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Morning Headlines 6/23/25

June 22, 2025 Headlines Comments Off on Morning Headlines 6/23/25

Insurers Pledge to Ease Controversial Prior Approvals for Medical Care

Major US health insurers pledge to improve prior authorization practices, noting that they are aiming for 80% real-time decisions by 2027.

NM Vintage Fund Invests in Electronic Caregiver to Strengthen Expansion of Leading Virtual Care Ecosystem

New Mexico Vintage Fund invests in New Mexico-based Electronic Caregiver, which specializes in virtual care and remote patient monitoring technologies.

Enhancing the provider search experience through Smart Choice

UnitedHealthcare announces AI-powered provider search for members.

Comments Off on Morning Headlines 6/23/25

Monday Morning Update 6/23/25

June 22, 2025 News 8 Comments

Top News

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Major US health insurers pledge to improve prior authorization practices. They aim for 80% real-time decisions by 2027, fewer procedures that require approval, and 90-day care continuity for patients who switch plans.

Insurer trade group AHIP says that it understands patient frustration. It did not mention mounting regulatory and political pressure.

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Insurers blame half of PA delays on providers who submit requests via mail, phone, or fax. They say that they will help those providers transition to electronic submissions.


Reader Comments

From Frank: “Re: AI. Is a vendor’s platform AI-enabled just because the junior PR person used ChatGPT to write the press release?” AI-crafted announcements and lengthy punditry articles on social media – which are easily recognizable, by the way – are starting to get annoying. The AI versions are just a bit too polished, soulless, and peppered with em dashes and overly dramatic recitation of background facts that often contain hallucinations.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Few poll respondents think more highly of Oracle Health now than in the pre-acquisition days when it was Cerner. I ran this same poll one year ago and the numbers were identical, so at least they’re holding steady. It has been three years since EVP Mike Sicilia promised the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs that it would “start over” in rewriting Cerner’s pharmacy module in 6-9 months.

New poll to your right or here: How concerned are you that AI will diminish or eliminate your job within five years? The poll results may be tricky to interpret. People who are convinced that their role requires their unique insight, nuance, or relationship skills are possibly like medical transcriptionists in failing to see what’s coming. I might get more objective responses if I instead asked if AI could eliminate the job of co-workers or direct reports. I’ll predict with admittedly superficial insight that the first health tech jobs to be affected will be prior authorization specialists, records retrieval and chart abstracting folks, RCM coders, marketing staff, and call center / help desk people.


The onset of summer means that we offer incentives for companies who can take their minds off vacations and beach weekends and make the decision to sponsor HIStalk. I don’t discount normal sponsorship cost because that wouldn’t be fair to existing sponsors, but we will usually offer one-time extra months, webinar exposure, or email messages, not to mention special offers for startups or former sponsors who rejoin the fold. Contact Lorre.


Sponsored Events and Resources

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Business Insider describes the “New Mountain special” for VC firms, as private equity firm New Mountain Capital is acquiring and rolling up health tech AI companies that are unlikely to IPO or be acquired. The firm operates more like a venture studio, targeting higher-risk innovation with larger investments, minimal debt, and a focus on long-term value creation. Some of its big deals involve Datavant from its acquisition of Ciox Health and its recent combination of Access Healthcare, SmarterDx, and Thoughtful AI to create RCM technology vendor Smarter Technologies.

Ohio’s attorney general conditionally approves the $485 million acquisition of Akron-based Summa Health by a business venture that is owned by VC firm General Catalyst.

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Non-profit, money-losing Ascension will acquire Amsurg, which runs 250 ambulatory surgery centers in 34 states, for $3.9 billion. Bring on those facility fees.


People

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SmarterDx hires Kit Kieling, MD (Orderly Health) as CMIO. He is an Air Force veteran and US Air Force Academy graduate who volunteered to serve as a pediatric ICU director for host-national children in combat field hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan with the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Operations Squadron.

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Dan Phippen (R1 RCM) joins Evergreen Healthcare Partners as chief growth officer.

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AdventHealth hires Erica Williams, MBA (Ascension) as VP/divisional CIO.


Announcements and Implementations

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UnitedHealthcare announces AI-powered provider search for members.

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Epic summarizes some of the main points it made in its response to HHS’s RFI on health tech interoperability and infrastructure.

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Humanate Digital pilots its AI front desk receptionist. The assistant checks patients in for clinic visits and adjusts its tone based on patient facial expressions. Other versions handle medical records requests and billing.


Government and Politics

Every newborn in England will have DNA screening within 10 years to allow NHS to predict and prevent disease and personalize treatment.


Other

Hartford HealthCare installs an OnMed CareStation in Bradley International Airport, the first such device to be placed in a US airport. The health system hopes to attract six patients per day to the CareStation, which accepts insurance and cash payments.


Sponsor Updates

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  • Healthcare IT Leaders staff volunteer at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
  • Capital Rx releases a new e-book titled “Why Savings Don’t Materialize: The Truth About Pharmacy Benefit Procurement.”
  • Optimum Healthcare IT releases a new episode of its “Visionary Voices” podcast featuring Mike Mosquito.
  • Rhapsody offers a new white paper titled “The 5 Most Common Interoperability Missteps—and How to Avoid Them.”

Blog Posts


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 6/20/25

June 19, 2025 Headlines Comments Off on Morning Headlines 6/20/25

Commure Raises $200 Million in Growth Financing from General Catalyst’s CVF to Accelerate AI-Powered RCM Platform

Commure raises $200 million in growth financing to advance its RCM, ambient documentation, and practice management tools.

Hoppr Secures $31.5M Series A to Scale AI Infrastructure for Medical Imaging

Hoppr, which offers a platform for developing medical AI imaging applications, raises $31.5 million in a Series A funding round.

Overland Park digital health startup closes $2.5M seed round with local, national investors

AI healthcare copilot developer CarePilot raises $2.5 million in seed funding.

Comments Off on Morning Headlines 6/20/25

News 6/20/25

June 19, 2025 News 1 Comment

Top News

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Commure raises $200 million in growth financing to advance its RCM, ambient documentation, and practice management tools.

