News 5/28/25

Top News

Coalesce Capital acquires Das Health, a health IT software and services business based in Tampa, FL.

Once primarily focused on the ambulatory space, Das has expanded to health systems and senior care through its acquisitions of Itentive, VCPI, and Randall Technology Services.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The majority of poll-takers are in favor of EHR vendors being required to provide data access to competing applications with shared customer consent.

New poll to your right or here: Have you ever used a digital physical therapy tool as part of your recovery? With Hinge Health’s IPO in the news and competitors like Luna, Sword Health (rumored to be prepping for an IPO later this year), and Kaia Health seemingly gaining traction, I’m wondering if providers are pushing them or payers are the more typical conduits. Share your experience by leaving a comment.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: June 18 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Fireside Chat: Closing the Gaps in Medication Adherence.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Ben G. Long, MD, director of hospital medicine, Magnolia Regional Health Center; Wes Blakeslee, PhD, vice president of clinical data strategies, DrFirst; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. Magnolia Regional Health Center will describe how its Nurse Navigator program used real-time prescription fill data from DrFirst to identify therapy gaps and engage patients through timely, personalized outreach. The effort led to a 19% increase in prescription fills and a 6% drop in 30-day readmissions among participating patients. Attendees will learn why prescribing price transparency is key to adherence, how real-time data helps care teams support patients between visits, and how Magnolia aligned its approach with value-based care and population health goals.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Digital healthcare software and services vendor Healthcare Triangle forms new subsidiary QuantumNexis through the acquisition of Niyama Healthcare, which specializes in AI-enabled digital mental healthcare, and Ezovion Solutions, which offers EHR and smart hospital management tech.

23andMe will delist and deregister from the Nasdaq. The consumer genetics testing and research company filed for bankruptcy in March and sold the majority of its assets to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals earlier this month.

Announcements and Implementations

The Boulder County Family Resource Network (CO) launches an online social services resource tool using software from Findhelp.

In England, Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust implements Epic.

Privacy and Security

Kettering Health (OH) acknowledges it was the victim of a ransomware attack last week and announces that it has restored its clinical communications and radiation oncology systems. It expects the rest of its network to be up and running soon.

Healthcare cybersecurity leaders are unprepared for AI-enabled physical threats to their facilities, according to a new study from Black Book Research. Seventy-one percent of hospital survey respondents say they are unprepared for things like sensor spoofing or deepfake badge credentials, while just 18% say they have a strategy in place to mitigate this new type of digital manipulation.

Other

A patient catches their therapist using ChatGPT during a virtual session after the therapist mistakenly enables screensharing: “This led to a very surreal session in which out of sheer shock I also ended up basically cribbing from ChatGPT in my responses. For example, I’d say something, he would type it into ChatGPT, it would return a result, like a summary of ‘Cognitive Flexibility,’ and then because I could see his screen, I would say something like ‘I guess I could be more flexible…’ and he’d say, ‘Yes! Exactly!’”

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD staff volunteer at several charitable organizations, including the St. Vincent De Paul Dining Hall, during the company’s Day of Caring.
• Agfa HealthCare North America reports strong Q1 2025 momentum with major enterprise imaging expansion and strategic customer wins.
• Fortified Health Security names Rachel Bryant and Danika Miles marketing coordinators.
• Wolters Kluwer Health receives for the 14^th consecutive year the NorthFace ScoreBoard Service Award for achievements in customer support by its Ovid and Lippincott customer service organizations.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “The Evolving Health Benefits Market: Everyone is Getting Smarter, with Mike Tate.”
• Tegria will present at the International Performance Management Institute Healthcare IT Institute June 9 in New Orleans.
• Waystar will exhibit at the 2025 HFMA Region 1 Annual Conference May 29-30 in Uncasville, CT.
• Clinical Architecture releases a new case study featuring LifePoint Health titled “From Fragmented to Future-Ready: How Data Governance Fueled Clinical Transformation.”
• CloudWave will exhibit at the E-Health Conference and Tradeshow June 1-3 in Toronto.
• DrFirst is now accepting nominations for its 2025 Healthiverse Heroes Award.

Black Book Research’s latest survey reveals the top technology vendors driving Medicare Advantage five-star ratings amid heightened CMS audit standards, including the following HIStalk sponsors:

• Arcadia (population health management)
• InterSystems (interoperability and data integration)
• Redox (interoperability and data integration)
• Inovalon Quality Intelligence (quality measure management and analytics, audit readiness and compliance management)

Blog Posts

• Securing Healthcare Data: Ensuring Cyber Resilience with Vendor Partnerships (AGS Health)
• Why Cybersecurity is Critical for Modern Health IT Solutions (PerfectServe)
• Why Onboarding Matters More Than Ever in Senior Care (Symplr)
• The keys to unlocking the power of AI for nurses (Altera Digital Health)
• Virtual nursing at Hackensack Meridian Health is making nurses and patients happy (AvaSure)
• The Missing Link in Healthcare Cyber Defense: Culture (CTG)
• The ROI of Working with a Specialized Recruitment Partner (Direct Recruiters)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 5/23/25

Top News

Digital physical therapy company Hinge Health raises $273 million during its IPO, giving it a $2.6 billion valuation.

The San Francisco-based company has raised more than $1 billion since launching in 2014.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Fortified Health Security. As a managed security service provider, Fortified offers a broad range of advisory and security operations center (SOC) services that help organizations throughout the healthcare ecosystem protect patient data and reduce risks. Working alongside their clients, Fortified builds customized programs for healthcare organizations that leverage their prior security investments and current processes while implementing new solutions that strengthen their security posture over time. Thanks to Fortified for supporting HIStalk.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: June 18 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Fireside Chat: Closing the Gaps in Medication Adherence.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Ben G. Long, MD, director of hospital medicine, Magnolia Regional Health Center; Wes Blakeslee, PhD, vice president of clinical data strategies, DrFirst; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. Magnolia Regional Health Center will describe how its Nurse Navigator program used real-time prescription fill data from DrFirst to identify therapy gaps and engage patients through timely, personalized outreach. The effort led to a 19% increase in prescription fills and a 6% drop in 30-day readmissions among participating patients. Attendees will learn why prescribing price transparency is key to adherence, how real-time data helps care teams support patients between visits, and how Magnolia aligned its approach with value-based care and population health goals.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Sources say that private equity firm Blackstone is the frontrunner in acquisition offers for revenue cycle company AGS Health in what could be a $1 billion deal. Parent company EQT began considering strategic alternatives for AGS last September.

Truepill (white label digital pharmacy), Veritas (genetics), LetsGetChecked (home testing kits), and Alto (prescription delivery) come together to form Fuze Health. LetsGetChecked acquired Truepill in 2024 for $525 million, $25 million of which was cash.

Acute care telehealth company Equum Medical acquires the virtual clinical services of VeeOne Health. VeeOne will focus on its remaining service lines that include ambulatory care, virtual nursing, remote patient monitoring, hospital at home, and acute inpatient care.

Sales

• Dallas-based AccentCare will implement Netsmart’s CareFabric platform within its medical group.

People

Michael Volpi (RWJBarnabas Health) joins Comport Consulting as VP of healthcare technology.

Anish Arora (Cardinal Health) joins TigerConnect as VP of product.

Announcements and Implementations

TigerConnect announces GA of its CareConduit automated clinical workflow software.

Wolters Kluwer Health develops Ovid Guidelines AI to help healthcare researchers and organizations develop clinical practice guidelines using agentic AI.

Innovaccer launches Innovaccer Gravity to help providers unify and glean insights from data and expand adoption of AI.

Government and Politics

The VA renews its contract with Oracle Health for another 12 months. The department renegotiated its contract with the company in 2023, turning a five-year agreement into five one-year terms.

Other

Emory Healthcare’s Hillandale Hospital (GA) replaces all of its legacy computing devices with Apple products. The health system had already been using some Apple devices at its facilities. It decided to first pilot the all-Apple concept across one floor of its St. Joseph’s Hospital after clinicians noticed that Apple products were not impacted by CrowdStrike’s downtime debacle last year. Staff at Emory, an Epic customer since 2022, say Epic’s integration with Mac also helped to spur the project along.

Sponsor Updates

• Medicomp Systems releases a new “Tell Me Where IT Hurts” podcast episode featuring Lynn Carroll, COO of HSBlox.
• Wolters Kluwer Health offers new data from the fifth edition of its “State of Drug Diversion” report.
• Nordic publishes a new research brief titled “Closing the AI governance gap: Build a strong foundation for success.”
• Ellkay joins the Meditech Alliance as an innovator member.
• Health Data Movers names Morgan Kent (Medhost) account manager.
• Infinx forms a strategic advisory board to strengthen customer advocacy and innovation in healthcare.
• Nordic joins Operation Song to empower veterans through music.
• Optimum Healthcare IT releases a new episode of its “Visionary Voices” podcast titled “The Evolving Role of the CIO with Craig Richardville.”
• Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the Back Door” podcast titled “An AI agenda – Robots, rules, and really big questions.”
• Rhapsody publishes a new customer story titled “Axia Women’s Health saved $300,000, replacing a standalone API engine with Rhapsody Corepoint.”

Blog Posts

• What You Need to Know About Interoperability and How it Affects You: Part 3 (Netsmart)
• Reclaiming clinical capacity: Addressing burnout and restoring empathy through optimized health IT (Altera Digital Health)
• Decoding Social Care: Understanding Available Data Standards (Findhelp)
• Transforming care through collaboration: Lessons from the frontlines of value-based healthcare (Healthmonix)
• Hospital Staffing in Summertime (Impact Advisors)
• Looking to maximize your revenue opportunities? Meditech can help (Meditech)
• Tackling Top Cybercrime Trends with Healthcare Security Best Practices (MedTech Solutions)
• Navigating the transition to V28: Impact in 2025 (Navina)
• Implementing and Utilizing Integrations in Healthcare (PerfectServe)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Sponsorship information.
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Morning Headlines 5/22/25

Equum Medical Acquires VeeOne Health’s Clinical Services Portfolio, Expanding Telehealth Leadership

Acute care telehealth company Equum Medical acquires the virtual clinical services of VeeOne Health.

WorkDone, a Y Combinator-Backed Startup, Raises $1.8M in VC Funding to Transform Medical Documentation Compliance With AI

San Francisco-based WorkDone, which has developed AI to resolve healthcare documentation errors, raises $1.8 million in pre-seed funding.

Fuze Health Launches to Transform Patient Experiences and Enable Personalized Care in a Changing Healthcare Environment

Fuze Health launches to offer patients the combined digital healthcare services of Truepill, Veritas, LetsGetChecked, and Alto.

VA continues partnership with Oracle Health to deploy Federal Electronic Health Record

The VA renews its contract with Oracle Health for another 12 months.

News 5/21/25

Top News

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals acquires 23andMe’s Personal Genome Service, Total Health and Research Services businesses, and Biobank and related assets for $256 million at bankruptcy auction, beating out a bid from co-founder and former CEO Anne Wojcicki.

23andMe retains its Lemonaid Health telemedicine business, though it, too, may be sold off at a later date.

