Katie Adams is a senior reporter for MedCity News covering providers and healthcare technology. Previously, she worked as a healthcare technology editor at Becker’s Hospital Review. Her journalism degree is from DePaul University in Chicago, where she is still based.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-adams-450775141/
April has seen a slew of executive hires, promotions and layoffs across the healthcare industry. For instance, Aledade, Humana and Zimmer Biomet named new executives. There were also layoffs at organizations including Baylor Scott & White Health Plan, Novo Nordisk and UnityPoint Health.
The first major update to HIPAA in more than a decade will eliminate the distinction between “required” and “addressable” safeguards, making key cybersecurity and physical security measures mandatory for all healthcare providers. This shift will expose gaps in hospitals’ fragmented security systems, though, according to Kumar Sokka, CEO of cybersecurity platform Acre Security.
By reducing administrative burden and redesigning workflows around human needs, it creates space for what matters most: connection between clinicians and patients.
Medtronic suffered a cyberattack on its corporate IT systems. The incident highlights growing cybersecurity risks in the medtech sector, with cybergangs increasingly using phishing and other human-engineering tactics to gain access to data.
Nvidia and Hoppr are betting that healthcare AI will scale not through standalone applications, but through a new infrastructure layer that lets providers develop and deploy their own imaging models.
Midstream Health is taking a bit of a different approach to healthcare AI by focusing on reducing hospitals’ costs rather than boosting their revenue. The startup uses AI to identify savings opportunities across fragmented spending data, which helps health systems like Mount Sinai and CommonSpirit quickly improve their purchasing decisions.
Telehealth clinic Hone Health partnered with imaging company BodySpec to give its patients access to DEXA body composition scans. The partnership seeks to help providers and patients on GLP-1s distinguish fat loss from muscle loss and better evaluate how these drugs are affecting the body.
Small practices play a critical role in healthcare delivery, but they cannot continue to absorb ever-increasing administrative demands without consequences.
The AI Health Fund launched Treehub, a new residency program designed to back and build healthcare AI startups at the earliest stages, often before companies are even formed. It is supported by prominent figures in the Silicon Valley venture capital world, including Tim Draper and Anne Wojcicki.
CMS is rolling out its health tech ecosystem initiative with a new Medicare app library that functions like a healthcare “App Store,” aiming to make patient data more portable and accessible across vetted digital health apps.
Innovaccer is committing $250 million to expand its AI agent platform, which automates workflows across areas like prior authorization, revenue cycle management and population health. The move comes amid an ongoing debate over whether administrative AI tools can ultimately reduce costs for providers.
HeartFlow, which makes AI tools to analyze cardiac images, sued its rival Cleerly, alleging infringement on six patents. Cleerly is pushing back.
Enterprise EHR boosts scalability, interoperability, and governance for large healthcare systems.
Hospitals are still on quite fragile financial footing if you look beneath the surface, according to new Kaufman Hall data. Rising costs, uneven patient volumes, and ongoing reimbursement and payer mix pressures continue to limit the sector’s financial recovery.
The Department of Justice has sued both OhioHealth and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital this year, alleging that they use contracting tactics that limit competition and keep healthcare prices high. The cases mark a broader push by regulators to scrutinize how health systems use “all-or-nothing” contracts to shape insurance networks and patient access.
The Social Security Administration’s move onto the TEFCA interoperability framework is beginning to streamline disability determinations by enabling faster exchange of medical records from hospitals. Dr. David Kaelber, chief health informatics officer at MetroHealth System in Ohio, said the shift is replacing a months-long, fax-driven process with near real-time data sharing.
Luminai raised $38 million in Series B funding to scale its AI platform that automates healthcare administrative workflows. The company is working with Cleveland Clinic to expand the use of its system across high-volume processes, starting with referral management.
Jefferson Health in Philadelphia is suing Aetna over a new Medicare Advantage payment policy that hospitals say unfairly reduces reimbursements for legitimate inpatient stays. The case highlights a broader clash between providers and Medicare Advantage plans over “downcoding” short hospital stays and controlling costs.