The company now calls itself “the fast-growing enterprise AI healthcare technology company,” which is a phrasing shift from previous press releases that described it more generically as “a leading healthcare technology company” or “a leader in healthcare technology innovation.”


Reader Comments

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From Significant: “Re: Commure. A $200 million investment to build what, exactly? RCM, ambient notes, and practice tools aren’t exactly underrepresented in health tech. Maybe Commure can use the cash to invent a fourth buzzword.” The company’s current website is at the top of the page, while the year-ago, AI-absent version that vaguely described the company’s product as a “healthtech operating system” is directly above. This was prior to its late 2024 acquisitions of Memora Health (care navigation) and Augmedix (AI-powered medical scribing). Certainly the current website is more specific about what the company actually sells, which was difficult to determine not long ago. The company launched as a FHIR-native developer platform in 2020.


Sponsored Events and Resources

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Patient referral technology vendor Tennr raises $101 million in a Series C funding round.

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Hoppr, which offers a platform for developing medical AI imaging applications, raises $31.5 million in a Series A funding round. Founder, CEO, and board chair Khan Siddiqui, MBBS spent executive time at Microsoft and Higi.

Consulting firm Huron will acquire Eclipse Insights, which offers revenue cycle consulting services.


People

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Abby Polich, MBA (TridentCare) joins Health Data Movers as SVP of client services.


Announcements and Implementations

Oracle announces GA of Oracle Health Community Care, a cloud-based mobile extension of the Oracle Health Foundation EHR that can be operated offline.

Willis Knighton Health goes live with Meditech Expanse in its 132 clinics.

This may have healthcare implications and will almost certainly kill some competing apps. OpenAI announces ChatGPT Record, which records speech in real time (including from multiple speakers), creates a transcript, generates a summary, and allows rewriting into an email or project plan. A “reference record history” option allows ChatGPT to look back on previous transcripts to improve its responses and to recall previously shared information. The Record option is available only for paid users who run MacOS for now.


Government and Politics

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I wrote back in the dark COVID days of early 2021 about Anosh Ahmed, MD, the COO of Chicago’s 122-bed Loretto Hospital who resigned after getting caught diverting scarce vaccine doses to his cronies. He’s back in the news for filing $900 million in bogus COVID testing claims, which netted him and his co-codefendants an astounding $300 million. Ahmed allegedly stole patient data from the hospital to bill the federal government for performing COVID tests on uninsured people who never actually received them. Beyond the $300 million, he also is accused of pocketing $147 million in kickbacks from a lab company. He put his $9 million Houston house on the market after the first round of charges, for which he generously threw in one of his Rolls Royces. He now lives in Dubai as a “wealth management strategist” and operates a charity whose books might warrant review. Kudos to Kelly Bauer of Block Club Chicago for originally breaking the story and chasing it aferward

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Epic files a motion to move the CureIS lawsuit against it to a different venue, arguing that the Northern District of California doesn’t make sense given that both companies are based in the Midwest. CureIS’s lawsuit accuses Epic of anticompetitive behavior, requiring customers to use its own products instead of those of CureIS, blocking integration, stealing trade secrets, and violating Cures Act information blocking provisions. Epic says in the motion that the lawsuit contains “seven kitchen-sink causes of action” that “read like a bad spy novel.” In its motion, Epic argues that:

  • CureIS blames Epic for its stalled growth and fading customer relationships instead of looking inward.
  • Epic doesn’t need to steal IP given that its thousands of developers ship new software constantly.
  • CureIS cites information blocking rules that weren’t in effect at the time.
  • CureIS should win on merit, not in court, and its job is to prove to customers that its products are better than Epic’s.
  • CureIS wants to limit Epic’s ability to improve its offerings and inform its customers about what’s coming, which is “both absurd and antithetical to how competition works in the United States.”
  • This isn’t the first time a smaller company has tried to shift blame to a dominant competitor.

Privacy and Security

A late January ransomware attack on medical coding and risk adjustment firm Episource exposed the information of 5.4 million people.


Other

MIT researchers say that ChatGPT makes its users dumber, with brain scans of essay writers suggesting that they incur “cognitive debt” that dulls critical thinking, reduces creativity, and makes them more susceptible to manipulation. They found that 83% of the subjects couldn’t recall anything from the essays they had asked ChatGPT to write.


Sponsor Updates

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  • Clearwater sponsors the Tennessee HIMSS Chapter Golf Tournament.
  • Black Book Research reveals the most promising European health IT firms selected by investors for their growth potential, regulatory preparedness, and ability to scale.
  • KLAS features Clearsense in its latest Emerging Insights case study titled “Clearsense Data Platform as a Service 2025: Reducing Costs & Increasing Efficiency Through Accelerated Data Archiving.”
  • Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Inside Capital Rx’s Acquisition of Amino Health: Creating the Health Benefits Platform of the Future, Today.”
  • Netsmart announces that its MyUnity EHR platform has received the Community Health Accreditation Partner Verification for Home Health.
  • Ellkay will exhibit at Health Choice Network’s Annual Board Educational Conference June 20-22 on Marco Island, FL.
  • First Databank names Jessica Durm clinical informatics pharmacist, Ryan Cornell security operations engineer, and Keiron Jerome cloud operations engineer.
  • Linus Health receives Silver in the Connected Digital Health, Clinical Decision Support Tools category at the 2025 Spring Digital Health Awards.

Blog Posts


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 6/19/25

June 19, 2025 Dr. Jayne 5 Comments

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As a consultant working with care delivery organizations, I see many of them using “access” as some kind of a performance mantra. Whether it’s access to book a visit with a physician in an office or access to the emergency department, there is constant pressure to make sure patients are formally scheduled for some kind of revenue-generating service with the organization.

I was recently part of a discussion with other physicians who were talking about how access is being conflated with value. One example was the push for patients to book a visit with a provider, without giving full consideration to whether the provider had the correct experience and knowledge to actually treat the patient. It doesn’t matter if you get the patient in quickly, but to the wrong office since you’re ultimately going to have to book a second appointment elsewhere to meet their needs.

Another example was the boom in patient portal messages. Patients can reach their physicians quickly, but that’s not helpful when it causes providers to be burned out and creates risk that patients won’t receive the correct treatments because someone is trying to read between the lines of a series of message exchanges to create a diagnosis and treatment plan rather than having a direct conversation with a patient (either in person or via virtual care).

