News 7/23/25

Top News

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

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

People

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

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

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

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

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

Announcements and Implementations

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

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

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

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

Government and Politics

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

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

Other

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

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 7/22/25

CMS Innovation Center plans hiring spree after cuts

CMS is reportedly looking to hire 100 employees at its Innovation Center, which was established in 2010 to develop and pilot new care delivery and payment models.

TechMatter Acquires DoctorPapers to Expand Its Healthcare RCM Footprint

Health IT services and staffing company TechMatter acquires billing, coding, and virtual staffing vendor DoctorPapers.

Hackensack Meridian Health Names Dr. Joel Klein, Renowned Physician and Technology Executive, as Chief Digital Information Officer

Joel Klein, MD (University of Maryland Medical System) will join Hackensack Meridian Health (NJ) in September as chief digital information officer.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 7/21/25

Mr. H is running a poll that asks, “Is it ethical for doctors to prescribe the drugs of their pharma sponsors to people who seek specific treatments?” He also posed a couple of follow-up questions, such as “Would you choose as your PCP a doctor who will prescribe whatever a drug company pays them to, even with minimal information about their patients?” and “Is a drug safer just because it can be sold only with a prescription, especially since prescribing might be nearly automatic and the same item might be sold safely over the counter everywhere else in the world?”

I like the response choices that Mr. H included in the poll. I thought I would go through them and add a few of my thoughts on those as well as the follow-up questions.

No. The patient should see their regular doctor. As a primary care physician, I agree with this one in my heart. Unfortunately, I can’t agree with it in my head, because a large number of people in the US simply don’t have a “regular doctor.”

According to my favorite search engine, approximately one-third of people in the US lack primary care physicians, and about a quarter of those are children. Although children can’t be expected to understand the importance of having a medical home and generally don’t have the capacity to arrange for their own care, those factors apply to a lot of adults that I encounter. Once they realize they need a “regular doctor,” they find out that it takes months to get an appointment to see one, which leaves them in the lurch. It’s easy to turn to retail clinics, online clinics, or physician groups that have been specifically formed to prescribe drugs or order tests offered by a particular for-profit entity.

No, unless they review the patient’s medical records. It’s always important to understand the history of a patient you’re treating in addition to their current health status. For example, you don’t want to prescribe the majority of estrogen-containing products to a patient who has had estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. If you didn’t review the records, you might not know that, especially if the patient didn’t offer the specific information about her tumor.

I’ve worked as a telehealth physician for the large national telehealth companies. Most of the time in those situations, you don’t have the patient’s records. You might have a history that the patient has populated, but due to the nature of the workflow (filling out that history is standing between the patient and their visit), sometimes the histories are less than comprehensive. Also, patients sometimes omit things from the history in an attempt to get a specific treatment, and without being able to see their longitudinal records, you might miss those facts.

No. It drives costs up for everyone. This response is currently scoring rather low, but it’s an important one. Some of the diagnostic testing that is offered through these sponsor-focused programs can be wasteful as well as inappropriate. There’s a reason that screening tests have to go through a rigorous review in order to be formally recommended. Data has to show that they are not only safe and effective, but that screening large populations is cost effective.

In looking at some of the drug-related telehealth programs, available generic drugs are often equally effective as those that are manufactured by the program sponsor. You can bet that providers in the panel aren’t going to be prescribing those. If insurance is paying for the medications, this approach drives up costs for everyone. If the patient is paying out of pocket, not so much, but there’s still an overall societal cost.

No. It’s a prescriber lawsuit waiting to happen. I’m a little on the fence about this one. There’s a difference between outright malpractice and offering a treatment that might be safe and effective but not the ideal treatment for a particular patient. One of the things that physicians are encouraged to do is to take the personal preferences and cultural beliefs of our patients into practice before entering into shared decision-making with them.

If that sounds like a mouthful, that’s because it is. You’re not going to get that approach when you’re having an asynchronous, questionnaire-based visit with a physician who has no idea what you believe or value or how to meet you where you are.

Yes. It’s legal and what patients want. I’m going to channel millions of parents of teenagers here. My first thoughts were, “Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it the right thing to do” and “I want a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean I get all of them.”