Regeneron has stressed that it will ensure the security of its newly acquired consumer genetics data.

Reader Comments

From Tom B. William: “Re: Epic’s latest courtroom win. The company has scored recent wins against patent troll GreatGigz and Decapolis, with the latter win on behalf of a customer. I’d love to know how much money is annually budgeted by Epic for such matters.” Readers, feel free to weigh in with your best guess. I can only assume that the sum is more than some health IT companies spend on line items like sales and marketing. As I mentioned in 2022 after Epic triumphed over GreatGigz in a suit involving Christus Health, “Epic has historically been one of few companies willing to do whatever it takes to defend itself, and in this case, the involvement of one of its customers is likely to unleash its legal dogs.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: June 18 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Fireside Chat: Closing the Gaps in Medication Adherence.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Ben G. Long, MD, director of hospital medicine, Magnolia Regional Health Center; Wes Blakeslee, PhD, vice president of clinical data strategies, DrFirst; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. Magnolia Regional Health Center will describe how its Nurse Navigator program used real-time prescription fill data from DrFirst to identify therapy gaps and engage patients through timely, personalized outreach. The effort led to a 19% increase in prescription fills and a 6% drop in 30-day readmissions among participating patients. Attendees will learn why prescribing price transparency is key to adherence, how real-time data helps care teams support patients between visits, and how Magnolia aligned its approach with value-based care and population health goals.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

New Mountain Capital combines portfolio RCM companies SmarterDx, Thoughtful.ai, and Access Healthcare to create AI-powered healthcare revenue management company Smarter Technologies. New Mountain Executive Advisor and industry veteran Jeremy Delinsky will serve as CEO of the new business.

Sales

• Medical University of South Carolina Health selects Glytec’s diabetes and insulin management technology.

People

Inovalon promotes Karly Rowe to president of its provider business unit.

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

Glooko promotes Mark Clements, MD, PhD to chief medical and strategy officer.

Announcements and Implementations

TruBridge adds Microsoft’s Dragon Copilot AI-powered clinical workflow assistant to its EHR.

Dayton Children’s Hospital (OH) implements Abridge’s ambient documentation software.

Government and Politics

VA EHR Modernization Program Executive Director Neil Evans, MD explains that next year’s slate of 13 implementations will occur in waves of facilities chosen for their pre-existing relationships, with many patients receiving primary care at one facility and specialty care at another. Go lives will occur next year at sites in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Alaska.

Privacy and Security

Kettering Health (OH) reverts to downtime operations, canceling all elective procedures and diverting ambulances in the wake of a ransomware attack discovered Tuesday morning. Hackers have threatened to publish patient data on the dark web if the health system doesn’t meet their demands within 72 hours.

Other

Researchers at the the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Dentistry develop an app that connects dentists to health information exchanges so that they can more easily access a patient’s medical history.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research’s new study reveals the world’s leading cities in achieving seamless health record exchange and EHR optimization.
• Arcadia publishes a new white paper titled “10 strategies to lead in value-based care.”
• AvaSure wins Oracle Customer Excellence Awards for multi-cloud excellence and CTO of the year.
• Clearsense publishes a new white paper titled “How Application Portfolio Management Accelerates M&A Value in Healthcare.”
• Clinical Architecture, First Databank, and InterSystems will sponsor and Elsevier will exhibit at the AMIA Clinical Informatics Conference May 20-22 in Anaheim, CA.
• CloudWave will exhibit at the New England HIMSS 2025 Annual Spring Conference June 5 in Norwood, MA.
• Altera Digital Health announces that Latrobe Regional Health in Australia has integrated its Sunrise EHR with Provation’s anesthesia information management system.

Blog Posts

• Transforming Denials Management through Automation and Analytics (AGS Health)
• Five9 Celebrates Eleven Honorees Named to 2025 CRN® Women of the Channel List (Five9)
• The Future of TheraOffice is Now: Experience Our Brand-New, Modernized Platform (Netsmart)
• The role of EPRs in dementia care: How Bolton NHS Foundation Trust is enhancing early detection and patient Support (Altera Digital Health)
• How service line analytics is transforming operations (Cardamom)
• Assumed Breach Simulation: Lateral Movement Explained (Clearwater)
• Key Takeaways from Reuters Digital Health 2025 (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 5/19/25

Top News

Shares of Scotland-based Craneware jump on reports that Bain Capital is considering acquiring the company.

Bain Capital confirmed that Bain Capital Funds is assessing a possible offer, but it has not involved Craneware’s board.

The company, which sells health system financial software, reported 800 employees and $189 million in sales last year. Its market capitalization is nearly $1 billion.

Reader Comments

From Japonais: “Re: CureIS versus Epic. What points does Epic need to dispute to prevail?” Unlike Particle Health’s lawsuit against Epic, CureIS makes no claim that Epic created an illegal monopoly, which carries a high burden of proof that is unlikely to prove successful. The CureIS complaint lists these specific items:

• CureIS alleges that Epic mandates the use of its own inferior products over those of competitors like CureIS. To prove coercion, CureIS will need to produce evidence, such as contractual language or customer testimony, that Epic’s policies forced CureIS customers or prospects to take an action that they wouldn’t have taken otherwise.
• The complaint references unnamed health systems that were allegedly told by Epic that integration with CureIS was not allowed, which would seem to require at least one of those customers to testify against Epic.
• CureIS accuses Epic of misappropriating its trade secrets by convincing a shared customer to give Epic a detailed document under the pretense of integration planning. CureIS would need to prove that Epic obtained the material with the intention of developing competing software. It might also need to provide examples where Epic actually used the contents to compete.
• CureIS makes a trade libel claim that Epic misrepresented its own product capabilities while disparaging those of CureIS. Trade libel complaints are rarely successful and would require CureIS to show that Epic made and widely distributed objectively false statements that provably harmed CureIS. Epic’s distribution of a document titled “Products You Can Replace with Epic” is not a strong argument.
• The biggest legal exposure for Epic is the claim that Epic refused to provide data to CureIS even with customer approval, which probably falls under the information blocking provision of the 21st Century Cures Act. CureIS says that Epic falsely used security risk as an excuse. Information blocking falls under ASTP and not a civil court, but possible exposure might pressure Epic to settle (although Epic pretty much never settles).

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Respondents for last week’s poll passed along some advice to those who are planning, or should be planning, their future.

New poll to your right or here: Should Epic and other EHR vendors be required to provide data access to competing applications if their shared customer approves?

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: June 18 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Fireside Chat: Closing the Gaps in Medication Adherence.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Ben G. Long, MD, director of hospital medicine, Magnolia Regional Health Center; Wes Blakeslee, PhD, vice president of clinical data strategies, DrFirst; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. Magnolia Regional Health Center will describe how its Nurse Navigator program used real-time prescription fill data from DrFirst to identify therapy gaps and engage patients through timely, personalized outreach. The effort led to a 19% increase in prescription fills and a 6% drop in 30-day readmissions among participating patients. Attendees will learn why prescribing price transparency is key to adherence, how real-time data helps care teams support patients between visits, and how Magnolia aligned its approach with value-based care and population health goals.

Announcements and Implementations

Oracle Health, Cleveland Clinic, and Emirates-based AI company G42 will develop an AI-based healthcare delivery platform that will combine Oracle Health applications, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and Oracle AI Data Platform. The system will continually analyze population and public health data and provide real-world data for life sciences to enhance diagnostics, personalize treatments, optimize outcomes, and decrease costs.  

Government and Politics

The VA plans to implement Oracle Health at 13 facilities in 2026, followed by 20 to 25 additional go-lives in 2027. VA Secretary Doug Collins says that the agency will address the lack of standardization that stalled the project.

The Department of Justice settles a False Claims Act whistleblower lawsuit against Fresno, CA-based Community Regional Medical Center and its for-profit technology subsidiary Physician Network Advantage for $31.5 million. The hospital was accused of bribing doctors with cash, wine, strip club visits, and trips in return for using the hospital’s $75 million Epic EHR to refer their patients to its facilities. Michael Terpening, the whistleblower and former PNA controller, says that CMC provided the Epic system under the Community Connect model at no charge in return for referrals. Details from the lawsuit:

• The hospital spent $1 million to create HQ2, a wine and cigar lounge in PNA’s headquarters that was used to “build loyalty.” It was stocked with $1 million in wine and liquors that CMC used to recruit practices to join its Epic network.
• PNA booked appointments for network doctors to use the facility that included table service and free access to wine and food, and then billed the cost back to CMC as a business expense.
• CMC planned to develop a new club, HQ Ranch, to entertain executives and network doctors with another cigar and wine lounge, a skeet shooting range, and an off-road vehicle course.
• Terpening discovered the scheme after a fire in PNA’s headquarters revealed a stash of 1,000 bottles of wine, which PNA executives told him were left over from a holiday party.

Sponsor Updates

• A new Black Book Research study reveals that despite ongoing investments in digital health, Canada’s EHR systems remain fragmented, outdated, and under-optimized.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Shreya Shah, MD.
• Redox announces the launch of “Connections,” a new insights series authored by leaders at the company.
• TruBridge will exhibit at the 2025 NRHA Annual Rural Health Conference May 20-23 in Atlanta.
• Waystar will exhibit at the 2025 Senior Living Executive Conference May 19-21 in Tampa, FL.
• Zen Healthcare IT joins the Open Integration Engine Project as part of its long-standing mission to simplify the exchange of healthcare data.

Blog Posts

• Healthcare organizations, like the human body, thrive on coordination (Altera Digital Health)
• Cyber Resilience Roundup: How to Maintain Revenue Continuity Following a Cyberattack (FinThrive)
• A Mother’s Day to Remember: Brain Health, Community, and the Future of Care (Linus Health)
• The pharmacist’s growing role in patient care and whole-person wellness (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• 3 Ways Data Is Revolutionizing Addiction Care: Driving Productivity, Outcomes and Funding (Netsmart)
• Prescriptions, praise, and peers: A low-tech burnout playbook (Nordic)
• Understanding the Fundamentals of IRE (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• By the Numbers: A Closer Look at Why Saving $82 On a Prescription Matters (Surescripts)
• Nurses at the Helm of Change: The Role of Leadership & Technology (Symplr)
• Elevating Expanse: Five Ways to Maximize Value With the Right Support (Tegria)
• Good Science | Visage at SIIM25 (Visage Imaging)

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 5/16/25

Top News

Tucson-based CureIS Healthcare files suit against Epic, alleging that the company harmed its business by blocking access to billing data from Epic-using customers and falsely claiming that Epic’s products could replace those of CureIS. The complaint alleges these actions by Epic:

• Engaged in a “widespread scheme” to disrupt competitors in the managed care data reconciliation space.
• Enforced an “Epic-first” policy that pressures EHR and RCM customers to adopt Epic’s own software alternatives, which Epic promotes in a brochure titled “Products You Can Replace with Epic.”
• Coerced shared customers to terminate their CureIS contracts and restricted the access of those customers to their own data.
• Attempted to obtain CureIS’s proprietary product information under the pretense of integration planning.
• Committed trade libel by telling customers and prospects that CureIS products create a security risk when integrated with Epic.