Another physician mentioned secure texting, which creates a staff access problem “where it’s easy to just fling messages out there rather than thinking through what you’re really asking. It seems like people formulated their questions better when they knew they had to make a phone call.” There may have been cocktails involved in this discussion, leading one of my colleagues to ponder the fact that that “patients have access to their notes, but they’re useless when the notes suck.”

We often look at ways to use technology to create more access, but these comments remind us that there might be “good” kinds of access along with those that are less desirable. I’m hoping that someone might read this and think it through the next time they’re in a meeting pushing for increased access. It’s not just about getting bodies through the door, messages to the provider, or notes to the patient. We need to get to a point where greater access is providing greater value and driving patient outcomes. Otherwise, it’s just a buzzword.

From Navy Fan: “Re: remote work. I’ve enjoyed being a remote worker for 15 years now and I hate seeing people mess it up for the rest of us. Did you see the story about Sentara Health, where remote workers accessed patient information using false identities?” I hadn’t seen it before a reader highlighted it, which reminds me how much we appreciate our readers when they bring us a good story. Apparently, the system hired remote workers to manage lab requisitions, but eventually discovered that they were not based in the US and may have been misrepresenting their identities. The situation impacted patients who had lab tests performed between January and April of this year. The bad actors had access to plenty of protected health information, including names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers. A manager became concerned in early April when they noticed that the workers attending virtual department meetings did not match the photos that were submitted during hiring. Sentara Health is offering free credit monitoring and identity protection services.

I wanted to add my two cents to some of Mr. H’s comments earlier this week about virtual care prescribing of ADHD medications. He mentioned a study done at Massachusetts General Hospital that showed that at least with their virtual care model, there was not an increased risk of addiction in patients receiving stimulant medications. Mr. H noted that the findings don’t necessarily apply to freestanding telehealth companies that have been accused of cranking out prescriptions, especially those that are investor-backed startups where clinicians are paid on a per-visit basis.

Although I haven’t treated ADHD via telehealth, I’ve worked for several different freestanding telehealth companies and the pressure to prescribe is real. Large percentages of providers working for some of the big firms are 1099 contractors and some of them are trying to complete visits every three or four minutes, which means they’re not doing a detailed visit with the patient. Some of the companies are focused on patient satisfaction metrics, which means that if you don’t give the patients exactly what they request, you’re going to receive scrutiny due to your perceived poor performance. Some in-person organizations are hype- focused on the same metrics and place similar pressure on their physicians, but the risk is much lower with in-person care because you can do an actual examination and can leverage your care team to ensure you have a more comprehensive history from the patient.

Bad news for those of us that like a good nap: a recent research article showed that certain kinds of daytime napping are tied to an increased risk of death in middle- to older-aged adults. The study looked at 86,000 non-shift workers. Those who took longer naps, had high variability in the duration of their naps, and who took more naps around noon or early afternoon were those most impacted. One of the takeaways from the study is that physicians should be asking not only about sleep habits, but specifically about daytime napping. Given all the other data-driven recommendations, I don’t see this one being added to the formal recommendation set anytime soon.

My best time for napping is around 3 or 4 p.m. when my energy is fading and I just need a break. Conference calls during those times are the worst, but sometimes they’re unavoidable for me since I work in all of the US time zones. Based on the data, I should be able to mitigate my risk somewhat by taking consistent short naps in the late afternoon. That seems like a much more enjoyable option than some of the other things I can do to reduce my risk of all-cause mortality, especially since I’m already doing most of them.

What’s your favorite time and place for a nap? Do you like a hammock on the beach, or are you one of the folks I spotted catching a few winks on a park bench after leaving the local winery? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 6/19/25

June 18, 2025 Headlines Comments Off on Morning Headlines 6/19/25

Healthcare referrals are where patients get lost. Tennr raises $101M to bring the visibility our system desperately needs

Referral optimization company Tennr raises $101 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to $160 million.

Vestar Capital puts Quest Analytics up for sale

Vestar Capital reportedly prepares to sell Quest Analytics, which offers management solutions for provider networks.

Huron to Acquire Revenue Cycle Consulting Firm Eclipse Insights

Professional services firm Huron acquires revenue cycle consulting business Eclipse Insights.

RevelAi Health Secures $3.1 Million Seed Funding to Scale Artificial Intelligence Care Coordination for Musculoskeletal Health

AI-powered musculoskeletal care software startup RevelAi raises $3.1 million in seed funding.

Comments Off on Morning Headlines 6/19/25

Healthcare AI News 6/18/25

June 18, 2025 Healthcare AI News Comments Off on Healthcare AI News 6/18/25

News

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Lee Health (FL) launches Leah, an AI-powered conversational engagement platform that helps patients with hip, knee, and shoulder pain navigate the system’s services and receive guidance and education.

CONCERN EWS, an AI-powered early warning system that is powered by nurse observations and developed at CU Anschutz, analyzes nurses’ documentation patterns to predict patient deterioration up to 42 hours earlier than standard methods, reducing mortality and hospital stays while improving ICU transfers.

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Abstractive Health launches Clinical Time Machine, an AI-powered game that lets users explore structured charts that are generated from centuries-old handwritten medical records. The company, which describes the tool as “a Microsoft Flight Simulator for Medicine,” says that fewer than 1% of physicians have ever seen a full AI-generated medical record summary.

SAS launches Health Cost of Care Analytics, a tool that analyzes claims data to build episodes of care, helping identify cost, quality, and outcome drivers to inform protocols and provider contracts.


Business

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Abridge releases Inside for Inpatient, which converts bedside conversations into structured Epic notes. The company is also piloting integration of outpatient orders into Epic.

Hamilton Health Sciences is piloting an AI-powered phone receptionist that was developed by two local doctors and a software engineer. The system, which is being commercialized as Strello Health, books appointments, manages prescription refills, and answers questions. The company says it saves four hours per day and ensures that no caller is ever put on hold or sent to voicemail.

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Intermountain Health will implement Layer Health’s AI-powered chart abstraction system for chart review and will invest in the company.


