In October, Rite Aid announced it would close all remaining stores, following a multi-year trend of major pharmacy chains like Walgreens and CVS eliminating thousands of locations.
When the only nearby pharmacy shutters, where can patients go instead? For a growing number of communities, the answer is: nowhere close.
Nearly 16 million people in the United States live in a pharmacy desert, traveling a significant distance to reach the nearest pharmacy. This limited access to
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Health IT | News, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Stop the $150B Drain: Using AI Agents to Fix Missed Appointments
Urban Health Plan scheduled 794,322 patient visits in 2022. Only 457,722 people showed up.
The missing 336,600 appointments cost the New York health system revenue, burned out their providers with constant rescheduling, and forced patients to wait weeks for the care they needed. Urban Health Plan isn't alone. Missed appointments drain $150 billion from U.S. healthcare every year, according to research published in the Annals of Family Medicine.
Healthcare systems have tried to fix this
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CMS Launches WISeR Model: New Medicare Prior Authorization Rules Start Jan. 1
Earlier this year the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services introduced the "Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction" model, a series of prior authorization requirements designed to ensure timely and appropriate Medicare payment for select items and services in six states (New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Washington) that take effect Jan. 1.
As part of the “WISeR” requirements, CMS selected tech vendors to implement enhanced technological models to
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AI Nutrition Labels: The Key to Provider Adoption and Patient Trust?
At the frontline of patient care, providers have been put under impossible pressure to lead the charge for AI within healthcare. This is not a sustainable way to move the needle towards increased AI innovation for healthcare as a whole. Providers require a familiar frame of reference, collaboration with a broader network to build effective standards, and tools that will help translate the impact of innovation to patients and ensure safety.
The healthcare industry is finally on the brink of a
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The 2025 Margin Rally: Hospitals See Late-Year Gains Despite Soaring Drug Costs
What You Should Know:
- U.S. health systems recorded their strongest financial improvement of the year in November 2025, with median year-to-date operating margins rising to 1.5%, marking the fourth consecutive month of gains.
- Despite this stability, hospitals remain under significant pressure from rising expenses, particularly a 9.3% year-over-year spike in drug costs and increasing financial strain on physician practices. While revenue is growing, high operational costs suggest that
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Is Your Agency Next? Why Behavioral Health Leaders Can’t Ignore Cybersecurity
Many behavioral health agencies lack adequate controls to address and recover from a cybersecurity incident. What these agencies need are capabilities such as adequate backup and recovery, managed detection and response (MDR), security information and event management (SIEM), data loss prevention and other key security elements. Without these tools, agency leaders cannot identify a security incident and remedy or recover their IT environment.
In a 2024 report, the Ponemon Institute, an IT
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Affordable Healthcare for Realtors: ORRA Unveils New Member Benefit with PeopleOne Health
What You Should Know:
- PeopleOne Health, a leader in value-based primary care, today announced a strategic partnership with the Orlando Regional REALTOR® Association (ORRA), one of the most innovative local real estate associations in the country, to bring affordable concierge-level healthcare directly to Central Florida’s real estate professionals.
- Through this collaboration, ORRA’s network of more than 18,000 Realtors will gain access to PeopleOne Health’s member-focused care model
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Retail Pharmacy 2026 Forecast: From “Hard Truths” to AI-Driven Innovation
2025 has been a year of hard truths for retail pharmacy.
Persistent reimbursement pressures, escalating fees, workforce shortages and policy whiplash have forced many operators to rethink how they serve patients and sustain their businesses. Expanding into clinical services and stepping into the role of frontline healthcare providers is becoming an expectation, not an option. Direct-to-payer contracting is no longer experimental.
But perhaps the most palpable change for
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HCAP Partners Invests in Puzzle Healthcare to Scale Post-Acute Care Platform
What You Should Know:
- Private equity firm HCAP Partners has invested in Puzzle Healthcare to scale a post-acute care platform designed to stop the "revolving door" between hospitals and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs).
- Puzzle’s model embeds specialized physiatry providers and care managers into SNFs to coordinate recovery for 90 days post-discharge, directly tackling the high readmission rates that cost hospitals millions in CMS penalties. The funding will support national
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Catalyst by Wellstar Launches Polysight: An AI-Native Compliance Platform for Health Systems
What You Should Know
- Catalyst by Wellstar has launched Polysight, a new AI-native company designed to tackle the $39 billion annual cost of U.S. healthcare compliance.
- The platform uses validated regulatory sources and real-time data to automate what has historically been a fragmented, manual process. Currently piloting with Wellstar Health System, Polysight aims to modernize how hospitals anticipate and adapt to changing regulations without sacrificing patient safety.
$39 Billion
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