An Epic spokesperson provided this response: “Epic believes in free and fair competition, and we also believe our customers are in the best position to choose the right solutions to meet their needs — whether with Epic or by adopting other products and services. We are aware of the complaint filed by CureIS and we look forward to setting the record straight in court.”

Reader Comments

From VTInquirer: “Re: [ambulatory EHR/PM vendor name omitted]. The CEO of a provider organization told me they are exploring alternatives because the vendor can’t certify as a compliant EHR until they release some kind of patch whose ETA is November 2025. Can anyone verify?” I’ve omitted the vendor’s name pending reader confirmation (I’m 100% sure the company won’t do so). Chime in if you know the company and the issue.

From Gin Diesel: “Re: your Epic report. I ran across this in a Google search and found it fascinating.” Thanks for stirring that memory since I totally forgot about “Epic: The Cold, Hard Facts” that I wrote way back in 2016 using custom research data from Peer60 (now Reaction). We received responses and comments from nearly 100 Epic-using health system CIOs, along with 39 CMOs, 22 CEOs, and dozens of CFOs and CNOs. My intro hinted at the sassiness to come:

Everybody in healthcare IT has a strong opinion about Epic. Most of the people who express those opinions confidently (and sometimes loudly) don’t have any first-hand experience with the company or its products. It’s like asking an armchair quarterback dribbling wing sauce onto his shirt how Peyton Manning should be reading the defense. On the “Epic is great” side are loyal customers who are financially vested in Epic’s success; consultants who make a great living riding on Epic’s coattails; and research firms who sell reports after talking to a few Epic-using hospital employees of unstated job titles. The “Epic is evil” contingent has a significant portion of people whose employer is losing business to Epic; experienced industry specialists who Epic won’t hire since they aren’t new graduates; and those naysayers who just don’t like Epic’s success. Also in the anti-Epic camp are critics of electronic health records who use Epic as an example of how technology has ruined medicine.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Zen Healthcare IT. Zen combines a modern API for healthcare with a traditional interface engine platform, providing a single, unified solution for all healthcare interoperability use cases. Zen’s Stargate Gateway provides certified access to the national data exchange networks, including Carequality (Implementer), eHealth Exchange (Validated) and CommonWell Alliance (Service Adopter & Connector). TEFCA is accessible via our certified connections with QHINs such as CommonWell Health Alliance and eHealth Exchange. For direct interface use cases, our Gemini Integration platform combines a robust, secure, and scalable integration foundation with advanced data transformation services, making integrations faster, easier and less costly. Built with a security first mindset, all Zen hosted solutions are HITRUST CSF r2 certified. Whether you want to be “hands on” with an integration engine, or “hands off” with an API, or both, we put the Zen in Interoperability. Thanks to Zen for supporting HIStalk.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Complement 1, which offers virtual lifestyle modification for coaching for cancer patients, raises $16 million in seed funding. India-based founder and CEO Karan Bajaj, MBA has an interesting background – brand manager for P&G, author of several novels, yoga teacher, executive of Discovery Networks, and founder of a company that applies technology to alleviating poverty in India.

Behavioral health and substance abuse operations software vendor Dazos raises $25 million in Series A funding.

Health data company Datavant acquires Aetion, which offers a real-world evidence platform for drug companies.

Sprinter Health, which offers virtual and in-home preventive care, raises a $55 million Series B round. Co-founder and CEO Max Cohen, MBA came from Google and Facebook.

Cohere Health, which offers prior authorization solutions, raises $90 million in Series C funding. Co-founder and CEO Siva Namasivayam, MS, MBA is an industry veteran who has held leadership roles at Gartner, Perot Systems, MphasiS, and SCIO Health Analytics.

Compensation for executives at Atrium Health, now part of Advocate Health, jumped 41% last year, with EVP/Chief Innovation and Commercial Officer Rasu Shrestha, MD, MBA earning $3.3 million and EVP/Chief Information and Analytics Officer Andy Crowder, MHA making $2.3 million.

Announcements and Implementations

Google-owned Fitbit Labs adds a Gemini-powered lab results summary creator, a symptom checker, and an alert for unusual trends to its app. The enhancements are being released for testing.

Two-thirds of 9,000 nurses who were surveyed by Black Book Research cited poor EHR usability and documentation burden as major sources of their job dissatisfaction. Among nurses under 40, two-thirds say that EHR experience ranks among their top three considerations when evaluating new employers. Just 11% believe that their EHR vendor or IT department takes frontline nurse impact into account when making changes.

AGS Health opens an office in Guadalajara, Mexico and will hire 150 employees to provide clinical administrative services.

Government and Politics

The Department of Justice is reportedly conducting a Medicare fraud investigation of UnitedHealth Group’s Medicare Advantage business. Hard-hit UNH shares dropped sharply on the news. They have lost more than 50% in the past month, erasing $250 billion in market capitalization.

Other

More than half of surveyed Swiss physicians say that their EHRs don’t improve patient safety, while two-thirds of hospital doctors cite EHR inefficiency as wasting their time. The authors conclude that IT configuration and support strongly influence user satisfaction related to the same EHR.

Sponsor Updates

• Redox partners with cognitive and behavioral health assessments software vendor Creyos.
• Health Data Movers names Mina Banoub integration engineer.
• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new episode of its “Leader to Leader” podcast titled “Driving Innovation at Emory Healthcare: Leveraging Cloud and AI for Better Patient Care.”

Blog Posts

• Tackling Clinician Burnout with Working Diagnosis (Altera Digital Health)
• Women Innovating Health IT: Helen Waters (Ellkay)
• Helping Prevent a Nursing Workforce Emergency (First Databank)
• The Supreme Court DSH Payment Ruling: What It Means for Hospitals Serving Low-Income Communities (FinThrive)
• Winning Over Gen Z and Millennials: How to Tailor Customer Service for the Next Generation (Five9)
• Audit the Mix: Why Health Systems Must Reevaluate Their IT Staffing Strategy (HCTec)
• Your One-Stop Guide to RADV Audits (HealthMark Group)
• Operating Room Utilization (Impact Advisors)
• How service line analytics is transforming operations (Cardamom)
• Candida Auris: From Threat to Reality (Inovalon)
• Celebrating Moms: Why Brain Health Belongs at the Center of Women’s Health (Linus Health)
• 4 stories that showcase the power of nurses (Meditech)
• Accelerate Your Path to HITRUST Certification by Adopting MTS HITRUST r2 Inheritance Provider Status (Med Tech Solutions)
• Capitol Hill Briefing: Health Data Privacy 101 with the Healthcare Trust Institute and MRO (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 5/14/25

Top News

UnitedHealth Group announces that CEO Andrew Witty has resigned for personal reasons and has been replaced by Chairman and former CEO Stephen Hemsley.

The company also announced that it will suspend its 2025 financial forecasts due to rising medical costs in its Medicare Advantage business.

UnitedHealth Group has recently struggled with the Change Healthcare cyberattack; the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of its insurance business; and consumer backlash over high costs and denied claims.

UNH shares dropped 18% Tuesday following the announcement.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare RCM and patient care software company TruBridge reports Q1 results: revenue up 3.7%; adjusted EPS $0.36 versus $0.19, beating revenue expectations but falling short on earnings.

Care coordination company Olio announces $11 million in Series B funding, bringing its total raised to $26.5 million.

OpenAI launches HealthBench, a physician-developed benchmark that evaluates large language models on real-world medical decision-making. It uses 5,000 realistic clinical conversations to grade models on communication quality, instruction adherence, accuracy, context awareness, and completeness.

A federal court orders Commure to stop marketing and selling its Strongline Pro wearable panic button for staff safety. Canopy Works, the original developer of the technology, alleges that Commure resold its system until their partnership ended in 2023, after which it accuses Commure of launching a similar product almost immediately.

Sales

• The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic expands its use of Baton Health’s physician credentialing system. 

People

Children’s Wisconsin names Benjamin Mansalis, MD (Indiana University Health) chief information and digital officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Epic integrates lifestyle medicine assessment tools from The American College of Lifestyle Medicine with its EHR. Tools include a short form-assessment, diet screener, and physical activity review.

Virtual healthcare company Ovatient launches the MyCare Anywhere patient engagement app using technology from League. Patients at MetroHealth (OH), which co-founded Ovatient in 2022 with MUSC Health (SC), will be among the first to use it.

Exalt Health implements WellSky’s Specialty Care EHR at its inpatient rehabilitation facility in Arizona. The company will soon roll out the software at three sites in additional states.

Sanford Health implements organ donor registration via Epic’s MyChart. The collaboration between Epic and Donate Life America streamlines registration with pre-populated information, adds the registrant to the National Donate Life Registry, and updates their medical record to ensure that donor preferences are accessible to care teams anywhere.

PsychNow launches Chapter, an AI co-pilot that captures a behavioral health patient’s history and assessment from their initial visit conversation.

Government and Politics

CMS and ASTP issue an RFI titled “Health Technology Ecosystem” that seeks public input on digital health products in the Medicare population, with a focus on interoperability.

The US Navy’s Military Sealift Command is upgrading its IT infrastructure, including linking the US Naval Ship Mercy, a humanitarian and military vessel, to the federal MHS Genesis EHR. Hospital Ship Joint Task Director Mike Taylor says they are considering incorporating AI into the ship’s healthcare operations: “… I don’t want AI making decisions to shut off a network point, a port that goes to an IV infusion pump. We’re watching it carefully. We’re excited to implement some facets of AI, especially in the security arena, but we’re treading lightly at this point.”

Other

AdventHealth will launch a hypertension management program this summer across 370 care sites that will incorporate remote patient monitoring devices and virtual visits.

Frustration with timely prior authorizations takes the top spot in payer-provider collaboration challenges, according to Black Book Research. An overwhelming majority of surveyed providers typically experience prior auth delays of more than five days, while just 29% of payers say that they have implemented electronic prior authorization tied to EHRs.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research releases a Q2 update to its “Global EHR Market Report,” revealing a growing shift in international healthcare IT dynamics.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “The Bridge to Value-Based Care: Unified Claims Processing, with Dr. Sunil Budhrani.”
• The “Risk Management: Brick by Brick” podcast features Censinet CEO Ed Gaudet in an episode titled “The Power of AI in Risk – Healthcare Cybersecurity: From Digital Risk to AI Governance.”
• Clearsense announces that Director of Healthcare Product Strategy Amy Staly, RN has received PerfectServe’s Nurses of Note Innovative Technology Utilization Award.
• Clinical Architecture releases a new case study featuring LifePoint Health titled “From Fragmented to Future-Ready: How Data Governance Fueled Clinical Transformation.”
• Consensus Cloud Solutions will present at the HIMSS New England conference June 5 in Norwood, MA.
• Direct Recruiters unveils a new website.

