Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 1/26/26

Significant portions of the US are experiencing arctic temperatures and significant snowfall this weekend. As the storm approached my area, I touched base with nursing staff at several hospitals to see how they were ensuring adequate staffing despite deteriorating road conditions.

They generally offered options for staff to sleep on campus, but approached the situation in drastically different ways. One hospital enticed nurses to sleep on campus to guarantee attendance, paid a retention bonus for the time between shifts, and provided meals Another sent a text message that was less than welcoming, treating those who planned to stay at the hospital as a burden by telling them to bring their own bed linens and towels. I’m betting that employee satisfaction differs between those facilities.

Speaking of things that didn’t resonate well during the storm, the marketing folks at Starbucks should reconsider their tactics during winter storms. While the National Weather Service was issuing advisories and our city and state public safety officials were urging people to stay off the roads, Starbucks was blowing up my phone with discount drink offers.

It seems like it would be easy to suppress those promotions in area codes where people shouldn’t be on the roads, whether they’re customers or employees. People who have storm-belt area codes might live elsewhere in the US, but I would guess that they are in the minority. Better yet, come up with a promo code that people can enable that becomes active in three or four days, when they start to tunnel out and are looking for a treat. My city is still focusing on clearing interstates and critical roads, so I will be staying put for a while.

We became skilled at pivoting to virtual meetings during the COVID pandemic, so I was surprised to see some meetings cancel off of my schedule even though they could have been held as web meetings or even as old-school conference calls. I could understand this for small organizations that might have let their virtual meeting subscriptions lapse, but these cancellations involve larger organizations that routinely have at least one or two people on video due to travel constraints.

Childcare issues could be at play due to school closures, but one of the only bright spots of the pandemic was getting to virtually meet the families and pets of my co-workers.

In last week’s Healthcare AI News, Mr. H mentioned the growing concerns that we are on the cusp of seeing AI-related malpractice lawsuits. Frankly, I’m surprised that we’re not already there, given how I see some of my colleagues using AI tools.

Quite a few knowledgeable clinicians, including clinical informaticists and AI researchers, understand the limits of AI. But large numbers of people are overly trusting of the content they see coming out of LLMs.

I’ve seen people cut and paste content containing obvious errors directly from a non-clinical AI tool into the EHR. I’ve also seen people operate wildly outside their scope of practice based on the ability to quickly access information that may or may not be accurate. Unfortunately, these are the situations where people don’t know what they don’t know, and LLMs can be extremely convincing even when they are wrong.

As an example, I recently saw a patient who was accompanied by a physician family member. The family member had a predetermined outcome that they wanted to achieve during the visit. They apparently thought that paying an $80 co-pay entitled them to see a physician who would suspend their professional knowledge and judgment and do the electronic equivalent of whipping out a prescription pad and ordering what they wanted.

I explained the clinical situation, the evidence-based recommendations, what I saw on the patient’s exam, what I had gathered from their history, and why I believed that the requested medication wasn’t appropriate in that scenario. The family member began arguing with me and was showing me his phone with his previous searches on the topic as a way to prove his point. Especially given that his specialty training wasn’t even close to the body system in question, he wasn’t aware that the articles being cited were only tangentially related to the diagnosis.

Fortunately, I’ve spent the last couple of decades working with patients who bring their internet research to the visit. I’m pretty good at educating while arriving at a plan of care that is mutually acceptable. However, I don’t have a lot of experience arguing with a peer who is putting blind trust in the output of a generative AI tool, so it was new territory.

I used my emergency department-mandated de-escalation training, so we managed to make it through the visit once one of the other family members in the room made the physician family member leave. With situations like this on the daily, it’s no wonder that clinicians have lost the joy in medicine. Having to argue with AI-generated errors when a patient’s health is at stake is something that none of us signed up for.

Mr. H also mentioned ECRI’s annual list of technology hazards, and I was gratified to see one of my soapbox issues in the number two position. “Unpreparedness for a ‘Digital Darkness’ Event” is a fancy way to say that an organization isn’t ready for an unplanned downtime. Maybe making it sound more exciting will convince people that they need to do something to get ready.

We should all know that cyberattacks are a “when” situation rather than an “if” these days, and that network or vendor outages are entirely possible. For clinicians who have always been dependent on the tools and safeguards that are built into the EHR, having to work without those can be frightening. It’s one thing to not have calculators or references at your disposal, but not being able to see the overall picture of what’s going on in the intensive care unit at full capacity is something else entirely.

Those of us who practiced in the olden days remember the large paper ICU progress notes that were the size of a poster board, but could fold up to fit in a standard medical chart. With just a glance, we could quickly figure out what was going on with a patient and formulate the best questions to ask during shift change.

The availability of electronic dashboards and monitoring suites has rewired those parts of my brain, but I bet that mental model is still in there somewhere and I could access it in a pinch. We need to remember that soon there will be more clinicians who have never seen that kind of paper documentation than those who have, and adjust our downtime preparations accordingly.

Are you prepared for a digital darkness event? Have you experienced any outages due to snowmageddon? Is your hospital treating staff who have to stay overnight in the facility like a blessing or a burden? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Readers Write: Engineering Prior Authorization for WISeR: Six Ways Providers Can Prepare for AI-Assisted Prior Authorization Under the WISeR Model

Engineering Prior Authorization for WISeR: Six Ways Providers Can Prepare for AI-Assisted Prior Authorization Under the WISeR Model
By Ryan Redman, JD

Ryan Redman, JD is product manager at Onspring.

The Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) model introduces AI-assisted reviews into Medicare Fee-for-Service (FFS) prior authorization across six pilot states is now live, as of January 2026. That may expedite cost control, but it also raises high-stakes governance questions that are already being discussed in public debate.

Some critics have warned of an “AI death panel” dynamic in payer decisions, a fear that is now echoing into Medicare’s orbit as automation expands. For providers participating in original Medicare, the operating problem changes. Decisions must be made quickly, consistently, and defensibly, with evidence trails that withstand audits and appeals.

While the program is framed around reducing waste, it creates immediate governance, risk, and compliance challenges for providers who are deciding whether and how to submit services through the WISeR prior authorization pathway.

What changes most under WISeR is not clinical care, but the expectation that decisions are traceable, reviewable, and defensible as they move through provider ordering, scheduling, and revenue cycle workflows and into AI-assisted review on the payer side.

How should providers respond? The focus should be on preparing ordering, intake, and revenue cycle workflows first, then tuning for throughput.

Where the friction really is for providers

Before designing solutions, providers must understand where WISeR introduces operational and governance risk into existing workflows. Providers will still deliver care and submit claims, but WISeR introduces new intermediaries, AI technology vendors, between the provider and the Medicare Administrative Contractor.