Other

Aidoc releases an open-source, expert-authored framework that it developed with Nvidia and 17 healthcare organizations that guides safe, scalable, trust‑focused deployment of clinical AI across technical, regulatory, operational, and monitoring domains.


Contacts

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

Comments Off on Healthcare AI News 6/18/25

This Week in Health Tech 6/18/25

June 18, 2025 This Week in Health Tech Comments Off on This Week in Health Tech 6/18/25
LinkedIn weekly 061825 - Copy
Comments Off on This Week in Health Tech 6/18/25

Morning Headlines 6/18/25

June 17, 2025 Headlines Comments Off on Morning Headlines 6/18/25

Nabla Raises $70M Series C to Deliver Agentic AI to the Heart of Clinical Workflows, Bringing Total Funding to $120M

Ambient scribe technology vendor Nabla raises $70 million in a Series C funding round, increasing its total to $120 million.

Glytec Secures $36 Million Growth Investment to Accelerate AI-Powered Diabetes Technology Platform Innovation

Diabetes management software vendor Glytec announces $36 million in new funding.

Sword Health nabs $40M at $4B valuation, pushes IPO plans to at least 2028

Sword Health, a digital health startup specializing in virtual physical therapy, pelvic healthcare, and mental healthcare, raises $40 million.

Comments Off on Morning Headlines 6/18/25

News 6/18/25

June 17, 2025 News Comments Off on News 6/18/25

Top News

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Ambient scribe technology vendor Nabla raises $70 million in a Series C funding round, increasing its total to $120 million.

The company will use the money to develop an agentic AI platform that will include real-time coding support, smarter documentation, EHR command execution, and nursing capabilities.


Reader Comments

From Skrill: “Re: virtual ADHD prescriptions. A new study out of Massachusetts General Hospital says that remote prescribing doesn’t increase someone’s chances of becoming addicted to drugs like Adderall. Doesn’t this fly in the face of the federal scrutiny (and fines) faced by Cerebral, Truepill, Ahead, etc. several years ago?” Reasons this study’s findings don’t necessarily vindicate for-profit telehealth providers who were cranking out prescriptions for stimulants:

  • It looked at MGH patients who were treated for ADHD from March 2020 to August 2023. Most of them had at least one in-person visit before COVID moved their care to virtual. They were evaluated in person and managed by doctors in traditional academic medical center practice.
  • I would trust MGH doctors who started seeing patients virtually to follow the proper prescribing guidelines, as compared to an investor-backed startup that contracts with doctors who are paid for each Adderall prescription they generate.
  • The study looked at substance use disorder as an endpoint, but that doesn’t necessarily prove the absence of overuse or even misuse in general. Patients could have been selling or sharing their meds or using them for purposes other than as prescribed.
  • The researchers had no way to measure diversion or inappropriate prescribing.

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

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Parkview Health (IN) launches UpVia Health, a management services company that is focused on independent hospitals and provider groups. UpVia will initially offer services for virtual care, EHR sharing, revenue cycle, and group purchasing as well as pharmacy management and supply chain management.

Diabetes management software vendor Glytec announces $36 million in new funding.


Sales

  • VA San Antonio expands its CliniComp EHR system to its post-anesthesia care environments.
  • Ochsner Health (LA) selects clinical AI software from Latent Health.
  • Erlanger (TN) will implement surgical operations automation software from Qventus.

People

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CereCore names Matt Dearborn (Pivot Point Consulting) regional VP.

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Eyecare EHR/PM vendor Sightview hires Tycene Fritcher (Outcomes) as CEO.


Announcements and Implementations

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St. Mary’s Health and Clearwater Valley Health in Idaho implement a shared Meditech Expanse EHR system.

Stanford Health Care (CA) uses virtual pulmonary rehabilitation services from Kivo Health as part of its home-based care program for COPD patients.

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Veterans Memorial Hospital (IA) goes live on Epic through a collaboration with University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

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Med Tech Solutions begins offering personalized NextGen Healthcare and EClinicalWorks EHR utilization training through its new ProviderCare program.

Altera Digital Health announces GA of Sunrise 25.1.


Government and Politics

The FDA issues its most serious level of recall on select Zyno Medical Z-800 infusion pumps, citing software that has not undergone verification or validation testing.

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VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence, PhD stresses that progress is being made on preparing facilities in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio to go live on its Oracle Health-based EHR in 2026. Implementation activities are also set to begin this month at care sites in Anchorage and Cleveland. Thirteen facilities are scheduled to go live on the software next year.


Privacy and Security

Population health management platform vendor HealthEC and four of its customers will pay a combined $5.48 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit that stemmed from a 2023 breach that affected the data of 4.6 million people.


Other

A local news outlet questions the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s decision to add a “citizenship” field to Epic, noting that hospitals are not required to collect the information and patients are not obligated to answer.


Sponsor Updates

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  • Capital Rx supports the annual NYCFC/NYCSI Community Cup in Queens.
  • Arcadia announces a strategic integration partnership with Quest Analytics.
  • Black Book Research’s latest survey ranks Inovalon as the top-rated vendor for the End-to-End Medicare Advantage Risk Adjustment Lifecycle.
  • Waystar appoints Aashima Gupta and Michael Roman to its Board of Directors.
  • Altera Digital Health announces that customer Bolton NHS Foundation Trust has become the first trust in Greater Manchester to implement district nurse referrals in its Sunrise EPR system.
  • Clearwater founder and Executive Chairman Bob Chaput leads a cyber risk management course at The University of Texas at Austin.
  • Consensus Cloud Solutions will exhibit at the HIMSS Central & North Florida Chapter Conference June 19 in Tampa, FL.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Comments Off on News 6/18/25

Morning Headlines 6/17/25

June 16, 2025 Headlines Comments Off on Morning Headlines 6/17/25

Parkview launches Upvia Health to empower independent hospitals and physicians with trusted management solutions

Parkview Health (IN) launches Upvia Health, a management services company focused on independent hospitals and provider groups.

Cosentus Expands National Reach with Strategic Acquisition of Utah based Alta Management Solutions

Ambulatory health IT company Cosentus Holdings acquires practice consulting and RCM vendor Alta Management Solutions.