I’ve treated many patients who think they want something. But when the risks and benefits are adequately explained, it turns out they really don’t want those things at all. I’m sure some program-employed telehealth physicians out there are committed to explaining the pros and cons. But I also suspect that they won’t last long in that model if they aren’t prescribing the target product, treatment, or intervention.

Of course, this happens during in-person visits as well. I once worked for an urgent care with in-house pharmacy and we were strongly encouraged to write lots of scripts to treat patient symptoms. Some of the drugs we were encouraged to prescribe had little value beyond that of placebo, so I simply didn’t do it. Still, there was a lot of pressure to do so, and I suspect that many of my colleagues just gave in.

Not sure, but it’s puzzling that doctors do this. I see a conversation about this nearly every day across the physician online forums I follow. A lot of reasons are cited for working in these models. Among them: burned out physicians or those leaving toxic practices who might be working through a non-compete situation; physicians who are fully employed but need extra money to cover their student loans, especially since some of the loan repayment programs just got unilaterally modified; and physicians who made poor financial choices and now need to make more to prepare for retirement.

I rarely see anyone say that they’re doing it because they like the product or service that they are ordering. Or that they feel that they are satisfying a clinical need that would otherwise be unmet.

As for Mr. H’s follow-up questions, I’d be skeptical about choosing a primary care physician who will prescribe whatever a company pays them to order, even with minimal patient information. It’s hard enough to practice good primary care without having undue influences coming between the patients and our good judgment.

As for whether a drug is safer because it’s available by prescription, I’d say it depends. Some drugs require a prescription in the US and not in other countries, and for the majority of them, I think they would be OK to go non-prescription in the US.

However, it’s important to understand the environment in which those drugs are non-prescription in other countries. Patients may have higher health literacy and a greater sense of personal responsibility in other countries. Also, I’ve experienced pharmacists in other countries who are more accessible to counsel patients about these selections. 

Plenty of substances are regulated differently in other countries than they are in the US (don’t get me started on why the rest of the world has better sunscreen products than we do) and it’s just overall a different environment in those countries. Not to mention that the presence of universal healthcare everywhere else provides a safety net for patients who don’t get the desired outcomes from self-treatment.

It will be interesting to see the final poll results when they come in. Feel free to leave a comment when you vote on the poll, and as always, you are welcome to leave a comment here or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Readers Write: The Multi-Million Dollar Transformation Opportunity Healthcare Loves to Hate: Application Rationalization

The Multi-Million Dollar Transformation Opportunity Healthcare Loves to Hate: Application Rationalization
By Amy Penning

Amy Penning is senior application analyst at CereCore.

Rationalize your applications, they say. It will lead to cost savings, streamline your portfolio, and release resources for innovation and technological advancement.

So why do we groan at the idea of starting an application rationalization effort? Immediate reactions to AppRat, as it is commonly called, are often due to the complexity of the work and lack of employee bandwidth to complete the work thoroughly. AppRat is often deemed a “not now, but maybe later” task that is driven by bigger strategic moves like M&A, cloud migration, and EHR implementations, further complicating these mission imperatives, adding to their timelines, and increasing their cost.

Consider these points about all there is to gain from having full visibility into your application portfolio before, rather than during, another strategic undertaking at your organization.

Application Sprawl is Expensive and Risky

Over time, even the most well-managed IT environments accumulate technical debt. Siloed purchasing, legacy systems, and shadow IT can create a bloated application portfolio that could:

• Drain IT support resources.
• Increase cybersecurity risk.
• Inflate licensing and maintenance costs.
• Complicate integration and data governance.
• Impact patient safety.

Application sprawl quietly erodes operational efficiency and financial flexibility, with the most significant impact observed at small to mid-sized hospital systems. However, application rationalization as a strategic lever introduces efficiencies through the elimination of overspending on resources and duplicated functionality.