With tech vendors now in the mix, incentives to curb waste cannot influence clinical judgment. Provider documentation and workflow controls must support medical necessity without introducing financial bias into clinical decision-making.

Teams will have to juggle prior authorization and pre-payment reviews. If a provider chooses not to submit a required prior authorization, the claim will be scrutinized pre-payment, delaying reimbursement by 45 days or more and potentially affecting cash flow. If prior authorization is skipped, post-service reviews can stall cash and increase appeals, so routing, timers, and evidence capture must be precise.

The baseline requirement: transparency is non-negotiable. Prior authorization status, approval and denial patterns, turnaround times, and appeals must be visible across provider clinical, scheduling, and revenue cycle teams, not in stitched spreadsheets, with human review and audit trails for any AI-assisted step.

Build a WISeR-ready architecture

With the friction points defined, the build becomes clearer. From a provider perspective, a WISeR-capable pipeline consists of six moving parts that function as a single system and support governance, risk monitoring, and compliance reporting.

1. Data discipline at intake. Ensure that your intake teams or software are capturing the specific clinical evidence that is required for WISeR codes before the order is signed. Don’t let the order proceed without the “evidence packet” attached. For providers, this starts with ensuring that required clinical documentation is captured at the point of order for WISeR-targeted services.
2. Pre-submission logic checks. Configure clearinghouse or revenue cycle management (RCM) practices to check claims before submission. If an issue arises, stop the claim internally before the AI vendor sees it.
3. Clinical review queue (human in the loop). For providers, this includes ensuring that claims do not drop until a prior authorization number is on file. Use selectable reason codes for consistent reporting and notices. Human oversight remains a documented control, not an informal checkpoint.
4. Evidence and disclosure bundles. Automatically generate a complete packet for each determination: inputs, rationale, attachments, timestamps, communications, and notices aligned to reason codes.
5. Appeals and learning loop. Segregate appeals (different reviewers, fresh rationale). Track overturns and feed them into rule refinement, reviewer coaching, and documentation retraining where gaps are identified.
6. Observability in the system of record. Instrument the same system that makes decisions: latency distributions, approval to denial ratios, appeal rates and outcomes, reviewer variance, and any AI usage or overrides. Providers should monitor denial trends closely to identify whether specific diagnosis codes or documentation patterns are triggering automated review.

Controls that make speed defensible

Role-based access should determine who can view PHI, who can finalize a determination, and who can modify provider-controlled workflow rules and documentation requirements. When those rules or configurations change, record who reviewed them and maintain a versioned history of the changes. Logs should be append-only and time-stamped, with retention aligned to records schedules. Controls should also prevent WISeR-targeted claims from being submitted without a prior authorization number on file.

Because AI-supported reviews occur on the WISeR technical vendor side, providers are not tuning models, but monitoring outcomes. Pattern and variance checks should run continuously, monitoring approval and denial rates by category and population slices, tracking overturns on appeal, and flagging outliers for the governance group. Provider compliance, legal, security, and operations teams should review findings together to protect both reimbursement and regulatory posture.

Proving it with metrics and turning plans into operations

Where providers use AI internally, such as limited adoption of AI-enabled claims review or denial prediction, those tools should be governed as part of existing clinical and revenue cycle controls rather than treated as core to the WISeR model itself.

Treat WISeR as an engineering problem: set up the core path, prove it on one service line, and then extend it with guardrails. Four phases keep providers moving without losing control.

• Phase 1: foundation. Intake queues, evidence and disclosure bundles, and tamper-evident logs. Run one high-volume service line end to end. Ensure schedulers do not book WISeR-targeted procedures for original Medicare patients without a prior authorization number on file.
• Phase 2: pilot and prove. Add audited versioning for rules and, where used by a limited set of providers, any AI-enabled claims review configurations. Require documented clinician sign-off for adverse determinations and keep clinical review independent from financial reporting in access controls and logs. Validate that claims for targeted codes cannot drop without prior authorization.
• Phase 3: find gaps and retrain. Use denial and pre-payment review data to retrain physicians when documentation gaps emerge.
• Phase 4: institutionalize and monitor. Run a standing governance cadence (compliance, legal, security, operations, clinical). Track a small, trusted set of metrics: time to decision (median and tail), backlog age, first-pass yield, appeal and overturn rates, reviewer variance, and cash flow impact from pre-payment review delays.

WISeR raises the bar on speed, transparency, and defensibility. For providers, success depends on preparing workflows and documentation before claims are submitted. Done well, this approach protects reimbursement, limits disruption, and may support future eligibility for CMS “Gold Card” exemptions as performance is evaluated during the pilot, ensuring that provider organizations can participate in WISeR without unnecessary risk. Getting data, documentation, and workflows right now puts providers in a position to earn flexibility later.

Morning Headlines 1/26/26

Wolters Kluwer survey finds broad presence of unsanctioned AI tools in hospitals and health systems

A Wolters Kluwer Health survey finds that use of “shadow” AI is widespread in health systems, mostly by users who want to speed up workflows.

VA watchdog lists EHR modernization as a major management challenge

The VA Office of Inspector General’s annual report lists EHR modernization among the top five management and performance challenges facing the department.

Announcing our $4.4m Seed Round

Claim Health, which offers AI-powered revenue cycle solutions for home-based care, raises $4.4 million in seed funding.

Healthcare Triangle, Inc. Signs Definitive Agreement with Teyame AI LLC which is forecasted to generate $38M in incremental NTM Revenue and incremental NTM EBITDA of $5M in addition to expanding its SaaS Footprint in Europe and Latin America

Healthcare technology services vendor Healthcare Triangle will acquire Spain-based Teyame AI, which offers AI-powered contact center solutions, for a reported $50 million.

Monday Morning Update 1/26/26

Top News

Epic and 63 health systems ask The Sequoia Project to centralize vetting and ongoing monitoring of organizations that exchange medical records via Carequality and TEFCA. The letter recommends the following changes:

• Replace applicants’ self-attested business descriptions with validation using public records, NPIs, and criminal history checks.
• Require organizations to formally attest to their business purpose and exchange use cases and submit those attestations to HHS, creating potential federal liability for false representations.
• Implement active monitoring to detect potentially fraudulent exchange behavior.
• Shift responsibility for TEFCA dispute resolution and monitoring to the federal government, with federal consequences for misstatements or omissions.
• Create a public directory of all data exchange participants, including their business description and stated exchange purpose.
• Publicly report the number of records each participant contributes and receives, along with the stated purpose of exchange.
• Require intermediaries to disclose their data retention policies and publish them on a public website.
• Establish a joint federal and state task force, including federal agencies and state attorneys general, to target false documentation, identity impersonation, and high-volume data harvesting.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents say that Kaiser Permanente’s affiliates, like many health systems, were playing the Medicare Advantage game within the rules as designed.