Blog Posts

• How to Begin with Application Management for Oracle Health/Cerner (CereCore)
• Get to Know AdvancedMD Chief People Officer Kristin Masters (AdvancedMD)
• The Troublesome Five: Navigating Complexities in Inpatient Coding (AGS Health)
• Best of both worlds: Documentation and navigating patient interactions (Altera Digital Health)
• Insights from Ashu Agte: What Makes Artera’s AI-Powered Virtual Agents Unique? (Artera)
• New Nurses Meet AI & Virtual Care (AvaSure)
• RSA 2025 Recap: AI, Innovation, and Identity Take Center Stage (Clearwater)
• Supporting Nurses’ Work with the Right Data (Dimensional Insight)
• Building Lasting Relationships: How DRI Creates Trust with Clients and Candidates (Direct Recruiters)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Monday Morning Update 5/12/25

Top News

Virtual care provider Omada Health files for an IPO, reporting a $44 million loss on $170 million in 2024 revenue.

The company posted strong revenue growth and a narrower net loss compared to 2023.

Co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy has led Omada since 2011, following stints as a Medgadget blog contributor and developer of Excel training tools. He dropped out of Harvard’s medical and business schools in 2010.

Reader Comments

From Not Pratap Sarker: “Re: Oak Street Health. Moving away from Greenway’s EHR and RCM services. This is Greenway’s largest customer. Their EHR Canopy currently sits on top of GW.” Unverified. I’ve emailed Greenway’s media contact. UPDATE: Oak Street is moving to Epic. Thanks to Brendan Keeler for sending a link to details. Oak Street is also listed on Epic’s UserWeb.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The top responses from last week’s poll suggest that the best sales and marketing activity is to let your product and support do the talking.

New poll to your right or here: For those over 50, what is the #1 thing you wish you had done differently? I’ve run this question a couple of times over the years, hopefully giving the under-50 folks time to replot their course if needed. I’m sure they would also benefit from an explanatory poll comment if you are so inclined.

Thanks to the volunteers who contributed to the first of my revived Executive Watercooler frontlines report. If you’re in a decision-making role at a health system, ACO, or hospital-owned medical group; serve as a CMIO, CNIO, or clinical informaticist; lead a health system IT organization; or work as a digital health executive, you’re welcome to join them. You’ll get a monthly question by email to which you just click “reply” with your answer.

Alabama teacher Ms. H sent some photos from her elementary school class, for which reader donations funded STEM-based centers.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The FDA approves the Teal Wand, a prescription device that lets average-risk women collect a cervical cancer screening sample at home, mail it in, and review results via telehealth. Shipping begins in June and the company is seeking coverage from insurers.

Kouper Health, which offers AI-powered tools to manage post-discharge care transitions and reduce readmissions, raises $10 million in funding. Co-founder and CEO Salman Ali, MBA, previously co-founded the at-home sleep apnea testing company GetSnooze.

Nordic-owned Healthtech opens Canadian offices in Halifax, Montreal, and Vancouver.

Definitive Healthcare reports Q1 results: revenue down 7%, EPS $0.05 versus $0.08, beating estimates for both. DH shares rose 31% on the news, valuing the company at $398 million. They’re down 29% in the past 12 months.

Former Theranos CEO and current federal inmate Elizabeth Holmes is reportedly advising her partner Billy Evans – a hotel heir and father of their two children — on his new medical testing AI startup. The company is raising funds to develop what it calls “the future of diagnostics” and “a radically new approach to health testing” for “human health optimization.” A recent patent claims that the technology can analyze sweat, urine, saliva, and small blood samples. That’s the happy couple above in pre-incarceration days with their husky Balto, which Holmes insisted was a wolf and whose eventual disappearance she blamed on a mountain lion that carried him off.

Sales

• University of Iowa Health Care will implement Visage Imaging’s Visage 7 in a $13 million contract.

People

The FDA hires Jeremy Walsh (Booz Allen Hamilton) as its first chief AI officer.

Intermountain Health promotes Tamara Moores Todd, MD to chief health informatics officer and Jason McClellan, RN, MBA to chief clinical informatics officer.

Tiffany Hodgins, MSHI (Health Catalyst) joins Sacvalley Medshare as chief technology and quality officer.

Jay Scholes (Veradigm) joins Advantmed as VP of sales.

Announcements and Implementations

Black Book Research overhauls its healthcare IT research model, adding AI-driven real-time sentiment analysis, redesigned KPIs, continuous survey pilots, and broader access to reports that are neither paywalled nor vendor-sponsored.

A year-long independent study finds that use of an AI assistant – Navina’s AI Copilot in this analysis – reduced clinical review time for complex visits by 40%, decreased physician burnout by 32%, and improved value-based performance as measured by Risk Adjustment Factor and Star quality ratings.

Nova Scotia Health delays the go-live of its Oracle Cerner Canada system until December, following its 10-year, $260 million agreement that was signed in February 2023. No reason was provided.

Sponsor Updates

• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a new case study titled “Northeast Georgia Health System’s Cloud-First Transformation Journey.”
• PerfectServe announces the winners of its 2025 Nurses of Note Awards Program.
• RLDatix signs a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi to develop a patient safety system using its technology.
• Sonifi Health will exhibit at the Texas Regional HIMSS Conference May 12-14 in Grapevine.
• TeamBuilder will present at The Millenium Alliance Transformation Assembly May 13-14 in Dallas.
• A new Wolters Kluwer Health survey finds that nursing schools will more than double their use of generative AI over the next two to three years.

The 2025 MedTech Breakthrough Award winners include the following HIStalk sponsors:

• Capital Rx’s Judi Health (best insurtech solution).
• CliniComp (EHR innovation award).
• Timely by DrFirst (best overall patient engagement platform).
• Elsevier ClinicalKey AI (AI innovation award).
• Inovalon’s Social Drivers of Health Market Insights (best data visualization solution).
• Navina (best use of AI in healthcare).
• SmarterDx (best overall healthcare operations solution).
• Symplr (best healthcare big data platform).
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere company (healthcare payments innovation award),
• Waystar (best overall healthcare payments solution provider).
• WellSky (best home healthcare solution).

Blog Posts

• Closing Gaps and Integrating Specialists: The Future of Value-Based Care (Inovalon)
• The Path to Integrated Care: 5 Things to Look for in a Technology Platform Partner (Netsmart)
• Data & Analytics Spotlight: A Q&A with Stats Lover Rochelle Henderson (Surescripts)
• The Power of Nurses: Honoring Nurses Week with Technology & Time (Symplr)
• Navigating CMS-0057: What Providers Need To Know (Tegria)
• Solution spotlight: 3 innovations to enhance patient financial care + maximize collections (Waystar)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 5/9/25

Top News

Persivia, a provider of data aggregation and AI-driven analytics, raises $107 million in funding.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Listening: Foo Fighters, of which I’m far from a fan, but I’m obsessed with videos of Dave Grohl (also not a fan) bringing audience members up to play. Kiss Guy and Richard the Drummer will give rock star wannabes goose bumps. I’m also not a fan of sports, but I’m intrigued by YouTube videos and livestreams of the sports-adjacent antics of the Savannah Bananas. 

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Virtual physical therapy vendor Hinge Health updates its IPO prospectus with Q1 results, showing revenue up 50% to $124 million and a $17.1 million net profit. The company announced IPO plans in March but hasn’t set a price range.

AI-powered clinical data abstraction vendor Carta Healthcare raises $18.25 million in Series B1 funding. Industry veterans who are on the executive team include Brent Dover (Medicity, Health Catalyst, and Commure) and Greg Miller (Healthlink, Medicity, and Health Catalyst).

WeightWatchers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to eliminate $1.15 billion in debt. The company’s transformation plan includes creating a better digital experience for members and expanding its weight loss medication telehealth business.

Cedars-Sinai and Redesign Health launch an innovation center that pairs health system experts with startups to develop digital health solutions, with Cedars-Sinai serving as the first customer. The focus will be specialty care access, personalized medicine, workflow intelligence, and provider-payer-patient coordination.

Israel’s Sheba Medical Center will open a US office for its startup accelerator in Massachusetts, aiming for a Boston-area location. The accelerator has backed 100 startups, including three unicorns.

Health and fitness wearable company Whoop releases new models that offer 14-day battery life, a heart screener with ECG whose data can be shared with doctors, daily blood pressure insights, and women’s hormonal insights. Membership costs $199 to $359 per year and includes the device and charger.

People

Health Data Movers names David White (Nordic) business development executive.

Government and Politics

NIH will analyze Medicare and Medicaid claims data to study chronic disease, starting with autism.

President Trump’s replacement nominee for surgeon general has a health tech connection: Casey Means, MD — who dropped out of her residency and never practiced traditional medicine — is a co-founder of Levels, which offers AI-powered tracking of food intake, habits, and data from continuous glucose monitors for health optimization, weight management, and improving athletic performance. Subscription to the app is $199 per year, while adding the CGM and supplies adds $199 per month.

Privacy and Security

Masino discloses in an SEC filing that a cyberattack on April 27 is hampering its ability to ship orders.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signs an executive order that bans state agencies from collecting autism-related personal data unless it is required for care, compliance, or eligibility.

Other

An appeals court rejects the attempt by former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes to have her 2022 fraud conviction overturned, leaving the Supreme Court as her last chance to reverse the 11-year sentence.

Sponsor Updates

• Clinical Architecture staff help sort 2,390 pounds of food at Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana.
• Surescripts will present at Kroger Health’s Nourishing Change Conference May 13-15 in Cincinnati.
• Black Book Research celebrates Women’s Health Month by releasing its free report, “Black Book of Women’s Health Information Technology and Software Innovations.”
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Empowering Plan Sponsors: Data Access & Analysis, with Bridget Mulvenna.”
• Ellkay will exhibit at the 2025 MUSE Inspire Conference May 27-30 in Grapevine, TX.
• Impact Advisors releases a new episode of its “Impactful AI” podcast titled “Synthetic Doppelgängers.”

Blog Posts

• Offshore vs. U.S. Based Billing Partner: Which One is Better for Patient Data Security? (AdvancedMD)
• Overcoming the limits of isolated data (Altera Digital Health)
• How Findhelp is Transforming Social Care Through Connection, Technology, and Trust (Findhelp)
• The Future of Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management (FinThrive)
• Reimagining Service with AI: See What’s Next from Five9 at ServiceNow Knowledge 2025 (Five9)
• How We Did It: 50% Reduction in Epic Hyperdrive Login Times (Goliath Technologies)
• HGP Observations – April 2025 (Healthcare Growth Partners)
• The Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM): A new era in healthcare (Healthmonix)
• Feeling the Pressure? Here’s How to Simplify Your CMS Facility Assessment (Inovalon)
• Watch healthcare innovators and AI experts discuss the power of transformative technologies (Meditech)
• AI for value-based care: Independent study shows Navina’s impact (Navina)

Contacts

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

News 5/7/25

Top News

CareCloud reports Q1 results: revenue up 6%, EPS –$0.04 versus – $0.10. Shares rose 26% Tuesday, valuing the company at $93 million.

The company said last week that its newly created, 50-member AI team will have 500 employees by the end of the year.