Why AppRat Is a Strategic Lever, Not Just Cleanup

Too often, we think of AppRat as a “someday” project, something to tackle after the dust settles from a major initiative. But done right, it can:

• Fund transformation by freeing up capital that is tied to redundant or underused systems.
• Accelerate innovation by simplifying the IT landscape and enabling faster adoption of technology.
• Improve clinician experience by reducing system fragmentation and login fatigue.
• Streamline training and support by setting up your organization with enterprise standards versus siloed applications.
• Strengthen security posture by eliminating outdated or unsupported applications.

AppRat’s Anticipated Impact on Operations

I have led programs that decommissioned as many as 30% of an organization’s applications over five years, resulting in savings of as much as $70M. Given the value of resources that can be redirected to patient care, staff development, and digital innovation, the potential impact of an AppRat initiative is even higher.

Timing Is Everything, But So Is Framing the Purpose and Value of AppRat

Timing matters. No one wants to launch AppRat during a go-live or construction phase. But waiting for the perfect time often means that it never happens. 

Instead, organizations should reframe AppRat as a foundational part of transformation, not a follow-up act. AppRat should be a thoughtful, repeatable process that is embedded in the planning phase of any major initiative, not left for the post-project cleanup crew. 

Use Industry Tools Instead of Devising Your Own AppRat Approach

Leverage the findings and tools of those who have done the work before you. The CIO Council’s The Application Rationalization Playbook is available as a free download. It’s a great starting point to understanding methodology

Final Thought: Rationalization Is Essential

Application rationalization should become a regularly performed assessment of your overall application portfolio. It is never finished, but it is foundational. Start your organization’s next major technology innovation or change with full transparency into your organization’s IT costs and cost of ownership by conducting AppRat before it even starts.

Morning Headlines 7/21/25

Humana Simplifies Access to Coverage and Care Information

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

Trump administration hands over Medicaid recipients’ personal data, including addresses, to ICE

HHS gives the Department of Homeland Security’s ICE agents access to the names and addresses of 79 million Medicaid recipients that will be used to track down those who are living in the US illegally.

American Heart Association Ventures Invests in Auxira Health to Transform Cardiology Care Delivery

Virtual cardiology care delivery startup Auxira Health announces funding from the Studio Red arm of American Heart Association Ventures.

Monday Morning Update 7/21/25

Top News

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

Reader Comments

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

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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

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

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

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

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

Sales

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

People

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

Announcements and Implementations

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

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

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

Government and Politics

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

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

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

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

Other

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 7/18/25

Senators reveal how much Lilly, Pfizer paid telehealth companies

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

Ensemble Announces Strategic Revenue Cycle Partnership with Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare

Ensemble Health Partners will take over Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare’s revenue cycle operations across its six hospitals in Tennessee.

CareCloud Launches AI-Driven, Fully Integrated Dermatology EHR to Streamline Workflows and Enhance Patient Care

CareCloud launches a dermatology EHR with AI-powered charting.

News 7/18/25

Top News

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

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

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

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

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

Reader Comments

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

Sales

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

Announcements and Implementations

CareCloud launches a dermatology EHR with AI-powered charting.

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

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

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

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

Other

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

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 7/17/25

It’s been one of those weeks where I’m pulled in so many directions I’m not sure which way I’m supposed to be going. Just when I think I’ve finished something, another obstacle turns up in my path and I have to swerve.

I’ve attended enough workplace resilience seminars over the years that pivoting from crisis to crisis seems second nature, even if it’s not fully in my comfort zone. Still, there’s something to be said for the excitement of doing the corporate equivalent of a “cattle guard jump” from time to time, so I’m happy to keep on keeping on.

From Universal Soldier: “Re: LLMs replacing physicians. What’s your take on projects like this?” Headlines abound for this kind of work, especially when the media talk about models achieving “diagnostic accuracy” or outperforming the average generalist physician.

The Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO) is claimed to deliver greater accuracy, but also to reduce diagnostic costs, compared to when physicians evaluate a patient. I don’t disagree with the fact that we need to figure out how to do workups efficiently and to improve cost savings, but I wonder about the ability to translate this work to bedside realities. Let’s inject some of the realities of the current state of medical practice into the model and see if it can come up with solutions.