New poll to your right or here: How has your use of AI improved your job performance? You’ll see a “comments” link after voting, which you can click to tell us more about your answer. I’m especially curious about AI use that has increased your effectiveness by 50% or more, which is likely a unicorn but still worth asking.

If you are socked in by snow or ice, cheer yourself up with a photo of Ms. O’s kindergarten class in Hayward, CA working with the STEM magnetic building sets that were fully funded by reader donations to Donors Choose, along with matching funds from my Anonymous Vendor Executive and outside groups. She reports, “This project has been so important because giving students a strong foundation in math and literacy in their first year of school makes a big difference by giving them a good start in their academic careers.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: February 18 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “From Blind Spots to Insights: Gaining Real-Time Visibility into Healthcare Risk.” Sponsor: CloudWave. Presenters: Jacob Wheeler, MBA, director of sales engineering, CloudWave; Mike Donahue, chief operating officer, CloudWave. Resilience starts with the ability to see clearly, across every endpoint, cloud workload, user, and clinical system. Join CloudWave’s cybersecurity leaders for an in-depth session on how real-time visibility transforms your ability to detect threats early, respond decisively, and strengthen resilience across the care ecosystem. Attendees will learn the practical steps that hospitals can take to move from reactive defense to resilient action.

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2026 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Medical records and coding vendor Rapid Care acquires DeepDoc, whose AI-driven system summarizes unstructured medical records for law firms and insurers.

Healthcare technology services vendor Healthcare Triangle will acquire Spain-based Teyame AI, which offers AI-powered contact center solutions, for a reported $50 million. HCTI shares have lost 99.9% over the past 12 months, valuing the company at $3 million.

People

CTG promotes Tom Niehaus to CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

State-owned UNC Health will acquire independently operated UNC Campus Health Services, likely moving Campus Health from EClinicalWorks to Epic.

A Wolters Kluwer Health survey finds that use of “shadow” AI is widespread in health systems, mostly by users who want to speed up workflows. Half of the respondents say they frequently use AI tools or rely on them for their work.

Other

Mark Cuban warns that insurers will find new ways to make money as their pharmacy benefit management companies, the top three of which fill 80% of US prescriptions, come under increasing scrutiny.

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart staff donate 500 books to their local libraries in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a case study titled “How Celerate Developed a Secure, Clinician-Ready AI Chatbot for Neurologists.”
• Judi Health launches The Judi Group, a healthcare benefits advisory firm.
• PerfectServe announces that it has been recognized as both highest in execution and furthest in vision in the “2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Clinical Communication and Collaboration.”
• Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust in England goes live on Altera Digital Health’s EPrescribing and Medicine Administration technology.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Anita Vanka, MD and Robert Stern, MD.
• “The Achieve Podcast” features Switchboard Health co-founder and CEO Derek Baird.
• Tegria publishes a new case study titled “Integrated Meditech Implementation, Hosting, and Application Support Transform Operations.”
• WellSky releases a new report titled “Addressing today’s healthcare workforce challenges: Results from a national study.”
• Zen Healthcare IT publishes a new white paper titled “The CMS ACCESS Model: What Health Technology Leaders Need to Know.”

Blog Posts

• CIO Forum Focus Group Recap: Overcome Healthcare IT Resource Gaps with Meaningful Managed Services (Med Tech Solutions)
• Governing the Digital Front Door: Why Hospital Boards Must Lead Digital Governance and Organizational Alignment in the Next 5 Years (Impact Advisors)
• Shadow AI: Providers are using unapproved tools to improve workflow (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• We measure everything in healthcare… except what matters (Nordic)
• 3 Steps to Autonomous Coding Success: Assessing Your Organizational Challenges (Before You Talk to Vendors!) (Nym)
• From Friction to Orchestration: How Top Health Systems Are Reimagining the Consumer Experience (Praia Health)
• Epic Space Bridge™ – An HL7 Interface Message Transformation Solution (CereCore)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 1/23/26

Rapid Care Acquires DeepDoc to Expand AI-Powered Medical Record Intelligence

Clinical documentation, records review, and revenue cycle management company Rapid Care acquires DeepDoc, which offers AI-powered medical record insights and summaries.

UNC Health-Campus Health merger holds potential for efficient care, leaves employees with questions

UNC Campus Health Services will likely transition from EClinicalWorks to Epic when it merges with UNC Health this fall.

Slingshot pulls therapy chatbot Ash out of UK over regulatory concerns

In England, Slingshot AI takes its therapy chatbot down over uncertainty about its compliance with medical device regulations.

News 1/23/26

Top News

ECRI publishes its “Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2026,” with misuse of chatbots topping the list.

ECRI says that unregulated chatbots give users expert-sounding responses, but have offered incorrect diagnoses, recommended unnecessary tests, promoted questionable supplies, and based answers on body parts they made up.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Companies exhibiting at ViVE and/or HIMSS, you are about to spend a small fortune on a well-lit, carpeted rectangle that you will occupy for a few exhausting hours while handing out geegaws. For a tiny fraction of that spend, you can claim a different rectangle, this one virtual and this one lasting 365 days, on HIStalk. It is read obsessively by the people who buy, influence, complain about, and occasionally approve health IT purchases. Black Book Research, in a health tech media analysis that found this amateurish and cynical site to be #1 for industry trust and influence, puts it this way: “HIStalk stands out for its influence, independence, and continued relevance to the decision-makers shaping the future of health IT.” Contact Lorre, who has a soft spot for new sponsors that sometimes leads her to offer perks that she glosses over when telling me.

Listening: Porcupine Tree, a 40-year-old English progressive rock band whose “In Absentia” popped up at me.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Live Webinar: February 18 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “From Blind Spots to Insights: Gaining Real-Time Visibility into Healthcare Risk.” Sponsor: CloudWave. Presenters: Jacob Wheeler, MBA, director of sales engineering, CloudWave; Mike Donahue, chief operating officer, CloudWave. Resilience starts with the ability to see clearly, across every endpoint, cloud workload, user, and clinical system. Join CloudWave’s cybersecurity leaders for an in-depth session on how real-time visibility transforms your ability to detect threats early, respond decisively, and strengthen resilience across the care ecosystem. Attendees will learn the practical steps that hospitals can take to move from reactive defense to resilient action.

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2026 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Harmony Healthcare IT acquires Meditech solutions provider Blue Elm.