Infusion Pump Recall: Zyno Medical Removes Certain Z-800 Series Infusion Pumps due to Software Issue

The FDA issues its most serious level of recall on select Zyno Medical Z-800 infusion pumps, citing software that has not undergone verification or validation testing.

Comments Off on Morning Headlines 6/17/25

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 6/16/25

June 16, 2025 Dr. Jayne Comments Off on Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 6/16/25

Healthcare isn’t the only industry grappling with how AI should, or should not, fit into our daily work.

Some friends who are teachers sent me the transcript of a recent discussion about how AI is impacting the ability of humans to think and whether it will alter our abilities for critical thinking. The discussion linked to an article “AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking” that was a great read. The author set out to examine how AI tool use relates to critical thinking skills and focused on the concept of cognitive offloading as a potential mediating factor. Cognitive offloading happens when thought processes are outsourced to technology instead of being developed independently.

The study found that higher AI tool use had a negative impact on critical thinking abilities. Younger study participants (ages 17-25) were more dependent on AI tools and had lower critical thinking scores compared to those study participants who were older than 46 years. It also noted that regardless of AI usage, better critical thinking skills were associated with higher educational attainment, which should be important to anyone who has a stake in ensuring a well-educated population. The study found that higher educated people maintained those critical thinking skills even when using AI, which supports the idea that how we are using AI is more important than whether we’re using it or not. The study also found that AI use encourages passive learning, where students consume information rather than creating it.

The study had multiple hypotheses about the role of cognitive offloading, including one that suggested that moving thinking tasks to external tools would reduce the cognitive burden on individuals. Instead, they found that the reduced cognitive load can lead to reduced critical engagement and cognitive analysis. According to the author, this phenomenon has been described as the “Google effect,” where being able to easily find information online leads to reduced memory retention and problem solving skills.

That would seem to go along with what many of us already think, which is that the internet is making us dumber. Although to truly explore that statement, you would also have to look at the proliferation of TikTok videos and the nonsense seen all over social media on a daily basis.

I had the chance to speak to a couple of teachers who were blissfully enjoying their summer vacation, so I figured I would ask about their thoughts around AI and their thoughts about how it was impacting education, beyond the obvious concerns about AI-generated work.

One said that plagiarism has always been an issue, and taking from AI sources isn’t a lot different than taking from other authors, although AI might be easier to catch because of stilted language that would have been caught by editors of more traditional sources. She also noted that she’s applying some of her existing “how to spot fake news” lesson plan content to AI, encouraging students to be skeptical about what AI is telling them, to ask about bias, and to consult multiple sources to ensure accuracy. She recommends that students do their best to answer questions in more traditional ways first, then use AI to validate their findings.

The other teacher felt that better education is needed on how AI works and the risks of using it. He likened it to when GPS units first came out, and there were reports of people driving off the edges of roads that were closed because they were blindly following the GPS and not paying appropriate attention to their surroundings. He also noted that although there are certainly concerns about AI use interfering with academic rigor, he is more worried about his teenage students being emotionally harmed by AI-generated content, such as deepfake photos or videos.

He noted, “When I was in school, people spread rumors, but now you can have altered videos going around that are a lot more difficult to combat.” As a proud member of Generation X, I don’t envy the students growing up in this environment. Still, I’m grateful for teachers that recognize these challenges and work to prepare students not only to be ready for the future but to protect their own mental health.

The use of AI by medical students and residents has been a hot topic for my colleagues who are working in academic settings. There are concerns that students have become used to looking up facts and aren’t memorizing information the way they used to, which places them at risk when resources aren’t readily available. Whether it’s a downtime event or a rapidly evolving clinical situation, I know I’m glad that I have certain pathways memorized to the point where they just happen naturally in my thought process.

Of course, I’ve allowed some things to go by the wayside and I would have to look them up if I ever needed them. (Cockcroft-Gault equation, I salute you.) One faculty member said his school is using AI within its case-based learning modules for medical students in hopes that the approach will build diagnostic reasoning skills rather than sabotage their development.

The faculty physicians I spoke with had different thoughts about the use of AI by resident physicians, since they’ve graduated from medical school and have the MD or DO behind their name and are therefore able to treat patients with some degree of independence even if they may not be fully licensed. Universally, they had concerns about using non-medical AI solutions due to the risk of hallucinations and the safety risks to patients. They were also concerned about students using those resources to learn procedures and algorithms, since students wouldn’t be aware if what they were reading was incorrect compared to what they might learn reading a more authoritative resource such as a medical textbook or journal articles.

All but one said they conduct their teaching rounds in an AI-free environment where participants are expected to contribute to the discussion without the benefit of external resources.

That conversation was limited to faculty in my immediate area. I suspect that attitudes might be different in parts of the country that are more apt to adopt new technologies more aggressively. I would be interested to hear from informaticists that work with medical schools or graduate medical education programs on how your institutions are approaching AI and what best practices are being developed.

Is AI really going to make healthcare better, or is it another shiny object that will eventually lose our admiration? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

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Readers Write: “The Illusion of Thinking”: Implications for Healthcare

June 16, 2025 Readers Write Comments Off on Readers Write: “The Illusion of Thinking”: Implications for Healthcare

“The Illusion of Thinking”: Implications for Healthcare
By Vikas Chowdhry

Vikas Chowdhry, MS, MBA is founder and CEO of TraumaCare.ai.

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If you are even moderately interested in AI, I am sure you have by now at least seen various comments and responses in social media to Apple’s paper titled “The Illusion of Thinking.” But in case you have been under the AI rock, here’s a brief summary.

In this paper, the authors show that today’s large reasoning models (LRMs such as OpenAI o3-mini, DeepSeek-R1, Claude 3.7 Sonnet-Thinking) — systems that explicitly generate long chains-of-thought — really do think more, but not necessarily better. On carefully designed puzzle tasks, they beat ordinary LLMs only in a narrow middle band of difficulty and then collapse outright as problems grow harder.