We can add a medical assistant who is stuck in traffic and doesn’t arrive in time to room the first patient, increasing everyone’s anxiety level as the office tries to kick off a busy clinic session when they’re already behind before they even start. As the model suggests tests to order, let’s throw in some cost pressures when those interventions aren’t covered by insurance or the patient doesn’t have any sick time to cover their absence from work. Add in a narrow network that makes it nearly impossible to refer to a subspecialist even when it’s needed. Let’s add an influencer or two worth of medical misinformation to the mix. Now we’re getting closer to what it’s really like to be in practice.

It’s great to do tabletop exercises to see if we can make clinical reasoning better. But unless we’re also addressing all the other parts and pieces that make healthcare so messy, we’re not going to be able to make a tremendous difference. I would love to see an investigation of whether physicians can improve their clinical reasoning simply by having more time with the patient, or fewer interruptions when delivering care, reviewing test results, and formulating care plans.

I would also like people to start talking more seriously about how care is delivered in other countries, where  better clinical outcomes are achieved while spending less money. Maybe it’s just easier to talk about AI.

An informatics colleague asked me what I thought of the Sonu Band, which is a therapeutic wearable that promises “clinically proven, drug-free vibrational sound therapy” that has been proven to improve the symptoms of nasal allergies. The band is used in conjunction with the Sonu app, which works with the user’s smartphone to scan their face and combine it with voice analysis and a symptom report to personalize the therapy.

The company says that the facial scan produces skeletal data that is used to create a digital map of the sinuses. It then uses proprietary AI to calculate optimal resonant frequencies for treatment.

Having spent most of my life in the Midwest, I can attest that allergy and sinus symptoms seem to be nearly universal. I reached out to my favorite otolaryngologist for an opinion, and although he pronounced it “fascinating,” he hadn’t heard of it. If it works as well as the promotional materials say, I could imagine it flying off virtual shelves. If you’ve given it a whirl or seen it prescribed in your organization, we would love to learn more.

The American Academy of Family Physicians and its Family Practice Management journal recently reviewed some AI-enhanced mobile apps that target primary care physicians. This was the first time I had seen their SPPACES review criteria:

• S – Source or developer of app.
• P – Platforms available.
• P – Pertinence to primary care practice.
• A – Authoritativeness, accuracy, and currency of information.
• C – Cost.
• E – Ease of use.
• S – Sponsor(s).

Even if you’re not in primary care (in which case you can feel free to omit the second “P”), this is a good way to encourage physicians to think about the sources of information they use in daily practice.

It’s not mentioned in the article, but the author also encourages physicians to be aware of whether their tools are HIPAA-compliant and whether they’re entering protected health information into third-party apps. He also mentioned that none of the apps reviewed are a substitute for physician judgment.

I would also consider adding an element to the “cost” criteria that encourages users to think about how the app is making money. People seem quick to overlook third parties that are monetizing user information, if they’re even aware of it happening at all.

I will use this as a teaching tool with students and residents, especially since they’re quick to download new apps without doing a critical review first.

I’m not sure how I missed this one, but OpenEvidence filed a complaint against Doximity last month, alleging that Doximity’s executives impersonated various physicians and used their NPI numbers to gain access beyond what they should have as lay people. Such activities are prevented by the OpenEvidence terms of use, assuming anyone actually reads them (they’re included in the complaint as Exhibit A if you’re interested).

The complaint alleges “brazen corporate espionage” and points out that Doximity “has built its brand on physician trust and privacy protection.” The defendants are alleged to have used prompt injection and prompt stealing to try to get at proprietary OpenEvidence code.

Pages 3 and 4 of the complaint describe a few examples of attacks in detail. The complaint notes that “this case presents the rare situation where defendants’ illicit motives and objectives are captured in their own words.” I always love reading a good court document and this one did not disappoint.

What do you think about corporate espionage? Can companies truly protect their intellectual property anymore? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 7/17/25

E Health Partners acquires Assertus to expand digital health leadership

In Puerto Rico, EHR vendor E Health Partners acquires RCM company Assertus Holdings.

CRMC confirms ransomware attack

Cookeville Regional Medical Center (TN) takes its systems offline while it investigates a ransomware attack first detected Sunday.

Can AI Detect Hidden Heart Disease?