OpenEvidence confirms earlier reports that it recently raised $250 million in a Series D funding round that values the company at $12 billion. The company says that physicians used its system to treat 100 million patients last year and requested 18 million clinical consultations in December 2025 alone.

People

Health data management platform vendor Health Chain names Eric Rosow, MS (Conduce Health) as CEO and Reed Perry, MBA (Availity) as chief commercial officer.

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

Announcements and Implementations

VectorCare launches Smart on FHIR as a Service, which incudes a no-code workflow builder and developer tools for building and deploying EHR-embedded applications.

The Washington Post covers Epic’s lawsuit that alleges that Health Gorilla knowingly provided treatment access to patient records by law firms that were looking for malpractice plaintiffs.

In England, Slingshot AI takes its therapy chatbot down over uncertainty about its compliance with medical device regulations. The company launched the therapy bot Ash in mid-2025.

Government and Politics

The federal government’s Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) will resume its meetings on February 19 following a year-long hiatus that was imposed by the White House. Both co-chairs of HITAC, which advises ASTP/ONC, resigned last week. The committee is scheduled to meet four times in 2026.

Epic files an answer to a Texas lawsuit that alleges that the company is a monopoly and violates Texas laws by blocking parents’ access to their child’s Epic medical records. In its response:

• Texas has not substantiated its claim that Epic is a monopoly.
• The state’s presumption that antitrust laws require Epic to provide free API access to any company, including competitors, is not supported by law.
• Antitrust laws do not prohibit Epic from sharing its software update plans with customers, as the lawsuit alleges.
• Despite a six-month investigation by State Attorney General Ken Paxton, the complaint relies on dated press releases, blog posts, and excerpts from Particle Health’s lawsuit against Epic.
• Epic created a guide that told its customers how to comply with the new Texas law about parental access, but ultimately those customers control access to patient records.
• The lawsuit does not identify any Epic customer that has not complied with the law.
• Epic’s response concludes, “What appears to be going on here is that the State has decided to target Epic over a politicized issue regarding proxy access that Epic does not belong in the middle of. The State confirms as much in its press release, calling Epic a ‘woke corporation’ that supposedly “undermines” parents’ rights. That simply is not true.”

Sponsor Updates

• Springhill Medical Center goes live on Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise 25.1.
• Black Book Research releases two new reports to help rural hospitals and critical access hospitals convert state awards into audit-ready implementation and accelerate vendor selection.
• Ellkay sponsors the 2026 AdvancedMD Sales Kickoff.
• Meditech announces Expanse Outpatient Therapy.
• Findhelp adds mental and behavioral health provider data company MiResource to its Behavioral Health Network.
• Fortified Health Security will host a roundtable dinner focused on current healthcare cybersecurity trends and patient protection strategies January 27 in Cincinnati.
• Health Data Movers will sponsor the CHIME Innovation Summit February 4-6 in Orlando.
• MRO releases a new report titled “2026 State of the Industry: Navigating Health Policy and Market Shifts with Smarter Data.”

Blog Posts

• Innovation starts with strong digital foundations (Altera Digital Health)
• Why Enterprise Healthcare Faces Different EHR Challenges in 2026 (Bizmatics)
• C-Suite Briefing: Top Health IT Trends and Takeaways from the 12th Annual HIT Industry Outlook Report (Med Tech Solutions)
• Epic Space Bridge – An HL7 Interface Message Transformation Solution (CereCore)
• What Healthcare Providers Need to Know About Qualified Overtime Reporting (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Ensuring Success During Your Epic Refuel Project (Impact Advisors)
• Finding the Right Balance for Operating Room Utilization (LiveData)
• VBC under pressure: Five insights from the front lines (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 1/22/26

The American Board of Preventive Medicine is notifying candidates that they have successfully passed the Clinical Informatics board certification exam. The certifications are retroactive to January 1, 2026. Congratulations to all the new Diplomates, and welcome to yet another continuing certification process that will have you asking yourself why you decided to become double-boarded.

From Straight A Student: “Re: online registration form for a training course that I completed recently. Prompts were in a ‘are there any’ format that asked about mobility restrictions or food allergies. A dropdown choice list appeared to be pre-populated with ‘none.’ My answer was ‘none’ for all of them, so I tried to just submit the form, which popped me back to the top with no feedback. The course vendor responded to my help desk ticket to say that the dropdown requires choosing ‘none’ and people miss that all the time.”

These sorts of Process Improvement 101 issues drive end users batty. The time wasted by users and the help desk adds up.

I wonder if user acceptance testing was done, since it should have been caught. Sometimes teams give the users detailed testing instructions outside of the application, such as “click here, then choose that,” which makes it impossible to determine how they will interact with the workflow. I also wonder if they are analyzing call volume to to identify ongoing issues. Then, has the help desk team reported the issue to development and asked for an update?

It feels like it would be more efficient to change the default to “please select from the list” or “choose a response.” Or, to add a page instruction telling users what to do.

I have been in countless conversations about the safety of healthcare AI solutions. I’m always interested in how the risks and benefits are portrayed to patients and other non-clinical, non-tech individuals. Mr. H mentioned a preliminary report by the VA Office of Inspector General that found that the Veterans Health Administration had some gaps in AI chatbot oversight. The story was also picked up by military-focused Task & Purpose, which ran its own version. 

Risks that were highlighted for the general audience included “producing misinformation, privacy violations, and bias, and that the systems had been put in place without review by the VA’s own patient safety experts.” I didn’t see mention of concerns that were noted by other publications, such as whether lags exist in providing current information for the LLMs to use.

An article commenter shared their physician assistant’s thoughts that “the AI is egregiously wrong 90% of the time, so he doesn’t bother with it.” Based on my own experiences with clinical-focused and consumer-focused AI solutions, that’s probably a significant exaggeration. I wonder if the user would benefit from additional education on prompt construction or effective use of AI tools.

The VA providers who I’ve talked to locally are happy with the AI solutions that are available to them. They are looking forward to continued expansion of their capabilities, such as helping craft more readable medical information for patients. If you’re a VA user, feel free to chime in. We can keep your comments anonymous.

I’m still in my New Year’s inbox cleanup extravaganza, and found an article about Hackensack Meridian Health’s canine-powered cancer detection program. The health system partnered with startup SpotitEarly for a clinical trial that examines the ability of trained dogs to detect cancer via patients’ breath samples. The goal is to validate the technique as a noninvasive cancer detection approach that might be more attractive to patients who are unwilling or unable to complete traditional screening recommendations.