As expected, the comments span the gamut, from “the sky is falling” to “not a big deal, they will figure out a way to overcome or fix this.” While I am not in the “sky is falling” camp, I do think that this paper raises some important questions with special implications for healthcare. Any healthcare organization (or vendor) that is using or developing a product that is based on LLMs/LRMs will need to think deeply about these issues and have a strategy to run their own similar evaluations and hopefully share them publicly.

Here are four key findings from the paper and my take on the implication of each finding for healthcare.

#1. Impact of complexity on reasoning performance

The authors identify three performance regimes as problem complexity rises:

  • Low complexity: standard LLMs are more accurate and efficient than LRMs.
  • Medium complexity: LRMs pull ahead.
  • High complexity: both collapse to zero.

Performance of LRMs (solid lines) and LLMs (dotted lines) across low, medium and high complexity puzzles (figure from the Apple paper).

Healthcare implications:

  • How will you define complexity thresholds in your workflow?
  • Does your system dynamically choose between an LLM and an LRM based on a case’s difficulty?
  • Can it detect when a case crosses a threshold and alert the clinician instead of forging ahead with low-quality output?

#2. Token-effort collapse

LRMs spend more tokens as tasks get more complex until a critical point, after which, they give up and begin to reduce their reasoning effort despite increasing problem difficulty. This behavior suggests a fundamental scaling limitation in the thinking capabilities of current reasoning models relative to problem complexity.

Healthcare implications:

Let’s say your product helps detect malignant tumors, or, transcribes ambient conversations using LLMs/LRMs.

  • In operational mode, does it have mechanisms to detect that the case has crossed a complexity threshold and that it is giving up, and that at that point, humans need to stop using it for that case?
  • What happens if the AI product was sold as a tool to make your apps take on more primary care responsibilities, and now that the product has given up, what’s your recommendation for the NP who was relying on your product?
  • What if your product doesn’t even have the awareness that it has given up and the NP continues to rely on its output? Who owns the risk for a misdiagnosis?

#3. Over-thinking & self-correction limits

For simpler problems, reasoning models often find the correct solution early in thinking, but then continue exploring incorrect solutions (overthinking). As problems become moderately more complex, this trend reverses: correct answers appear only late. For hard tasks they never appear (“collapse” as discussed earlier).

Healthcare implications:

  • Over-thinking wastes compute and drives up cost.
  • Yet aggressively pruning the chain of thought might remove the only path to a correct answer on tougher cases.
  • Your system therefore needs complexity-aware throttling, not a one-size-fits-all token limit.

#4. No benefit from explicit algorithms

Prompting with a known algorithm to solve the problem does not improve the performance. This indicates weaknesses in faithfully executing step-by-step logic, not just in discovering it.

Healthcare implications:

A healthcare organization may have explicit clinical guidelines for certain use cases and would want the AI product to follow them when those guidelines are met. However, the results of this paper show that an LLM/LRM based on AI product may not be able to execute an algorithm based on those guidelines even when explicitly programmed into the system.

  • Embedding clinical guidelines verbatim is not enough.
  • You must verify that the model can faithfully execute those step-by-step protocols under real-world complexity.

Final Thoughts

AI progress is breathtaking, yet deploying it in high-risk domains like healthcare demands transparent, domain-specific safety testing. This paper is a timely reminder that such work takes time, expertise, and openness. Sharing evaluation results will accelerate safe adoption for the entire industry.

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Readers Write: The Future of Member Support: How Intelligent Search Can Transform VAB Delivery

June 16, 2025 Readers Write Comments Off on Readers Write: The Future of Member Support: How Intelligent Search Can Transform VAB Delivery

The Future of Member Support: How Intelligent Search Can Transform VAB Delivery
By  Andi Gillentine

Andi Gillentine, MS is VP of national accounts at Findhelp.

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Value-added benefits (VABs) are services that are offered by Medicaid managed care plans above and beyond required Medicaid state plan services. They are extremely popular –  Medicaid plans in at least 48 states offer VABs — and historically poorly promoted and utilized.

How do we ensure improved utilization of VABs, which have the power to impact quality measures, quality of care, and overall health? By maximizing intelligent searching via closed-loop referral systems to surface the right programs to the right person at the right time, for both care managers navigating on a member’s behalf and members who are self-navigating.

About VABs 

While VABs are typically non-medical, they are often related to member wellbeing. Examples of VABs are car seats and bike helmets for children, extended dental and vision services, over-the-counter medication funding, and carpet cleaning. More and more commonly, these services are used to address health-related social needs (HRSNs).

In Ohio, for example, VABs are allowed for dental, vision, transportation, health and wellness programs (includes housing supports and medical meals), incentives to strengthen health and wellbeing (includes rewards for seeking preventative care), prenatal and postpartum incentives, application services, telehealth, and 24-hour medical advice lines. Each of the seven Medicaid plans in Ohio offers at least 30 VABs, with one plan offering nearly 50.

This wealth of benefits can help Medicaid members achieve improved health outcomes and quality of care that is measurable in HEDIS and other health quality measures, if the members are aware of the benefit and know how to access it, and if administering it is easy on the health plan. Unfortunately, this is often not the case.

Improving VABs Access and Awareness

Today, in most states, a Medicaid member seeking support would have to spend hours researching their health plan website or reading their plan’s member handbook. As any health plan member can attest, this is a challenging, time-consuming task, frequently made more challenging by engaging solely through a smart phone. Accessing VABs usually requires a call to a customer service representative, with potentially long wait times, and then a waiting period to receive the goods or services.

This high administrative effort to find and access benefits results in high costs for health plans. Many Medicaid members miss important preventive care appointments due to transportation issues, use the ED for non-emergent needs because they can’t afford medications, or lose housing or utilities. VABs can provide the resources and support to prevent these occurrences, but it’s not enough for support to just be available. Members need relevant recommendations and easy access.

In an ideal world, a Medicaid member would be able to go to one place, validate their insurance coverage, search for services that address their needs, and receive intelligent results that provide resources tailored to their specific situation, with the ability to self-refer to access these goods and services. This intelligent search needs to include all available resources from their community, county, state, and health plan’s VABs. No more hunting through multiple sites or staying on the phone for long periods of time just to put food on the table, get a ride to an appointment, or find a car seat.