Researchers at Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian develop a highly accurate AI tool that analyzes ECGs to identify patients who should undergo more expensive ultrasound screening for structural heart disease.

Healthcare AI News 7/16/25

News

AdventHealth Shawnee Mission sues Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, accusing the insurer of withholding $2 million in payments by using Apixio AI chart review technology to flag “clinically invalid” diagnoses.

Mayo Clinic radiology department chair Matthew Callstrom, MD, PhD says that the organization is building AI into its fabric and has brought 97 AI applications live. He told attendees of his keynote at its AI Summit:

A lot of what clinicians do is they serve Epic. The future of healthcare — and it’s not very far away — we actually use technology in a different way. We push it into the background, we enable and empower our physicians and caregivers so that they actually have the information that they need in a way that is most effective.

Hippocratic AI and Sheba Medical Center will collaborate to integrate generative AI into clinical operations to improve patient care, focusing initially on conversational AI for patient communication and support.

Business

AI-powered medical search and clinical decision support company OpenEvidence raises $210 million in a Series B funding round that values the company at $3.5 billion.

Five-month-old AI startup Thinking Machines, which was founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, raises $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation despite having neither products nor revenue.

Research

Researchers at Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian develop a highly accurate AI tool that analyzes ECGs to identify patients who should undergo more expensive ultrasound screening for structural heart disease.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
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Sponsorship information.
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This Week in Health Tech 7/16/25

Morning Headlines 7/16/25

Abacus and Medicus IT Merge, Creating The Leading Financial Services and Healthcare-focused IT Managed Services Platform

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

OpenEvidence, the Fastest-Growing Application for Physicians in History, Announces $210 Million Round at $3.5 Billion Valuation

AI-powered medical search and clinical decision support company OpenEvidence raises $210 million in a Series B funding round.

Sellers Dorsey Acquires DignifiHealth

Healthcare consulting firm Sellers Dorsey acquires DignifiHealth, which offers value-based care and population health data analytics.

News 7/16/25

Top News

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

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

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

Sales

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

People

Harmony Healthcare IT promotes Brian Liddell to president and CFO.

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

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

Announcements and Implementations

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

Government and Politics

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

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

Other

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

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Blog Posts

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

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 7/15/25

FTC Takes Action Against Telemedicine Firm NextMed Over Charges It Used Misleading Prices, Fake Reviews, and Deceptive Weight Loss Claims to Sell GLP-1 Weight-Loss Programs

Online weight-loss prescription delivery company NextMed will pay $150,000 to settle FTC charges related to deceptive and false representation of its products and consumer reviews.

CMS Proposes Physician Payment Rule to Significantly Cut Spending Waste, Enhance Quality Measures, and Improve Chronic Disease Management for People with Medicare

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

Goldman Sachs Alternatives Leads EvolvedMD’s $34mm Series B Investment

EvolvedMD, which offers primary care providers tech-enabled behavioral healthcare coordination services, raises $34 million in a Series B funding round.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 7/14/25

There’s always a lot of buzz around wearables. The majority of US adults have a smartphone in their pocket or purse, so a treasure trove of data can be collected without adding a secondary device.

Most of the people I talk to have no idea how much information is being captured by the apps on their phones, let alone the types of entities to which vendors are selling their personal data. Nearly everyone I know leaves their location services on 24×7. About half the people I interact with, along with their families, use tracking apps to keep up with each other’s location.

An article in JAMA Network Open this week caught my eye with its title, “Passive Smartphone Sensors for Detecting Psychopathology.” The authors analyzed two weeks of smartphone data from 550 adult users see if “passively-sensed behavior” could identify particular psychopathology domains. They noted that this is important work because smartphones can continuously detect behavioral data in a relatively unobtrusive way.

They had two main objectives. First, to determine which domains of psychopathology can be identified using smartphone sensors. Second,  to look for markers for general impairment and specific transdiagnostic dimensions such as internalizing, detachment, disinhibition, antagonism, and thought disorder.

Data were pulled from global positioning systems, accelerometers, motion detection, battery status, call logs, and whether the screen was on or off.

