nursing programs helped to reduce the average inpatient length of stay by 7% and readmission rates by 2%.

Astera Health (MN) implements a telehealth NICU program that enables clinicians to virtually connect with specialists at CentraCare – St. Cloud Hospital (MN).

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore names Richard Barrett senior director of Oracle Health Services.
• Agfa Healthcare President Nathalie McCaughley will present at the KLAS Research Digital Health Investment Symposium 2025 September 9-10 in Park City, UT.
• Arcadia will exhibit at the Medicaid Enterprise Systems Conference August 11-14 in Milwaukee.
• AvaSure will exhibit at Epic UGM August 18-21 in Verona, WI.
• A new Black Book Research analysis finds that psychiatric hospitals and behavioral health facilities across the US are rapidly modernizing their EHR systems, with Netsmart noted as the top-ranked inpatient behavioral health EHR for customer satisfaction.
• Censinet releases a new “Risk Never Sleeps” podcast episode titled “Ride the Dragon, Not the Hype: Engineering AI That Works, with Keith Deutsch, a fractional CTO and lifelong tech journeyman.”
• CloudWave maintains its SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA/HITECH compliance.
• DrFirst will exhibit at the Florida Society of Health-System Pharmacists meeting August 8-10 in Orlando.

Blog Posts

• Turning Rejections into Results: Modernizing Denial Management with Analytics and Automation (AGS Health)
• Unlocking the value of IT in healthcare (Nordic)
• CNO Turned CEO: How to Make Your EHR Work for You (CereCore)
• Healthcare in the face of the One Big Beautiful Bill: How AI can help navigate the new reality (Altera Digital Health)
• A Surgeon’s Perspective on Using LiveData (LiveData)
• Our Sputnik Moment (Artera)
• What If You Could See Your Cyber Maturity in One Clear View? (CloudWave)
• DIUC25: Connect for What’s Next (Dimensional Insight)

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 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.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Sponsorship information.
Contact us.

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.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
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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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