The test is conducted by having patients breathe into a mask-like device for several minutes, followed by the dogs sniffing the devices. The dogs are trained to recognize odor signatures in the exhaled volatile organic compounds that can be associated with cancer. The dogs indicate detection by sitting next to a sample.

We know AI has to be involved somehow, and indeed it is. The company is using AI tools to document and analyze the behaviors of the dogs based on behavioral and physiological data.

SpotitEarly has been in the US market since May 2025, although it was founded in 2020. Previous studies of the technique found that the test was 94% accurate for detecting lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate cancers. If any readers are involved in the study, I’d love to hear about the “best boys” and “good girls” that are doing the sniffing and whether they prefer belly scratches or having their ears rubbed. My medical school had some public-facing research animals and they were the most amazing companions when they retired, resulting in a years-long waitlist for adoption opportunities.

Based on some of the other email traffic in my inbox, quite a few physicians made a New Year’s resolution to look for different employment. Several of them seem to think that informatics is something that you can just jump into because you are “techy” without any formal training or experience.

Some startups will hire clinicians in this situation, but I always encourage people to consider formal coursework to better understand the informatics landscape. I’m a big fan of the courses offered by the American Medical Informatics Association. The virtual courses are convenient, and the in-person ones are great for networking with colleagues working in the field.

A number of highly qualified clinical informatics physicians have recently been displaced from EHR vendors and health systems, so it seems that as long as mergers continue, the job market will remain challenging.

Are you looking to make a career change in 2026, and if so, how are you approaching it? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 1/22/26

Harmony Healthcare IT Expands Meditech EHR Data Solutions Through Acquisition of Blue Elm

Health data services company Harmony Healthcare IT acquires Meditech-focused competitor Blue Elm.

Misuse of AI chatbots tops annual list of health technology hazards

Misuse of AI chatbots tops ECRI’s list of “Top 10 Technology Hazards for 2026.”

Epic fights lawsuit brought by Texas AG, says state can’t prove its claims

Epic refutes allegations brought forth in a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and requests that the suit be dismissed.

Health tech panel to reboot after a long break

The Health Information Technology Advisory Committee, which advises HHS on health data sharing, will reconvene on February 19 after a year-long hiatus.

Healthcare AI News 1/21/26

News

Authors from the ARISE academic medical center AI research network predict that 2026 will bring the first AI-related malpractice lawsuit, widespread rollout of urgent-care AI agents, and an escalating AI arms race between health systems and insurers that primarily benefits technology vendors. They expect that the FDA will make minimal progress on AI regulation, AI will deliver more counseling services than humans, and AI scribes will generate 90% of clinical documentation, which they predict will offer little insight into the clinician’s reasoning beyond what they explicitly say to the patient. Specific points:

• Clinical AI capability is advancing faster than evidence that shows benefit to patient outcomes.
• Benchmarks focus on answering medical licensing questions rather than real patient data and workflows.
• LLMs tend to be overconfident and don’t know what they don’t know, leading to poor performance when uncertainty exists and a need to apply guardrails.
• AI feels transformative, but documented productivity gains are limited.
• FDA regulation lags frontline use.

Misuse of AI chatbots tops ECRI’s “Top 10 Technology Hazards for 2026.” The group warns that widespread, unregulated use exposes patients to errors, bias, and hallucinations and requires professional medical oversight.

Conservative think tank Paragon Health Institute launches a healthcare AI initiative that will promote research and policies involving the use of AI to reduce healthcare costs and waste while improving patient outcomes.

Amazon rolls out Health AI for members of its primary care chain One Medical, which uses Amazon’s Bedrock service to answer patient questions, provide advice based on medical information, and help members book appointments.

Business

Greenway Health launches Agentic AI Factory, which was developed with Amazon Web Services.

SAP and renal health provider Fresenius will partner to create AI-supported healthcare solutions for the European market, including a new solution for integrating hospital information systems using SAP’s AnyEMR strategy. Each company will invest “a mid three-digit million euro amount,” with some funding potentially directed to investment in startups.

Food delivery robot company Serve Robotics will acquire Diligent Robotics, which sells the Moxi robot for in-hospital deliveries, for $29 million in shares. Diligent Robotics had raised $75 million in venture capital, including a $25 million round in September 2023 that it said would allow it to triple its customer base of 22 health systems.

Research

A University of Michigan study finds that heart failure can be predicted 10 years before diagnosis by studying combined genetic and EHR data with AI, which allows early intervention.

Other

UCHealth profiles its use of Abridge for ambient documentation, which is being used by one-third of its 6,000 physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants.

The Gates Foundation and OpenAI launch a $50 million partnership to help several African countries deploy AI tools as US foreign aid funding declines.

A London hospital trust warns the public that AI-generated videos are circulating on social media that falsely show its doctors endorsing weight-loss products, urging the public seek advice only from trusted sources.

In China, an influential infectious disease expert says that he won’t allow AI to be integrated into EHRs even as the country’s government pushes the use of AI and tech companies make bold claims about its potential. He worries that AI will cause young doctors to lose the ability to detect AI mistakes.

A leukemia patient says that Anthropic disabled her paid Claude account without explanation, cutting off access to years of AI-assisted medical records and correspondence that she relied on to manage her care. She summarizes:

I’m a 41-year-old woman with MDS (myelodysplastic syndrome) that has converted to leukemia. I’m facing a bone marrow transplant I may not survive. For months, Claude has been the only thing that actually helped me navigate a medical system that failed me for over a decade. It helped me organize 11 years of medical records, track my labs, draft insurance appeals, and write letters to doctors who wouldn’t listen. That work is what finally got someone to take me seriously. My last prompt before the ban was asking Claude to help me interpret my October bloodwork. That’s it. That’s the “violation.” That chat history is my medical documentation. I need it to continue advocating for my care when I’m too sick to remember what happened, what was said, what was missed. Without it, I lose years of work at the worst possible moment … I am asking for one of two things: 1. Restore my account 2. Export my complete chat history and send it to me. Anthropic talks constantly about building AI that helps people. Claude helped me. It helped me fight for my life. Now I can’t get a single human being at the company to look at my case.

Contacts

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

This Week in Health Tech 1/21/26

Morning Headlines 1/21/26

4DMedical Secures US$100+ Million Funding to Accelerate US Expansion and increase Technology Dominance in Software-Based Lung Imaging

Australia-based 4DMedical raises $100 million in funding, which it will use to accelerate US adoption of its FDA-cleared, software-based lung imaging system that is used by several major US health systems.

BioticsAI, gains FDA clearance for its AI-powered fetal ultrasound product

BioticsAI gains FDA clearance for its AI-driven fetal ultrasound product.