The authors were able to link nearly all the domains with specific sensor-captured behaviors, creating “behavioral signatures” by measuring things like call volume, mobility, bedtime, and time at home. Specifically, they were able to link disinhibition with battery charge level and antagonism with call volume.

Based on the phone-related behaviors I observe, it would be interesting to see if my gut feeling about a user’s psychopathologic situation is accurate. I would also be curious to know if there is a difference in the data looking at other age groups that weren’t studied, such as teens or the elderly. Although the study was done on adults, the mean age was 38 with a standard deviation of 8.8, so there is certainly some opportunity to look in detail at other groups.

I was recently with a large group of individuals in their 70s. Their visible phone behavior would rank them right up there with the teenagers I know.

Reading about this made me think about all the data that companies are collecting now that they’re focusing on potentially eliminating remote work and ensuring high levels of productivity. There are plenty of stories out there about people using so-called “mouse jigglers” to make it look like they’re working so that their computers don’t go to sleep. Of course, companies that restrict what kinds of USB devices can be plugged in might be attuned to that, and there are also more sophisticated monitoring tools that also look at keyboard usage patterns and can detect if something shady is going on.

Remote work isn’t the only place people might be slacking off. I see plenty of people who have in-person jobs who constantly use their phones for potentially non-work activities. Many apps  might be adjunctive to job role and responsibilities, but I see a lot of online shopping and social media use as well.

I’d love to see some robust research that looks at communication and collaboration strategies within an organization to see which workers might thrive with one style more than another. I’ve worked in organizations that have documented communication plans that make it clear what kinds of work should be conducted using meetings, phone calls, email, instant messaging, and texting, but those kinds of policies are few and far between these days.

Even without a written policy, workplace culture defines how things get done, but when you’re a new person, a consultant, or a contractor, it can be difficult to try to figure that out unless someone clearly explains the rules of engagement.

I worked in one organization that basically used Slack as the connective tissue of the organization. I have to admit that I struggled there. Every time I asked where to find a resource, the answer was, “It’s in Slack,” but it didn’t seem like there was any rhyme or reason to how things were organized. More often than not, important documents were accessed through links within a message thread rather than being in a “files” area or in specific channels that made sense to those of us who were new.

A tremendous amount of work seemed to get done via direct messages rather than channels, making it even more difficult to find things. At one point, during a critical issue with a release, I had a separate cheat sheet of which conversations to look through when I needed certain kinds of information, since I had an endless list of direct message conversations with various combinations of the same group of people.

When I asked if there was any team- or company-level documentation on how it was all supposed to work, I felt like I was revealing myself as someone who simply couldn’t keep up. As a consultant, I had multiple conversations with leaders at the company about how this was working and how I had seen it contribute to process defect rates and rework. I also knew of plenty of examples at that company where people downloaded documents to their own hard drives so they could find things later, but who then ended up working off of outdated specifications since they were using local copies rather than shared ones. Not to mention that if people can’t find clear information, they are more likely to improvise or otherwise wing it, which is generally a bad idea when you’re building healthcare software.

If you could use data to find scenarios where someone was working on a deliverable – say, a slide deck or a document — and then spent 10 minutes rapidly flicking through various file structures or messaging platforms, opening and closing multiple documents, and doing web searches before finally returning to the document, it could be an indicator of disordered work patterns that might benefit from some kind of intervention.

If you see multiple people on a team with these work habits, that may be indicative of the need for a different kind of organizational structure for work product and other materials. I think those patterns are much more important to explore than knowing whether someone’s mouse is moving

What do you think about looking at smartphone or other device data to learn more about people’s behavior and the potential for psychopathology? Would having more information make things better or potentially make things worse? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 7/14/25

KC-area hospital sues Blue KC, says AI-powered insurance denials ignored doctors

AdventHealth Shawnee Mission sues BCBS of Kansas City, claiming that the insurer withheld $2 million in payments using Apixio’s AI chart review technology, which flagged “clinically invalid” physician diagnoses.

Duke Endowment awards $4M to Atrium, funding first rural NC virtual nursing facility

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

Samsung to launch AI health coach beta in US by end-2025

Samsung will roll out a beta version of an AI-powered health coach chatbot in the US by the end of the year.