Reader Comments

From Nasty Parts: “Re: Epic. Are they getting too big, a la UnitedHealth Group? Smaller software vendors are constantly squeezed by Epic invading their solution, or telling prospects that Epic’s basic system is good enough or that they have a solution on the product roadmap. I think UHG will be broken up at some point and Epic will have 75% of the market in 6-7 years. Are we allowing a monopoly to be created?” Epic, unlike UnitedHealth Group, is giving the market what it wants. The alternative to “allowing” a monopoly is “disallowing” it, for which no legal or practical grounds exist. It’s hard to justify interfering with buyer preference in the absence of consumer harm. My take:

• The acute care EHR market is a legal oligopoly, with Epic its dominant player that keeps increasing market share.
• About half of US hospitals use Epic, which is not a monopoly and certainly not one that has provably competed unfairly.
• Epic’s mega-suite strategy echoes Meditech’s early model: tightly integrated systems from a single vendor, which theoretically lowers both cost and risk.
• That approach is now supercharged by Epic’s deep financial and engineering resources, which have allowed it to push into MyChart Bedside, the Cheers CRM, Hello World messaging, Secure Chat for clinicians, and its sprawling analytics suite. Each new product puts Epic head-to-head with a vendor who built it first and maybe better.
• Beyond making its products attractive, Epic also controls the interoperability and app store access of its potential competitors.
• Epic’s dominance, combined with the massive time, expertise, and capital that would be needed to build a competing system, makes new entrants unlikely.
• There’s no sign that the federal government has an interest in challenging Epic’s position. Dominant players in other industries (Adobe, Intuit, Salesforce, Bloomberg, Shopify) have faced little pushback for similar market control.
• I agree with your major point. Epic is not a monopoly and has done nothing illegal, but its dominance in a critical industry sector creates system risk in providing a single point of failure and a potential bottleneck to innovation if the company gets lazy or does something as a money grab, like going public.
• Until regulators or customers decide to penalize popularity, Epic’s dominance is a feature of the landscape, not a bug.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

HealthStream reports Q1 results: revenue up 1%, EPS $0.14 versus $0.17, falling slightly short of expectations for both and sending shares down nearly 20% Tuesday.

LifeMD reports Q1 results: revenue up 49%, EPS $0.01 versus –$0.19, valuing the virtual primary care company at $342 million.

Sales

• MetroHealth (OH) will implement AI-enhanced inpatient and ambulatory clinical workflow solutions from Pieces Technologies.

People

Revenue cycle solutions vendor Millennia hires Scott Pattillo, MS (Homecare Homebase) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Wilson Health (OH) implements Epic.

OhioHealth Southeastern Medical Center goes live on Epic.

A small Canadian study finds that the medical records ecosystem is a web of commercial data brokers, for-profit providers, and pharmaceutical companies, each of which helps turn patient records into profitable commercial assets. Notably missing from that loop are patients and their best interests. The authors warn that unsupervised distribution of data to drug companies could give them even more leverage to push high-margin, patent-protected drugs.

Government and Politics

Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-IL), the ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Technology Modernization Subcommittee, warns that federal cutbacks could impact the project’s timeline and success. She notes that some of the VA’s recently cancelled projects are related to the EHR project and some EHR modernization staffers have been laid off or accepted a deferred resignation offer.

A poll finds that fewer than half of Americans have any confidence that federal agencies ensure that safety and efficacy of drugs and vaccines, while even fewer are confident that the federal government could respond well to infection disease outbreaks. The authors found that the level of confidence is shaped by partisan perspectives.

Other

Dr. Jayne’s favorite celebrity-backed subscription lab test company, Function Health, acquires full-body scanning MRI company Ezra. Function will now offer a 22-minute full-body scan for the low, low price of $500 – a third of the cost of Ezra’s lowest-tier offering. A 47-minute scan costs just $2,000. Function co-founder and CMO Mark Hyman, MD says that “[w]hat used to be the domain of the wealthy is now accessible to everybody, including comprehensive imaging.”

Sponsor Updates

• AGS Health will exhibit at CHIACON25 June 1-4 in Long Beach, CA.
• DrFirst wins a Silver Stevie Award in the customer service department of the year category at the annual American Business Awards.
• CereCore releases a new podcast titled “Why IT Governance Leads to Innovation and Growth.”
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of “The Informonster Podcast” titled “How Velox Helps Payers Measure Data Usability.”
• Cordea Consulting partners with Amazon Web Services to help healthcare organizations implement Epic’s Isolated Recovery Environment.
• Crossings Healthcare Solutions parent company UHS names former Cerner executive Chris Vernaci associate VP of technology ventures.
• Altera Digital Health announces the activation of Sunrise Surgical Care, its integrated operating theatre system, at Latrobe Regional Health in Australia.
• Redox integrates IntelePeer’s AI-powered automation platform for medical and dental practices with its interoperability network.
• Netsmart adds automated auditing capabilities to its Bells AI platform.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “What’s New with Medicaid PBM? With Jessin Joseph, PharmD, MBA.”

Blog Posts

• Six Key Takeaways from the AGS Health Partner Summit 2025 (AGS Health)
• Easing healthcare challenges with a responsible approach to innovation and AI (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Strength in Every Story: Celebrating Mental Health Awareness Month (Netsmart)
• Mastering IT Governance: Strategies, Insights and Innovations for Growth (CereCore)
• Top Priorities for Private Practices: Hire More Staff & Spend More Time with Patients (AdvancedMD)
• Get your sea legs: How low risk AI paves the way for further adoption (Altera Digital Health)
• 6 keys that drive success in value-based care (Arcadia)
• The Impact of Product Discovery: Why We Start with Curiosity at Artera (Artera)
• Why this benefit leader switched to a more modern, transparent PBM (Capital Rx)
• The Importance and Opportunity of Veterans as Cybersecurity Professionals (Censinet)
• 5 Takeaways from KLAS Research’s “Data & Analytics Platforms 2025” Report (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 5/5/25

Top News

The White House’s budget proposal would increase funding for the VA’s Oracle Health EHR project by $2.17 billion.

The proposed budget also calls for a $493 million reduction in the VA’s spending on specific IT systems.

Reader Comments

From Earl: “Re: Baptist Health South Florida. Replacing Cerner with Epic in a huge loss for Oracle Health.” Unverified, but I see that BHSF has been added to Epic’s UserWeb list. The health system has 11 hospitals, 28,000 employees, and annual revenue of $6 billion.

From AI Esquire: “Re: patients correctly diagnosing themselves with ChatGPT after their doctor missed something. Will an AI double-check become the standard of care?” When consumer-grade AI outthinks a doctor, which is surely rare, the best-case outcome is reputational damage. The worst is having a malpractice attorney feigning puzzlement for the jury’s benefit in asking, “Doctor, if your patient thought to check a free version of ChatGPT, why didn’t you?” Most clinical decisions are routine, but when they’re not, a second opinion that is backed by real-time evidence and that is free of confirmation bias isn’t just helpful, it’s malpractice self defense.Those ambient documentation tools that everyone is rushing out could extend beyond the commoditized function of simple transcription and integrate with the EHR to put helpful clinical information on the screen to support treatment decisions or patient questions. That’s a lot more professional than watching your doctor painfully pecking at ChatGPT on their phone.

From Darnell: “Re: hospital EHR count. Was the percentage number you ran based on organizations or beds?” The KLAS report contained both, but I ran the hospital count — Epic 48%, Oracle Health 27%, and Meditech 15%. By the percentage of 887,000 acute hospital beds, it’s Epic 55%, Oracle Health 22%, and Meditech 13%.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Voting in last week’s poll was both heavy and decisive.

New poll to your right or here: In the most recent major health tech purchase you were involved with, what triggered the buyer’s initial interest? It’s weird wording I know, but I wanted to make the question applicable for people on both sides of the deal.

Thanks to these companies for their recent support of HIStalk. Click a logo to learn more.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Waystar reports Q1 results: revenue up 14%, EPS $0.17 versus –$0.13. WAY shares have nearly doubled since closing below their IPO price on the first day of trading in June 2024. CEO Matt Hawkins said in the earnings call that the company has shifted “from AI hype to ROI reality” in delivering results through its AI-powered products.

Private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners acquires an undisclosed stake in NextGen Healthcare from Thoma Bravo, which took the company private in 2023.

Five South Florida Tenet hospitals sue The Leapfrog Group, which they claim penalized them with poor safety grades because they declined to provide proprietary data.

People

Civitas Networks for Health names Jolie Ritzo, MPH as interim CEO following the departure of founding CEO Lisa Bari, MPH, MBA, who has joined Innovaccer as head of external affairs.

TigerConnect hires Sean O’Neal (Sinch) as CEO.

Google Chief Health Officer and former National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MSc will retire this summer. Replacing her will be Michael Howell, MD, MPH, Google’s chief clinical officer.

Dale Gold, MD (CommonSpirit Health) joins Kaiser Permanente Medical Foundation as CMIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Early adopters are piloting an Epic feature that allows patients to schedule appointments using a texting-based AI assistant.

A new KLAS report on data and analytics platforms scores Dimensional Insight #1 in customer satisfaction. Oracle Health finished last due to lack of service, support, and communication, but most customers say that they will keep using its product because they are committed to Millennium. Nearly one-third of surveyed Health Catalyst customers plan to replace the product due to high data storage costs and lack of innovation.

Privacy and Security

Microsoft will replace passwords with phishing-resistant passkeys for newly created Microsoft accounts. The company hopes that the number of password authentications will decline to the point that it can eliminate password support.

Other

The best thing I that read on LinkedIn this week was from Colonel Chani Cordero, MHA, MEd, CIO/CDO of Brooke Army Medical Center and a soldier for nearly 20 years. It’s just a personal update, but it got my attention because her personal branding is outstanding. She’s in great career shape if her plan is 20 and out.

UCHealth CMIO CT Lin, MD posted this slide from a presentation by MultiCare at Epic XGM titled “A Wellness Approach to Improving Provider Efficiency and Reducing Burrnout.” It’s a refreshing take from Chris Kelley, MD, MS; Wesley Lane; and Tamara Chang, MD, especially the “B- is good enough” part. I figure it must be insightful if CT’s a fan.

Sponsor Updates

• InterSystems will host Ready 2025 and the accompanying Healthcare Leadership Conference June 22-25 in Orlando.
• RLDatix joins The Leapfrog Group’s Partners Advisory Committee.
• Black Book Research survey-takers rank Netsmart’s GEHRIMED as the top solution for geriatric and gerontology physician practices.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast episode titled “Interview with Melissa Welch, MD.”
• Sonifi Health offers a new case study featuring Henry Ford Health titled “Virtual care, real results: How to successfully transform virtual patient care across an organization.”
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company, publishes a new e-book titled “Safeguarding Patient Payment Data: A Critical Priority for Healthcare Providers in 2025.”
• WellSky will exhibit at the Ohio Health Care Association Convention May 5-8 in Columbus.
• VisiQuate offers a new client overview titled “How predictive forecasting helped CHOC plan smarter, act faster, and stay ahead of cash flow challenges.”