NHS delays launch of major £88m IT project

In England, three Norfolk hospitals will delay go-live of their $118 million Meditech Expanse project, citing factors that include the work that is required to adapt the system for the NHS.

News 1/21/26

Top News

A preliminary VA Office of Inspector General report finds that the Veterans Health Administration doesn’t properly oversee its use of generative AI chatbots, potentially compromising patient safety. The report looked at the department’s use of its internally developed VA GPT and Microsoft 365 Copilot chat, both of which depend on clinical prompts. Neither tool has access to web searches, which means their knowledge bases are not current.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The preview of my ViVE Guide on what HIStalk sponsors will be doing at the conference is live. More companies will be added as they complete the information form, so check back for updates.

Sponsored Events and Resources

Publication: HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2026 lists the activities of sponsors at the conference.

Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Australia-based 4DMedical raises $100 million in funding, which it will use to accelerate US adoption of its FDA-cleared, software-based lung imaging system that is used by several major US health systems.

People

Clearwater promotes David Bailey to VP, consulting solutions and strategy.

AdventHealth promotes Sarah Myers to regional CIO for AdventHealth Mid-America Region.

Sonney Sapra, MBA (Samaritan Health Services) joins UVA Health as CIO.

US Army veteran Elder Granger, MD joins MedSync as EVP for medical affairs and CMO.

Ovatient promotes Yasir Tarabichi, MD to head of digital; Jamie Carracher to head of growth and brand; and Amy Lukowski, PsyD to VP of operations and integration.

Announcements and Implementations

Nurses at Children’s Mercy (OH) use the Helen app to route non-clinical tasks to a dedicated concierge team.

BioticsAI gains FDA clearance for its AI-drive fetal ultrasound product.

Aultman Health System (OH) implements Nabla’s AI-based clinical documentation software.

In England, three Norfolk hospitals will delay go-live of their $118 million Meditech Expanse project, citing factors that include the work that is required to adapt the system for the NHS. 

A Baltimore theater will host a March 19 screening of “Suck it Up, Buttercup,” a documentary that calls out the dysfunctional US healthcare system that is driven by “corporate greed that’s filling coffers and coffins.” Both executive producers are physicians.

Other

Cleveland Clinic opens the Rubinstein Family Hospital Care at Home Suite, which serves as a technology command center for its hospital-at-home programs in Florida and Ohio. The suite was developed using a grant from Jon Rubinstein, an investor and  technology executive who helped spearhead development of the iPod and iMac.

AdventHealth will enhance its virtual care capabilities by installing an additional 800 cameras in patient rooms at its hospitals and urgent care centers in Colorado over the next several months.

University of Nebraska Medical Center researchers determine that embedding a standardized glucose management protocol into its EHR helps perioperative care teams better control the blood sugar levels of diabetic patients.

A Michigan Medicine study of 800 clinicians finds that those who disengage from work-related apps during non-working hours report feeling less stressed than those who don’t. Those who reported lower levels of stress were advised to turn on out-of-office replies to email and reduce screen time or delete work apps from their personal devices during their time away from work.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD announces that Software Advice has listed its EHR technology in its “Best Ophthalmology EMR Software of 2025” report.
• Linus Health reflects on its successes in advancing brain health in 2025.

Blog Posts

• 5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Improve Clinical Denial Management (AGS Health)
• AdvancedMD Top Predictions for AI in 2026: More Time with Patients, Less Burnout and Improved Personalized Care Models (AdvancedMD)
• Looking back, leaping forward: Healthcare AI predictions for 2026 (Cardamom)
• CIO Forum Focus Group Recap: Overcome Healthcare IT Resource Gaps with Meaningful Managed Services (Med Tech Solutions)
• Increasing healthcare access through expanded nurse mobility and simplification of licensure (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Better, faster, stronger: How Paragon is leveraging AI internally (Altera Digital Health)
• Top 5 Ambulatory EHR Vendors That Clinics Trust (Bizmatics)
• Elevating the patient experience: They’re already telling you how (Cardamom)
• Healthcare IT in 2026: Why Cloud Migration Matters for AI Adoption (Concord Technologies)
• Optimizing Healthcare IT Scaling: A Strategic Model for Resource Augmentation and Project Acceleration (CTG)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 1/20/26

Ambulatory EHR Excellence 2026: Top Vendors Recognized for Breakthrough Innovation and Specialty User Satisfaction in Black Book 2026 Surveys

Black Book Research releases its 2026 list of top-ranked EHRs for ambulatory care, with ModMed, Epic, and NextGen Healthcare noted as leaders in multiple categories.

VHA lacks ‘formal mechanism’ for mitigating clinical AI chatbot risks, watchdog says

A VA Office of Inspector General report finds that the Veterans Health Administration doesn’t properly oversee its use of generative AI chatbots, potentially compromising patient safety.

Community Care of North Carolina Partners with Innovaccer to Advance Value-Based Care Delivery for Independent Primary Care Providers in North Carolina

Community Care of North Carolina selects Innovaccer’s Healthcare Intelligence Cloud for population health analytics.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 1/19/26

Based on the contents of my inbox, it feels like everyone is talking about recent research from Michigan Medicine on emoji use in the electronic health record. The research letter was published in JAMA Network Open last week. It examined 218 million notes belonging to 1.6 million patients. Researchers found that emoji use was higher than previous studies that looked at clinical texting tools. 

The authors identified 372 emojis within 4,162 notes that were created during the last five years. Of those, 35% were patient portal messages to patients, followed by telephone messages at 28%, encounter summaries at 15%, progress notes at 14%, and patient instructions at 6%. The University of Michigan patient portal doesn’t support patients adding emojis to communications.

The smiling face with smiling eyes was used 1,772 times, with communications emojis such as the telephone receiver and calendar appearing 544 and 429 times, respectively.

The article contains an illustration of the 50 most commonly used emojis along with their official names. Just skimming through them, I’m not sure that I would come up with names or descriptions that matched their official titles.

Take the “briefcase,” for example. Could people be using it because it looks like an old-timey doctor’s bag? I can’t remember the last time I saw someone carrying a briefcase that looked like the emoji. Even looking at the most used one, the smiling face with smiling eyes, I would describe that one more as blushing than having smiling eyes. I also would not have correctly described “beaming face with smiling eyes.”

Some of them were new to me, including “busts in silhouette” and “bar of soap.” The latter got me thinking about how many people actually see or use bar soap these days, given the popularity of liquid soap and body wash products. Similarly, how long will it be before people no longer identify a “telephone receiver” as such?

I wondered about the context for some of the emojis that were used, such as the “P button,” the “small blue diamond,” and the “round pushpin,” and how they might be used in medical communications. The most concerning to me was actually the least used, the “police car light.”