Intelligent Search is the Answer

There are no technological hurdles to solving this problem. We have already solved it. We simply need to integrate these workflows at the right time and in the right place for navigators and Medicaid members, using interoperable social care platforms with intelligent search capabilities. Where a patient can walk in the doors of a safety net hospital and, because of the integrated social care information in their medical chart, tailored recommendations, including VABs, are automatically presented to  care teams. The care team may refer or recommend some of these resources to the patient and encourage the patient to self-navigate for additional benefits and support. Or where a health plan care manager, engaging with a chronically-ill, dual-eligible member, can assess need and eligibility for VABs and other integrated social care support and, with consent, directly refer the member to services.

One personalized, intelligent search for all services, in easy-to-access workflows for navigators and members. The future is already here. Let’s make the most of it.

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HIStalk Interviews Jaideep Tandon, CEO, Infinx

June 16, 2025 Interviews Comments Off on HIStalk Interviews Jaideep Tandon, CEO, Infinx

Jaideep Tandon, MS is co-founder and CEO of Infinx.

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Tell me about yourself and the company.

I come from a technology background in engineering, with a focus on doing back office work over the years in hardware and software. Our entry into healthcare happened by chance, where somebody we were talking to said, can you guys help us out on medical transcription? We said sure, why not? We’re enterprising. Let’s see what we can do.

That was the beginning of Infinx. We saw an opportunity around the overall burden that healthcare providers face when they are dispensing care. We started by providing back office help, but quickly realized that there’s an amazing opportunity here to reduce friction in overall RCM through the use of technology and trained resources.

That has been the journey that we’ve been on over the last 14 years since I co-founded this company. Today we provide a variety of RCM solutions to about 800 customers.

How has health system demand for RCM technology and assistance changed over the years?

Change is constant. It is inherent with the way that our health system is designed. It’s that principal-agent problem, where we’re all giving up some level of control to another party between patient, provider and payer. It is generally set up as a slightly adversarial system. As much as we talk about data interchange and things working smoothly, the incentives aren’t quite aligned for payers to share as much information with providers and vice versa. 

There’s always this friction that has been created inherently in the system. That leads to constant changes in payer guidelines, denials going up, and increased requirements for authorizations. We see no point in the future where suddenly everything will be solved. It’s an environment of managing and continuing to get more efficient as things change.

What progress has been made in making the prior authorization process less frictional?

The prior authorization burden is tremendous on providers as well as payers. Patients are the ones who suffer, because their access to care decreases or gets more complicated.

The end-to-end solution probably doesn’t ever get solved. Payers will always want some level of authorization, which they should in terms of making sure of medical necessity and that providers aren’t overprescribing certain things.  But even before you get to that aspect of it, a lot of information asymmetry exists as providers receive orders and submit prior authorizations. Missing information and incomplete orders are coming to providers, which can lead to denials on prior authorization. 

There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit that can be addressed through technology, as well as better business processes and having tighter controls in the front end of your RCM. That can stop revenue leaking, and more importantly, get patients the care they need when they need it.

How are these capabilities being integrated into the EHR?

EHRs are definitely making a lot of progress in being that single source of truth. Sadly, we still see that fax is still the lowest common denominator of communicating, which is absurd because I don’t think fax machines actually exist anywhere now. It’s just the fax protocol of the thing, “Oh, I’m receiving an e-fax.” 

We’re seeing a lot of interesting things happening in document capture. As much as we’re saying that paper has been or will be eliminated, that’s the primary form of information exchange that we see when it’s a handoff between a referring physician to a specialist, and then from that specialist to a hospital or a health system. Obviously there are exceptions, but the industry standard involves a lot of disparate systems, so faxes end up becoming the way of life because they are low cost and you can get work done. Perhaps not the most efficient, but at least things keep moving along versus burdening IT teams to build broader integrations.

What RCM opportunities might AI provide beyond the earlier phases of offshoring and robotic process automation?

We look at technology solutions as first line of defense across any of the business processes that we are addressing for our customers, but we don’t leave it there. Our view is that our customers should demand outcomes, and that’s what we should deliver to them. 

For instance, in an authorization request, our customers and their patient customers don’t care how we get that authorization done. What they want is a clean authorization on file before date of service so that the patient can be seen in a timely manner and care can be dispensed as needed. Sometimes the ugly truth is that it will require somebody picking up the phone. It’s a stat requirement and you will need to talk to the payer and give all the clinical details about why the patient needs to be seen today, and we will support that.

But we see a lot of things that can be done from a technology perspective. That’s where early days we had machine learning and brought in RPA. Today we’re gradually bringing in AI agents to do more and more of those cognitive tasks that humans were doing. Reiterating the outcome-based approach, it doesn’t matter how we get it done, as long as we get it done with a quality output in a timely manner for our customers so that they can continue to focus on dispensing care.

Are health systems holding prospective vendors more accountable for outcomes that create measurable return on investment?

A lot of the technology spend these days in larger health systems is coming out of their innovation groups. Healthcare has been slow in technology adoption, but we are seeing more of a push to be on the cutting edge and not being left behind that is being driven by these innovation departments. But the folks who are actually driving the business processes, who have been living and breathing those inefficiencies, are pushing back about consuming yet another piece of technology. What is the value proposition that you are delivering to us? How will you ensure that we won’t increase our team size versus actually bringing efficiency? 

A lot of creative things are happening, but more often than not, our customers are defining an outcome and a success metric and saying that we are both going to work towards it. Nine out of 10 times, we’re going to get to those success metrics. Sometimes there are inherent workflow issues or business processes that can’t be changed, and perhaps the technology can’t deliver the value that it promised at the outset. It’s a joint effort between vendors and health systems to better define the problem, because once that’s defined, the guardrail is established, and technology can work really well within those framings.

Will payers use technology that is compatible with that of providers?

With Epic and other EHRs, we are seeing payers coming to the table to support various data interchange standards such as FHIR or previously HL7. There’s more and more of that happening in our ability to connect with benefit managers to get automated responses, be it on claim status checks or prior authorization requests. All of those things are definitely leading towards addressing some of the low-hanging fruit around what can be done through technology and EHR integrations.