Blog Posts

• The Top Post-Acute Revenue Cycle Management Challenges — and How to Overcome Them (Inovalon)
• From culture to credibility: Elevating trust and reputation through “just culture” (RLDatix)
• Transforming healthcare through nurse-led innovation (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• What You Need to Know About Interoperability and How it Affects You: Part 2 (Netsmart)
• Over-screening and wellness apps: Why raw health data doesn’t always support effective healthcare (Nordic)
• HIPAA Security Rule Update: A New Era for Healthcare Cybersecurity (Nym)
• Knowledge25 – Where Optimum Will Be (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• 3 takeaways from this year’s patient experience conference (Sonifi Health)
• Transforming Prior Authorization: A Leap Towards Efficiency with Touchless Prior Authorization (Surescripts)
• 5 Small Ways Hospitals & Health Systems Can Celebrate Nurses Week in 2025 (Symplr)
• Selecting a Conversational AI Partner: Key Considerations for Healthcare Organizations (Tegria)
• The psychology of patient payments: How to improve collections + patient satisfaction (Waystar)

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 5/2/25

Top News

KLAS publishes its annual acute care EHR market share report, with these highlights:

• Vendor partnership strength has become a key differentiator.
• Oracle Health declined to provide new contract data, so KLAS used public sources.
• Oracle Health lost a net 74 hospitals and 17,000 beds in 2024, with customers citing broken promises and weak relationships. Loyalty and relationship scores have dropped 10 points since Oracle acquired Cerner.
• Epic posted its biggest net gain ever, adding 176 hospitals and 29,000 beds in 2024. It dominated small-hospital deals via Community Connect and won 70% of competitive decisions overall.
• Market share: Epic 48%, Oracle Health 27%, Meditech 15%.
• Nearly half of Meditech’s customers still run its legacy systems. Of those making a move, two-thirds chose Expanse, often citing the value of Meditech as a Service.

Reader Comments

From Creole: “Re: Oracle Health. Losing a customer also means losing access to its data, which was Larry’s big thing in buying Cerner.” Defecting Cerner customers take their data to Epic, undermining Ellison’s vision of a national health records platform and research repository. Oracle likely viewed Cerner as a valuable data asset, but outside of the DoD (and perhaps eventually the VA), that value diminishes with every lost client. As a tech company, Oracle seems to have underestimated the importance of Cerner’s domain experts, many of whom it has driven away, which has eroded trust and limits future business development. Not to mention that technical whiz-bangery doesn’t change the reality that Oracle Health will need to take business away from Epic to grow unless Epic collapses post-Judy. We healthcare lifers have reason to be wary, having lived through the loud arrivals and quiet exits of outsiders like GE Healthcare, Siemens, McKesson, Misys, and IBM.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I checked some of my past Temu orders and found that prices have tripled or more in the trade war environment. It’s probably no accident that I can’t compare further because everything in my order history now shows as discontinued or sold out, making the new, higher prices harder to track, although items that feature the same photo can be ordered for a lot more money.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Teladoc Health acquires UpLift, which offers virtual services for mental health and medication management, for $30 million in cash and $15 million in potential earnout. UpLift’s 2024 revenue was $15 million. 

Healthcare AI workflow automation platform vendor Plenful raises $50 million in a Series B funding round.

Ascend Learning acquires TIPreport, which offers medical education feedback and competency tracking.

Amwell posts Q1 results: revenue up 12%, EPS –$.19 versus –$4.94. AMWL shares dropped 17% before the market’s close on Thursday and have lost 40% in the past 12 months.

Sales

• In UAE, Al Zahra Hospital Dubai chooses InterSystems TrakCare EHR and its fully managed hosting service.
• Silver Hill Hospital (CT) will implement Meditech Expanse under the Meditech as a Service subscription model.

People

Craig Richardville, MBA (Intermountain Health) joins Guidehouse as a partner in its health practice.

Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital hires Kevin Shorten (Alameda Health System) as VP/CITO.

Matt Madden, MBA (EverCommerce) joins Net Health as VP of product and business development.

Advocate Health promotes Matthew Anderson, MD, MHA to SVP of clinical transformation.

Announcements and Implementations

Zocdoc launches Zo, an AI phone assistant that manages incoming patient scheduling calls.

An AdvancedMD survey of the owners of private medical practices finds that 44% plan to renegotiate payment rates and two-thirds will hire new employees.

Government and Politics

New York’s fire department issues a directive that requires ambulances to take patients to the nearest hospital as assigned by a computer system, regardless of patient preference or existing provider relationship. An FDNY commissioner dismissed complaints as mostly coming from hospitals that worry about losing volume, explaining, “We’re not the Uber or Lyft business to take people where they want to go.”

Privacy and Security

Politico reports that the White House has shifted HHS OCR’s focus from HIPAA, patient privacy, and cybersecurity to enforcing the federal bans on DEI programs and transgender care. An HHS spokesperson said that the agency is “restoring its tradition of upholding rigorous, evidence-based science” while rejecting “woke DEI policies.” Most regional investigators have reportedly been dismissed, leaving just 18 of the original 100.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders staff works with The Sandwich Project to make 700 sandwiches to help combat food inequity in Atlanta.
• The “Provider’s Edge” podcast features Consensus Cloud Solutions EVP Bevey Minder in an episode titled “Tech Equity is the Missing Link in Health Equity.”
• Black Book Research publishes a new report titled “Women’s Health Information Technology and Software innovations.”
• Netsmart’s MyUnity EHR achieves Community Health Accreditation Partner verification for hospice care.
• WellSky announces enhanced capabilities to help healthcare organizations succeed in value-based care models, including the new CMS Transforming Episode Accountability Model.
• Infinx announces its Patient Access Plus solution listing in Epic’s Connection Hub on Showroom.
• The new season of the Surescripts award-winning podcast, “There’s a Better Way,” will premiere May 20.
• Elsevier offers its complimentary, accredited Gen AI Academy for Health to help clinicians utilize generative AI responsibly and effectively in their practice.
• FinThrive publishes a new case study titled “How Eskenazi Health Transformed Claims Processing.”
• Artera, Ellkay, HealthMark Group, Inbox Health, Infinx, MRO, and TruBridge will exhibit at the AAOE Annual Conference May 2-5 in Atlanta.
• InterSystems joins the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium as a founding member.

Blog Posts

• Why healthcare still relies on faxing—and why it’s a problem (Altera Digital Health)
• 6 Proven Ways to Improve Agent Productivity and Efficiency (Five9)
• What primary care providers must know about billing, compliance, and MIPS MVPs in 2025 (Healthmonix)
• Workforce Analytics Software for Aged Care: Data-Driven Staffing That Works (Inovalon)

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 4/30/25

Top News

Community Health Systems (TN) restores computer systems at a reported 45 hospitals after several days of downtime that was caused by an Oracle Health engineer who mistakenly deleted critical storage during routine maintenance.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Private equity firm GTCR is reportedly looking to sell value-based healthcare technology vendor Cedar Gate Technologies at a $1 billion valuation. GTCR launched the company in 2014.

People

Direct Recruiters promotes Ben Shamis, MBA to managing partner.

DexCare promotes Matthew Blosl to CEO.

Pothik Chatterjee, MA, MBA joins Rice University as executive director of Digital Health Institute, which was formed with Houston Methodist.

Announcements and Implementations

Houston Methodist implements Ambience Healthcare’s new ambient AI documentation technology for emergency department and inpatient settings.

Black Book Research names Netsmart as the top-rated provided of EMR/PM solutions for physical therapy, outpatient rehabilitation, and speech therapy.

CliniComp adds enterprise PACS to its New Era EHR.

Abbott integrates its FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose monitoring system with Epic.

A new KLAS report on PACS finds that customers are expecting technology changes to accommodate AI and cloud. Sectra and Agfa Healthcare earn high marks overall, while GE HealthCare and Optum have lost significant ground due to lack of innovation. Intelerad users complain about poor Tier 1 support and being charged for services that were once free, while users of both systems from Philips — IntelliSpace PACS and Image Management Vue PACS — report deep dissatisfaction because of weak product development and poor support.

Government and Politics

Stat profiles Chris Klomp, the founder and CEO of Collective Medical (sold to PointClickCare in late 2020) who is now director of the Center for Medicare.

Privacy and Security

Ascension reports that patient data from care sites in five states may have been compromised during a December cybersecurity incident. It also states that it mistakenly shared some of the information with its third-party partner, which later experienced the software breach.

The Interlock ransomware group claims to have stolen data from outpatient dialysis company DaVita, which announced it was the victim of a ransomware attack several weeks ago. The group has posted data screenshots on the dark web, though no public mention of a specific ransom amount has been made.

Sponsor Updates

• CliniComp adds enterprise PACS to its New Era EHR with Intrinsic AI Solution Suite.
• Black Book Market Research announces Netsmart as the top-ranked IT vendor in its “2025 Post-Acute Technology Market Report.”
• Clearsense earns NCQA’s Validated Data Stream Status for the second year in a row.
• Wolters Kluwer Health announces that select UpToDate Enterprise Edition customers can now access UpToDate patient education content directly within their Epic EHR and MyChart patient portal.
• AdvancedMD partners with Moyae as an integration partner to boost efficiencies for ophthalmology and optometry practices.
• Agfa HealthCare will exhibit at SIIM 2025 May 21-23 in Portland, OR.
• AvaSure, InterSystems, and Philips Capsule will sponsor and exhibit at ATA’s Nexus 2025 May 3-5 in New Orleans.
• The “Ascendle Unscripted” podcast features Cardamom Health VP of Business Development Bridget Bell in an episode titled “Preparing your healthtech organization for AI.”
• Censinet releases a new “Risk Never Sleeps” podcast featuring Genesis Medical Associates Director of IT Bill Laukaitis.
• Consensus Cloud Solutions announces its e-fax cloud fax platform has placed twelfth on G2’s Best Healthcare Software Products list.

Blog Posts

• Handling Risk Adjustment and HCC Coding in Value-Based Care (AGS Health)
• Three challenges threatening rural hospital stability (Altera Digital Health)
• Physician Burnout: Fix the Foundational Elements First (Goliath Technologies)
• Why Now for Agentic AI in Healthcare: A Q&A with Guillaume de Zwirek (Artera)
• Ransomware in Healthcare: Why an Isolated Recovery Environment (IRE) Is Essential for Protecting Your Epic EHR (Cordea Consulting)
• The Importance of Culture Fit in Remote Healthcare Technology Teams (Direct Recruiters)

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 4/28/25

Top News

An anonymous HHS official says that despite last week’s announcement, it will not create a registry of people with autism. NIH will continue with plans to build a $50 million repository of de-identified data that will be available to selected researchers.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD said last week that NIH would be “developing national disease registries, including a new one for autism,” raising concerns about patient privacy and the use of private data sources such as insurance claims and pharmacies.

CBS News reports that doctors who treat autism are being overwhelmed by patients who are asking that their data be deleted and their appointments cancelled.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has described autism as a “preventable disease.” He has stated that HHS will determine its cause by September, although Bhattacharya has since said that the research grants won’t be issued until then.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Respondent choices were decisive in last week’s poll. I’m curious to know if your satisfaction with a vendor has ever improved with its acquisition?