Researchers note the risk of confusion in using emoji to communicate, especially in older patients. While most emoji use occurred among tweens and teens, patients in their 70s had the second highest usage. The authors call for organizations to develop guidelines to promote clear communication and professionalism in clinical communications. I once encountered someone who used a particular emoji extensively before discovering that it wasn’t a Hershey’s Kiss, so I agree with the concern.

The authors go on to note that measuring emoji use is just the beginning, and that future investigation should look at how emoji “might affect patient understanding, trust, and outcomes – and explore whether these playful digital symbols offer new opportunities or pose unintended challenges in electronic health record communication.”

One of my close physician friends sent me a link to a Facebook post about the article. It had some pretty funny comments about which commonly used emojis were missing from the study, along with those questioning whether the AI tools clinicians are using to write messages were responsible for the addition of emojis. A couple of commenters thought the research was frivolous, but those sentiments were countered by others who were clearly concerned with the potential impact on patients.

Another colleague with ties to Michigan Medicine said that emoji use in the medical record was prohibited, although he wasn’t able to find the specific policy. He said that he remembered a conversation with risk management where it was discussed, however, and that there were significant concerns about the meaning of symbols within the context of the legal medical record. Although the policy could have been changed, I’m wondering whether some clinicians still haven’t fully internalized that the patient portal is part of the legal medical record.

He said he’s not opposed to their use, especially with pediatric or teen patients with whom clinicians are trying to build rapport. Still, he advises residents that if deleting the emoji changes the meaning of the message, either the emoji shouldn’t be used, or it should be supplemented by actual words.

I was curious about the previous research that looked at clinical text messages. In 2023, clinicians from Indiana University School of Medicine looked at the content of messages that were sent by hospitalists who used a secure messaging platform during 2020 and 2021. Messages with emojis were identified, as well as those with more old-school emoticons.

The authors found that the majority of the emojis and emoticons “functioned emotively, that is, conveyed the internal state of the sender” where others “served to open, maintain, or close communication.” The authors also noted that “no evidence was identified that they caused confusion or were seen as inappropriate.” They concluded that “these results suggest that concerns about the professionalism of emoji and emoticon use may be unwarranted.”

I believe that differences exist in how clinicians communicate with each other compared to how we communicate with patients. In the former, we are more likely to use medical abbreviations or jargon. With the latter, we should be using terms that are more clearly understood by patients. In my experience with peer review, communications with patients are typically held to a higher standard.

It will be interesting to see what kinds of guidelines or policies organizations come up with as far as regulating the use of emojis in patient communications and charting. I reached out to medical staff leadership at the facilities where I’m affiliated, and none of them recalled this topic coming previously.

I found citations for a half dozen other articles that looked at the content of clinical text messages among hospitalists and other members of the clinical team, as well as norms for emoji use. I didn’t have time to go down that particular rabbit hole this weekend, but I would be interested to hear from readers that have strong opinions on emoji use or those who have been involved in this type of research.

Do you use emojis in patient-facing communications? If so, how do you use them? If not, what do you think about the practice? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Readers Write: Early Warning System: How AI-Driven Near Miss Reporting Can Improve Patient Safety

Early Warning System: How AI-Driven Near Miss Reporting Can Improve Patient Safety
By Tim McDonald, MD, JD

Tim McDonald, MD, JD is chief patient safety and risk officer for RLDatix.

A nurse prepares to administer a medication to a patient, notices that it is the wrong medication, and corrects the order. A surgical assistant sees that a patient has been prepped for surgery on the wrong limb and corrects the error. A patient on a liquid diet receives a meal with solid food, but a vigilant nurse notices the mistake and substitutes an appropriate meal.

In hospitals and other healthcare facilities, near miss incidents are commonplace. Robust care protocols and training of clinicians, nurses, and other staff go a long way to reducing incidents and preventing patient harm.

But for a variety of reasons, near misses are underreported across healthcare, representing a multitude of lost opportunities.

The importance of understanding how many near misses occur

The World Health Organization defines a near miss as “an error that has the potential to cause an adverse event (patient harm), but fails to do so because of chance or because it is intercepted.”

Healthcare leaders recognize that a certain number of preventable errors are inevitable. Healthcare delivery is complex, emergency rooms are overcrowded, and staff who are dealing with higher patient volumes are understandably prone to error due to fatigue or burnout.

Hospital leaders want to take measures to reduce the number of preventable harm events and have an opportunity to use near misses as a way to prevent them from escalating into serious incidents. That said, having a large number of near miss reports can be beneficial to a hospital as it indicates that a strong safety culture exists and provides valuable learning opportunities for leadership. Hospitals that effectively encourage robust near miss reporting are better positioned to identify and solve problems before they lead to patient harm.

Heinrich’s safety triangle theory holds that 300 near misses occur for every severe accident that involves a serious injury or fatality. Once hospital leaders have a good idea of how many near misses are occurring, they can use AI tools to analyze their near miss data and predict their risk for more serious adverse events. But the real challenge is getting an accurate near miss number.

Most hospitals have voluntary event reporting systems that include reporting of near miss incidents. But the fact that they are voluntary means they likely underestimate the actual number of near misses occurring. A nurse who notices a patient recovering from surgery walking the hallways without non-slip socks may not report the incident for fear of blame or any consequences of reporting. They also may not report a near miss because they believe the event not to be severe enough to warrant it.

One of the biggest reasons for the underreporting of near-misses is that clinical staff lack the time to log an incident report. For many hospitals, event reporting is manual and time-consuming, often taking around 10 minutes per report. Unless healthcare leaders take steps to simplify and streamline incident reporting, including leveraging AI tools to significantly reduce reporting time, they will lack real visibility into how many near misses are occurring and fail to fully understand the threats to patient safety.

Automating event reporting with AI

Advancements in generative AI and large language models (LLMs) offer the opportunity for hospitals to not only improve the accuracy of near miss reporting, but reduce the amount of time needed to log a report. These reporting efficiencies give back valuable time to clinical staff to care for patients. LLMs can process unstructured data, such as text, audio, and video transcripts, and understand the context, which makes it possible to extract and organize insights for a report.

For busy clinical staff, using an AI tool to accurately create an incident report, rather than filling out a report manually, could save considerable time.

As an example, say a nurse realizes that a patient with a penicillin allergy has been prescribed amoxicillin. The nurse prevents the dose from being given to the patient and requests an alternative prescription, preventing harm to the patient. The nurse takes a few minutes to make a verbal report using an AI-based event reporting tool, and moves on to their next patient. From the nurse’s voice notes, the event reporting tool generates a complete incident report, giving hospital leaders valuable insights about what happened.