But again, we feel that there are a lot of long-tail problems here in healthcare, RCM as well, that going back to my example on prior authorization, we just have to get it done. Let’s not wait for a technology to be 100% effective. If it is 80% effective, it’s a lot better than where some of the health systems are today.

As someone who has started, run, scaled, and sold businesses, how would you assess today’s environment?

Had you asked me that question maybe 10 months ago, my answer would have been very different. The general geopolitical environment worldwide is creeping into business decisions. Organizations are not taking a long view on things because they don’t know what the world will look like 12 months from now, and that makes it difficult for them to get tied into longer term contracts or buying into certain things that then they have to unwind. Commitment levels are getting tested.

But by the same token, innovation is at an all-time high. In the 15 years that I have been doing this, this is the first time that I have seen the investor community, healthcare leaders, the vendor community, and everyone aligned towards making this time different, with healthcare leading the charge versus being stodgy followers that never change. That is refreshing and exciting.

How do those factors affect the company’s strategy?

As we look at our various lines of business, and as we are looking to make investments across the organization, we ask ourselves the question — is AI going to disrupt us as we go down this path? Is AI going to be an opportunity for us as we go down this path?

More often than not, at least for now, we are seeing that the answer is the latter. We can definitely co-opt AI in many aspects of our business, which we continue to do. But it’s not the one silver bullet that will solve everything. Healthcare is an extremely fragmented industry and RCM is extremely fragmented across various specialties and geographies, so M&A is a key piece of our overall growth strategy. 

We feel that there is a lot of domain expertise that exists between various pockets around the country, whether it’s pathology billing, serving academic medical centers, or something complex like oncology billing. We keep looking at opportunities where we can partner with really smart people who have deep subject matter expertise in these specialties, then bring in our technology stack and our ability to globally scale to deliver value to our customers. AI continues to be a cornerstone of how we bring our solutions to market and how we service our customers, but domain knowledge will continue to exist and develop along with AI.

I have never been more excited about what we’re trying to do here at Infinx, along with the healthcare market in general. The ability to reduce friction between payers and providers, bring information to the forefront, and give agency to patients to better administer their own care is an industry opportunity. It obviously brings a lot of competition along the way, and a lot of noise as well, but we feel that we are well positioned. We are excited to be going forward and helping our provider partner customers across the board.

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Morning Headlines 6/16/25

June 15, 2025 Headlines Comments Off on Morning Headlines 6/16/25

Amazon reorganizes health-care business in latest bid to crack multitrillion-dollar market

Amazon restructures its healthcare business into six groups in an effort to streamline its business after several executive departures.

23andMe Reaches Agreement for Sale of Business to TTAM Research Institute Following Final Round of Bidding in Court-Approved Sale Process

23andMe co-founder and former CEO Anne Wojcicki regains control of the bankrupt company as her newly formed non-profit acquires its assets for $305 million, outbidding Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in a court-ordered final round.

Congress Eyes EHR Overhaul with VA Regulatory Plan

Draft legislation would increase Congressional control over the VA’s Oracle Health project by mandating regular reporting of project status.

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Monday Morning Update 6/16/25

June 15, 2025 News Comments Off on Monday Morning Update 6/16/25

Top News

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UCSF professor and University of California Health System chief data scientist Atul Butte, MD, PhD died Friday. He was 55.

Butte held the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professorship of pediatrics, bioengineering and therapeutic sciences, and epidemiology and biostatistics at UCSF. He was director of UCSF’s Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute and chief data scientist of UC Health.

The above UCTV video is from 2019, when Butte presciently described AI as “what’s old is new again” and discussed its potential in healthcare.


Reader Comments

From Efficient Hospital: “Re: AI. Everyone and their grandmothers have ideas on how to regulate it (CHAI, Joint Commission, AMA, AHA, CMS, FDA). Meanwhile, every AI company is learning that the only way to make money is to become an RCM vendor. All these regulations will end up applying to prior auth, denial management, and RCM workflows because nobody is willing to scale up deployment of clinical AI beyond itsy bitsy pilots.”


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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We clearly need to work out how to integrate and label AI-generated (or proposed) content into what clinicians generate manually.

New poll to your right or here: How has your perception of the former Cerner changed since its acquisition by Oracle? We’re now three years in, so comparisons are justified.


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

Amazon restructures its healthcare business after several executive departures. Amazon Health Services will be focused on six groups:

  • One Medical Clinical Care Delivery.
  • One Medical Clinical Operations and Performance
  • AHS Strategic Growth and Network Development.
  • AHS Store, Tech, and Marketing.
  • AHS Compliance.
  • AHS Pharmacy Services.

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Health data platform vendor Datavant acquires Ontellus, which offers records retrieval technology for self-insured companies and law firms.

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Autonomize AI, which offers AI copilots for healthcare enterprises, raises $28 million in a Series A funding round.

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Oracle names Mike Sicilia, who oversees the company’s vertical businesses including Oracle Health, as co-president alongside another executive in new SEC filings. Oracle has previously elevated executives to the role of president as part of CEO succession planning.

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23andMe co-founder and former CEO Anne Wojcicki regains control of the bankrupt company as her newly formed non-profit acquires its assets for $305 million, outbidding Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in a court-ordered final round.

China-based health tech company Ping An Good Doctor relaunches its health services platform with updates for proactive family doctor support, direct access to medical specialists, and full-cycle care coordination. The platform has 400 million registered users who can access 50,000 physicians, 105,000 health service partners, 235,000 pharmacies, and 4,000 hospitals. The company also announced AI tools for chronic disease monitoring, case triage, post-treatment care, and workplace health management.


People

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Lee Health hires Chris Akeroyd (Children’s Health) as CIO.


Government and Politics

Draft legislation would increase Congressional control over the VA’s Oracle Health project by mandating regular reporting of project status.


Sponsor Updates

  • Black Book Research offers comprehensive managed care industry studies and reports ahead of AHIP 2025, where it will recognize industry leaders.
  • Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Karen Joswick.
  • Optimum Healthcare IT achieves Microsoft’s Azure Virtual Desktop Advanced Specialization distinction.
  • RLDatix will exhibit at the AAMI EXchange June 20-23 in New Orleans.
  • Symplr receives the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Well-Being Excellence credential, and achieves Gold Tier status credentialing.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

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