New poll to your right or here: Do you trust government-led health data initiatives to handle your personal health information securely and responsibly?

Listening: Viagra Boys, raw post-punk with a saxophone kicker from Sweden, although the singer was born and raised in California. I’m not sure I love it yet, but it got my attention. They are probably best enjoyed in cramped, sweaty club where the lead singer’s stomach-leading slouch and sometimes non-musical growling shows his indifference to what we non-creatives think.

Today I learned (courtesy of ChatGPT) the term “zero complementizer” versus “explicit complementizer,” the latter of which makes a sentence easier to read. I change this constantly when editing someone else’s writing, but I didn’t know what to call it. Examples:

• The singer says that she won’t appear. The word “that” is an explicit complementizer. It is more formal and also easier to read.
• The singer says she won’t appear. This word “that” is implied but omitted.

The generous annual donation of long-time reader Mike funded these DonorsChoose teach grant requests, which also benefitted from matching funds from third party organizations and my Anonymous Vendor Executive:

• Headphones for Ms. T’s elementary school class in Fayette, MS.
• Tablets for Ms. E’s elementary school class in Tarzana, CA.
• Math learning games and centers for Ms. H’s elementary school class in Naples, FL.
• Lego kits for the elementary school robotics club of Ms. M in Dawson, GA.
• Research center furniture for Ms. C’s elementary school class in Dundee, MS.
• STEM centers for Ms. H’s elementary school class in Montgomery, AL.
• Coding robots for Ms. U’s elementary school class in Miami, FL.
• Uniform shirts for Mr. P’s high school class in Camden, NJ.
• Scientific calculators for Dr. W’s middle school class in Camden, NJ.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Business Insider publishes the pitch deck of Doctronic, which just raised $5 million in seed funding. The company’s website offers a symptom-checker that suggests possible diagnoses, then prompts the user to book a telehealth visit from its site. The deck says revenue will also eventually come from referrals and medication orders.

North York General Hospital becomes the first Cerner client in Canada to migrate to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, after which it reported improved EHR response times.

Sales

• KONZA National Network will participate in Phase 2 of the Missouri Department of Mental Health’s Electronic Long-Term Services and Supports (eLTSS) Data Exchange Project.

People

NYC Health + Hospitals promotes Divya Pathhak, MS, MBA to VP/chief data and artificial intelligence officer.

Suzanne Cogan, MBA (Aspirion) joins WebPT as chief customer officer.

Announcements and Implementations

MedStar Health will replace Oracle Health with Epic, targeting a fall 2027 go-live. A reader-shared internal memo says that Oracle Health’s software “has unfortunately not matured over time” and that MedStar has “evolved beyond the capabilities of our current technology.” Leadership also expects Epic’s RCM system to boost revenue. All other tech projects for FY2026 and beyond are paused unless individually approved by the executive team. MedStar, a Cerner customer since 1999, has 10 hospitals, 35,000 employees, and $8.3 billion in annual revenue.

Government and Politics

The DoD hires telehealth founder Justin Fulcher as a senior DoD advisor. Fulcher co-founded Singapore-based RingMD, which went bankrupt, and worked with the DOGE team  at the VA.

Privacy and Security

Yale New Haven Health notifies 5.5 million people that their data was exposed in a March 2025 cyberattack, according to a breach notice filed with HHS OCR.

Other

A Reddit post from a current Epic employee shows retrospective insight about losing the VA contract:

Looking back, we weren’t really ready for what implementing and supporting the VA meant in terms of complexity, red tape, rigidity …  Our philosophy is that your organization will change to effectively use the software, while Oracle’s philosophy is that they will tailor the software to work for your organization. Every core competency and technical or functional advantage Epic has today originates from the advantage of that fundamental difference in approach to software in an industry as complex as this … We have more than 450 … organizations live on Epic and making each one change to match how the other 449 orgs do something in the system is significantly easier than making the system different for each of those 450 orgs. It makes implementation, long term support, and development of new features infinitely easier. It also makes it easier on the actual users.

Sponsor Updates

• Altera Digital Health publishes a new client story titled “Systems up at Hendrick Health: How Altera streamlined a major upgrade.”
• Black Book Research ranks the digital interoperability performance of healthcare systems across 18 high-income countries.
• StoneGate Senior Living implements WellSky’s EHR and RCM technologies.
• Optimum Healthcare IT achieves AWS Premier Tier Services Partner status.
• Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the Back Door” podcast titled “The lost and found files – Data Loss Prevention with guest Zak Cowan.”
• RLDatix will exhibit at HSPA’s annual conference April 27-29 in Louisville, KY.
• SmarterDx will present at ACDIS 2025 May 6 in Kissimmee, FL.

Blog Posts

• Crisis Response in Action: 5 Strategies to Strengthen 988 and Community-Based Care (Netsmart)
• How can a hospital improve the inpatient experience? Start with a map. (Nordic)
• Certification Tester: A Game Changer for Your NCPDP Upgrade (Surescripts)
• Teamwork & Team Leaders: Making the Difference in Retaining & Supporting Nurses (Symplr)
• Comparing Technology Initiatives: How Small and Large Hospitals Strategize (CereCore)

Contacts

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

News 4/25/25

Top News

Eli Lilly sues four telehealth startups — Mochi Health, Willow Health, Fella & Delilah Health, and Henry Meds — for selling compounded versions of its $1,000-per-month GLP-1 weight loss drug Zepbound.

The FDA has reminded compounders that the practice is allowed only while a drug appears on its shortage list. FDA declared the Zepbound shortage over on December 19, 2024. It gave compounders 90 days to comply during the enforcement discretion period that ended on March 19, 2025.

Lilly says that the companies are sidestepping its patents by offering customized or vitamin-fortified doses, a tactic that has been used with other compounded products. It seems to be focusing on companies that are manufacturing such products on a large scale.

Lilly sold $16 billion worth of Zepbound and its diabetes twin Mounjaro last year.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I paid a Fiverr freelancer $10 to throw together a one-page sponsorship flyer that uses my survey data and a new batch from Black Book Research. I’m squirmy about the “’buy now, operators are standing by” vibe it throws off, but I’m all about getting to the point and it’s factual, if a bit immodest.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Kansas City-based HEI Global Health, a provider of revenue cycle solutions for healthcare systems, will open its first international branch office in Dubai. CEO Aaron Habben founded the company 20 years ago after spending several years at Cerner.

Pennsylvania high school student Max Kopp, who turned a science fair project on needle-free glucose monitoring into his startup VitaSense, launches a website to share his lessons learned and to mentor students in science and entrepreneurship.

Sales

• Valley View (CO) will implement Epic under UCHealth’s Community Connect program, apparently replacing Meditech.

Announcements and Implementations

AdvaMed, a non-profit medical technology trade association, publishes an AI roadmap that includes these recommendations, and others, for HHS:

• Ensure data protection without stifling innovation.
• Evaluate whether HIPAA needs to be updated to reflect AI.
• Develop guidelines for patient notice and authorization when their data is used to develop AI.
• FDA should continue to be the lead regulator for safety and effectiveness.
• FDA should implement Predetermined Change Control Plans for Medical Devices (PCCP) for AI devices to enhance pre-market efficiency.
• FDA should promote standards and issue guidance to promote common understanding between FDA and manufacturers.
• Congress should consider legislative solutions to address the budget neutrality requirements for Medicare.
• CMS should develop a payment pathway for algorithm-based healthcare services.
• CMS Innovation Center should test alternative payment models for AI technologies.

A new KLAS Arch Collaborative report finds that virtual EHR training now matches in-person methods as measured by Net EHR Experience Scores for both physicians and nurses, while cutting costs and scaling more effectively.

Government and Politics

A New York assemblyman who is also a pharmacist proposes a bill that would require hospitals to send a patient’s full electronic medical records to their insurers for pre-authorization, replacing faxes and mailed forms. Insurance companies and employers support the move, while hospitals worry that payers would use the more comprehensive information to deny more claims.

Axios reports that DOGE-directed layoffs at FDA have left it unable to keep its drug databases and NDC directory updated as affected employees are using their remaining government time to hunt for jobs. A significant HHS layoff is set for June 2. FDA drug reviewers have also reported that their work is on hold because they no longer have access to academic journals.

A Kansas anesthesiologist pleads guilty to healthcare fraud for exploiting his role as a telehealth contract doctor to mine company portals for patient information that he then used to submit fraudulent orders for DME, pain creams, and genetic tests. Scott Roethle, MD made $674,000 from five companies that paid him $30 per order, which cost cost Medicare $1.5 million.

In Canada, medical researchers and lawyers urge strengthening privacy laws and consider moving EHR data in-country to protect it from US-based AI training, saying that the data is housed on American cloud services that could be vulnerable if the Trump administration wants to access the information.

Other

Tennova Healthcare’s six Tennessee hospitals go offline when Oracle Health engineers accidentally delete a critical database storage component of its Cerner system.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research uncovers nine under-the-radar AI innovations set to transform healthcare revenue cycle management.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Judi Health: Going Beyond Pharmacy and into Medical Claims, with AJ Loiacono and Dr. Sunil Budhrani.”
• Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise Suite earns ISO 9001 recertification for 2025-2028.
• Ellkay will exhibit at the American Alliance of Orthopaedic Executives Annual Conference May 2-5 in Atlanta.
• Health Data Movers and Symplr will sponsor the CHIME Innovation Summit Southeast April 30-May 2 in Jacksonville, FL.
• Healthmonix names Marina Verdara (Tebra) account manager.
• Impact Advisors releases a new episode of its “Impactful AI” podcast titled “Clinicians Take the Lead!”
• Infinx CMO Radhika Tandon will speak at the HFMA Nor Cal Chapter Women’s Event April 25 in Pleasanton, CA.
• Lincata announces that its LincTV plug-in device designed for Epic’s MyChartBedside is now available in Epic Toolbox and will showcase it at XGM.
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a white paper titled “Transforming Operations and Care with the Cloud.”
• Linus Health will present at the virtual League Connect Digital Summit May 7.
• Med Tech Solutions publishes a new white paper titled “Proven IT Strategies Improve Care Delivery and Build a Foundation for Growth.”
• First Databank and Surescripts will present at the NCPDP 2025 Annual Technology & Business Conference May 5-7 in Scottsdale, AZ.

Blog Posts

• Hope, Healing, and Hastings the PAT Dog (Altera Digital Health)
• Not All Text Messages Are Created Equal (Some Are Driving Communication Barriers in Healthcare) (Artera)
• AI Agents: Integrating AI into Customer Service (Five9)
• The Hidden Challenges of Epic Implementation During M&A (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Mastering Record Retrieval: Smarter MRR Strategies for Risk Adjustment Success (Inovalon)
• Celebrating HIP Week: How MRO Supports Health Information Professionals with Automated Clinical Data Exchange (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 4/23/25

Top News

NIH is aggregating data from insurance claims, the VA, Indian Health Service, pharmacy chains, and even wearables to support the HHS-mandated autism research initiative that was launched by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

NIH will also create a disease registry to track Americans with autism. 