Leaders can use machine learning tools to analyze near miss reports over time and detect patterns and trends, as well as anticipate risks, in order to be able to prevent harm before it happens.

Automating incident reporting, including near misses, helps reduce barriers to reporting and gives clinical staff a more active role in reducing harm system wide. 

Better tracking of near-misses can serve as an early warning system

In a way, near miss incidents can indicate the diligence of clinical staff. An attentive nurse who notices an unsecured electrical cord and prevents a patient from tripping is obviously well trained.

Improved near miss reporting creates opportunities to improve processes and protocols, such as improved medication safety protocols, fall prevention measures, emergency department redesign, or training on safe injection methods.

When they are well understood and documented, near misses can act as an early warning system. When hospital leaders have a complete picture of incidents where a patient could have been harmed but wasn’t, only because of the timely intervention of a staff member or just plain luck, they can predict their risk of serious adverse events. They can understand their vulnerabilities and take corrective actions that prevent future incidents of harm.

Hospital leaders shouldn’t leave the future of patient safety to chance. Generative AI tools offer the opportunity for clinical staff to file incident reports seamlessly within their daily workflow, increasing the number of near miss reports received while decreasing the administrative burden that leads to clinician burnout and fatigue. AI and data analytics solutions give hospital leaders the ability to analyze trends over time and gain insights into how many near misses are actually occurring.

With effective use of AI-based tools, staff collaboration, and data-informed decision making, hospital leaders can raise standards of care and safety, reduce risk, and improve outcomes for all.

Morning Headlines 1/19/26

What to expect in US healthcare in 2026 and beyond

Healthcare services and technology will continue as the fastest-growing segment in healthcare, according to a new McKinsey report that predicts that providers and payers will increase outsourcing to tech and platform companies.

Multistate ‘hospital care at home’ command center opens in Vero

Cleveland Clinic opens the Rubinstein Family Hospital Care at Home Suite, which serves as a technology command center for its hospital-at-home programs in Florida and Ohio.

SmartSense by Digi Launches SmartSense ONE at NRF 2026

SmartSense by Digi launches SmartSense One, a modular, scalable IoT operations platform that merges the capabilities of SmartSense and its acquired Jolt for unified monitoring, compliance, safety, and workflow management.

Monday Morning Update 1/19/26

Top News

A McKinsey report predicts that healthcare services and technology will continue as the fastest-growing segment in healthcare. It expects providers and payers to increase outsourcing to tech and platform companies.

McKinsey projects that nearly half of healthcare profits by 2029 will come from software, platforms, data, and analytics, with traditional admin and consulting services growing slowly or shrinking. 

The authors expect federal funding for the Rural Health Transformation Program to drive adoption of telehealth and AI tools.

Payers that saw margins drop due to higher utilization and regulatory actions will face a decline of up to 30% in EBITDA from their ACA and Medicaid segments due to disenrollment driven by ACA subsidy expiration and impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents say that hospitals, like all other investors, put their money down primarily because they expect it to grow.

New poll to your right or here: What is the top industry takeaway from Kaiser Permanente’s settlement of Medicare Advantage overbilling allegations? These settlements always make me wonder whether a health system clearly violated the law, or whether vague coding rules come bundled with the unreasonable expectation that health systems will just forgo extra revenue to be responsibly nice. 

The paucity of recent health tech news suggests that everybody is on hold while they digest never-ending federal government changes that affect payments, a shifting regulatory environment, and having thunder stolen by AI froth. I’m not paid by the word or column-inch, so today’s short post gifts you free time.

HIStalk sponsors who are participating in the ViVE conference can send me your information to be included in my online guide. New this year: for more exposure and less work for me, I will post the guide immediately and update it as additional sponsors submit their details, which also creates an incentive to respond early.

Ms. G from Hope Mills, NC sent over this unpacking photo of the science kits that her fifth graders received courtesy of reader donations to her Donors Choose project. She reports, “We have officially received the science kits, and they have already made a huge impact in our classroom. The moment the boxes arrived, my students were buzzing with excitement and could not wait to explore what was inside. As they opened the kits, they eagerly examined the materials, asked questions, and started making connections to what they already know about science … Thank you for helping bring hands-on, joyful science learning into our classroom.”

Sponsored Events and Resources

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

People

Linus Health promotes Curt Thornton, MBA, MHS to president, Connected Care and names Chief Customer and Administrative Officer Leah Ray to the additional role of president, US healthcare.

Announcements and Implementations

SmartSense by Digi launches SmartSense One, a modular, scalable IoT operations platform that merges the capabilities of SmartSense and its acquired Jolt for unified monitoring, compliance, safety, and workflow management.

Other

Cerner co-founder Cliff Illig and his family sell a majority stake in the Major League Soccer Sporting KC for a record valuation of $700 million. He bought the team in 2006 with a group of six local investors, which also included his Cerner co-founder Neal Patterson, for a reported $20 million.  

Two women who were fired by businesses owned by a Huntsville, AL doctor file a sexual harassment lawsuit, alleging that the doctor forced them on multiple occasions to shave his legs. One of the plaintiffs notes in the complaint that “he was wearing lime green underwear.”

Sponsor Updates

• Altera Digital Health promotes Lindsey Honig to marketing communications manager.
• Black Book Research releases its “2026 Physician Practice Management Solutions Report.”
• Impact Advisors releases a new success story titled “Building a Scalable Quality Reporting Framework.”
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Steve Peltzman and Tim Woodward.
• ReferWell will exhibit at the Medicare Advantage Leadership Innovations conference January 21-22 in Buena Vista, FL.
• Symplr releases a new case study titled “Health First & Nebraska Methodist: A Blueprint for Value Analysis Excellence.”
• TruBridge will host its National Client Conference April 7-10 in Dallas.
• Waystar will exhibit at EClinicalWorks Day January 21 in Houston.

Blog Posts

• A Guide to the Use of AI in Healthcare: Deploying a Realistic Approach (Med Tech Solutions)
• Power to the people: Why digital healthcare transformations fail without effective change management (Nordic)
• Healthcare PMO Expert Answers Top Project Management Questions (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The Opportunity Cost of Your Old Hospital Switchboard (PerfectServe)
• Patients Win with Prescription Price Transparency (Surescripts)
• Elevating the patient experience: They’re already telling you how (Cardamom)
• All-payer OASIS documentation & accuracy: What home health agencies need to know (WellSky)
• CEO Letter: Reflecting on 2025 and Building the Infrastructure for 2026 (VectorCare)
• 5 Things Health Tech Leaders Need to Know About ACCESS (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.