Kennedy has stated that HHS will determine the cause of autism by September.

Reader Comments

From Oingo Boingo: “Re: engagement. You said your site was tops in health tech media, but didn’t explain what that means.” The Black Book Research survey included these questions: (a) whether respondents had read anything on a given site in the past month, and (b) whether they spent more than 20 minutes there. Becker’s Health IT & CIO Report beat HIStalk on raw visits, but trailed badly on time spent on site, which I take to mean that they write a strong headline but less-strong content. One site that I assumed was a capable competitor turned out to be a non-factor, with 0% of respondents saying they had read it in the past month. HIStalk was also #1 in overall credibility and industry respect and also topped the category of providing unbiased and accurate information with a score of 9.9 on a 10 scale. As a lazy, part-time amateur, I’ll take it.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I visited a family member who was a patient in a small, university-affiliated hospital several times last week. Given that I’ve only spent one night in a hospital myself, and that was years ago, these were my technology observations:

• The entire staff impressively used Stryker-owned Vocera’s communication for both clinical and administrative conversations, including in the patient rooms. I didn’t hear a single overhead page.
• They used Epic’s secure messaging function to ask questions and coordinate care in real time to get answers quickly rather than promising to find out later.
• Barcode verification was performed for just about everything.
• Clinical information flowed spectacularly across care that included ED, procedures, and clinical team rounds.
• The ability to order patient meals and guest trays via room service was very different than in my early hospital days.
• The nurse made appointments for follow-visits and had prescriptions filled and delivered at discharge, all via Epic, I presume.

Dear people of the Internet: if your graph’s y-axis doesn’t start at zero, I assume that you’re trying to support a shaky opinion rather than presenting facts and I move on.

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Brellium announces $16.7 million in Series A funding. The company offers automated chart auditing software to help providers maintain clinical and payer compliance.

Value-based care workflow automation vendor Reveleer acquires Novillus, which offers provider engagement and care gap management software to payers. Headquartered in California, Reveleer opened an operations hub in India last month.

Automated case management software startup Ascertain raises $10 million in Series A funding.

Patient experience software vendor Promptly acquires medical practice software from Patient Spectrum.

People

MyMichigan Health promotes Pankaj Jandwani, MD, MMM to VP/CIO.

Clearwater appoints Jeff Englander, MBA (New York University) executive advisor, business development.

Adam Weinstein, MBA (Cityblock Health) joins Teladoc Health as chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

South Australia Health implements Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise EHR and patient administration system across all of its public hospitals. The contract for the $225 million project was signed in 2011.

Emory University Hospital Midtown (GA) integrates AI-powered fall-prevention capabilities from VirtuSense Technologies with its virtual nursing service. Emory Healthcare plans to deploy the VSTOne technology across eight inpatient units this year.

University of California Health describes how its nurses are using AI.

Adventist HealthCare rolls out Mednition’s Kate AI to several of its EDs to support and validate nurse decisions for high-risk and complex patients.

A new KLAS report on ambulatory core solution mindshare finds that while functionality is the highest consideration factor, interoperability trails just behind, while usability is #3.

Government and Politics

A VA memo to regional directors stresses the need for clinicians who provide virtual consults to do so in private workspaces as they return to working in VA facilities in the coming weeks, per a mandatory return-to-office order that has left some providers concerned about working in open, call-center-like spaces. The memo doesn’t specify what providers should do if such spaces aren’t available. Meanwhile, the VA reports a 12% increase in veteran satisfaction with its virtual care services, particularly the VA Video Connect app.

Other

The apparently popular “Acquired” podcast devotes a four-hour (!!) episode to the history of Epic. It doesn’t say much that you and I don’t already know about the company, but it’s aimed at generalists who won’t realize until the hosts finally say it that Epic has never acquired or been acquired and never will be, according to the policy of its board. I downloaded the audio into my AI tool to transcribe, saving me about 3:45 of that ridiculous runtime. I found only a few nuggets:

• The hosts call Judy Faulkner the most successful female entrepreneur in history.
• Judy’s mother was part of a group that won the Nobel Peace Prize. This is the only new fact that I learned.
• Harvard Medical School Professor Warner Slack, MD sent Judy to Boston to learn how to run a business from Meditech’s Neil Pappalardo, who mentored her for three days. The hosts gave Meditech and Pappalardo a lot of props, but surprisingly didn’t mention InterSystems.
• Hosts: “Epic basically never did hire any business people. It is essentially a big gigantic company of programmers, logicians, implementation people who could be programmers, who would think like programmers. That is the DNA of the company to this day.”
• Epic won the Kaiser deal because Carl Dvorak knew that system architecture and performance was a big deal and pulled a team all-nighter to model it out in Excel using Kaiser’s data, which Cerner didn’t do. Kaiser wanted equity, so Cerner offered 10% of the company while Judy said no, that wouldn’t be good for Epic, its customers, or Kaiser.
• [Hosts on the VA contract] “Talking to Epic customers and CIOs in the research, they are like down on their hands and knees, thankful that Epic did not win this deal. Because Cerner just got dragged so into the muck … your founder and your leader is passing away in the midst of this very complex process. After that, Cerner cycles through a whole bunch of different leaders over the next few years. Meanwhile, Epic, kind of unburdened by this DoD and VA shitshow for lack of a better word, just keeps winning deal after deal in the large system providers and in their own way.”

Sponsor Updates

• AGS Health will exhibit at the 2025 ACDIS Conference May 4-7 in Orlando.
• CereCore publishes a new case study titled “Better User Satisfaction, Valuable Focus and Confidence Restored with Knowledgeable IT Service Desk.”
• A new Black Book Research survey finds that healthcare organizations are accelerating plans to shift from traditional revenue cycle outsourcing to AI-powered RCM platforms.
• The “This Just In” podcast features Arcadia Chief Strategy Officer Aneesh Chopra.
• Optimum Healthcare IT launches the first episode of its “Visionary Voices” podcast featuring guests from Northeast Georgia Health System.
• Capital Rx will present at the Business Group on Health Annual Conference April 22-24 in Nashville.
• Divurgent names Patricia Allvin (MLH Healthcare Consulting) senior director of client service.

Blog Posts

• Embracing Coding AI: A Strategic Vision for the future (AGS Health)
• CIOs Reveal Insider Initiatives: Transforming Budget Woes into New Victories (CereCore)
• How AI is Improving Clinical Documentation Accuracy and Compliance (Nym)
• Teamwork & Team Leaders: Making the Difference in Retaining & Supporting Nurses (Symplr)
• Improving EHR Training To Reduce Clinician Burnout (Tegria)
• The journey ahead: Truly transforming healthcare organizations (Altera Digital Health)
• Celebrating 10 Years of Artera: A Decade of Innovation in Patient Engagement (Artera)
• Virtual Care Solutions to Nurse Staffing Shortages (AvaSure)
• Smart revenue cycles start with smart build (Cardamom Health)
• Navigating AI-Driven Cybersecurity Threats in Healthcare with Enhanced Security Operations (CloudWave)
• What My Recent ER Visit Taught Me About Healthcare and Data (Dimensional Insight)
• Pharmacy’s Missed Moment—and What Comes Next (DrFirst)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 4/21/25

Top News

A Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency advisory recommends that users of the legacy Oracle cloud environment take several precautionary actions following a recent breach that exposed user credentials.

A hacker has claimed to have exfiltrated 6 million records that could affect 140,000 Oracle Cloud tenants. Security researchers believe that the claim is accurate, although Oracle continues to deny that information was exposed.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Company trust apparently erodes when its leadership’s designer footwear has rarely trod the uncarpeted parts of the hospital.

New poll to your right or here: What’s the hardest lesson you’ve learned in your health tech career? Add a comment if your favorite wasn’t listed. Mine would be that it doesn’t matter that you work for a great company if your boss is a challenge.

Thanks to industry veteran Doug Brown of Black Book Research for designing and conducting an excellent industry survey about HIStalk’s position among health tech media sources, as requested by some of my sponsors. Lorre sent him basic information and he was off to the races with a well-designed study methodology and sample size. The results intrigued him so much that he ran a second survey that covered general trust in health tech media. I’ll post a summary later, but some points are:

• HIStalk was #1 in Trust Index Rankings among all health tech media.
• HIStalk was #1 in engagement and influence. Some of the sources that seem popular or that are run by big corporations actually scored 0% or 1% in engagement (i.e., despite appearances, nobody’s paying attention).
• Respondents are fed up with media sources that run vendor-sponsored material without disclosing their paid relationships (it would be tacky of me to list the bottom finishers in this category, but you can take a guess). 
• The poll’s summary, which I’m shamelessly bragging about, is this: “HIStalk stands out for its influence, independence, and continued relevance to the decision-makers shaping the future of health IT … influencing perception, credibility, and market momentum at the highest levels.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Sales

• NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde taps Doccla to power a 1,000-bed virtual hospital as part of its hospital-at-home rollout in Scotland.

Announcements and Implementations

Leidos will invest $10 million over five years in a partnership with University of Pittsburgh to develop AI-powered digital pathology tools for early disease detection.

Sky Lakes Medical Center (OR) will lay off 70 employees, most of them in patient financial services and coding, due to the implementation of IKS Health technology that includes ambient documentation.

UK regulators approve the use of robotic surgery for 11 procedure types in NHS specialty centers, hoping to trim patient backlogs and streamline care.

Government and Politics

FDA will phase out animal testing for drugs and move to AI-based models.

Privacy and Security

A misconfigured database that is owned by Scotland-based healthcare staffing software vendor Logezy exposes 8 million records, including ID documents, work authorizations, certificates, timesheets, user photos, and electronic signatures.

Other

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman says that ChatGPT diagnosed and resolved his persistent jaw-clicking in one minute, a problem that specialists hadn’t been able to fix in over five years. He credits the chatbot with recommending a simple mouth-opening technique that realigned his jaw. Hoffman disputed a reader’s comment that doctors must hate ChatGPT: “If implemented correctly, AI could help doctors diagnose individual patients faster, do less paperwork, and see more patients in a day.”

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research’s survey of UK healthcare leaders dives into the potential impact of NHS restructuring on digital health planning.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast episode titled “Interview with Resa Lewiss, MD.”
• Praia Health and Abundant Health Acquisition partner to deliver the first end-to-end, personalized consumer experience for healthcare systems.
• Visage Imaging will exhibit at SIIM 2025 May 21-23 in Portland, OR.
• Vyne Medical will sponsor and exhibit at NAHAM’s annual conference April 30-May 3 in Phoenix.

Blog Posts

• What You Need to Know About Interoperability and How it Affects You (Netsmart)
• Patient care continuity: Safeguarding Epic EHR access during disruptions (Nordic)
• How Autonomous Medical Coding Can Speed Up Claims Processing (Nym)
• Turning Data Into Insights at USA Health (RLDatix)
• We’re a Designated QHIN! Here’s What That Means for You (Surescripts)
• Recapping AONL 2025: Key Takeaways & Insights (Symplr)
• Key Takeaways From IPMI Healthcare Finance Institute 2025 (Tegria)

Contacts

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