What You Should Know
The Report: Humana’s newly released Value-Based Care By the Numbers Report, reveals that Medicare Advantage members in value-based care (VBC) arrangements are seeing significantly better outcomes than those in traditional models.The Data: The impact is measurable and massive: VBC patients experienced 24.3% fewer hospital admissions and 13.4% fewer emergency room visits in 2024.The Shift: The report validates the industry's transition from "reactive" fee-for-service
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Health IT | News, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Lotus Health AI Raises $35M to Make Doctor Visits Free
What You Should Know
The Funding: Lotus Health AI has raised a $35M Series A (totaling $41M) co-led by venture giants Kleiner Perkins and CRV, with backing from Joe Montana and the former U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra.The Disruption: Lotus is attempting to break the insurance-fee cycle. The platform is free to patients (no insurance needed), monetized instead through "premium sponsorships" inside the app—a model designed to align incentives toward health rather than billing codes.The Tech: The
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AI-Enabled Digital Stethoscope Outperforms Traditional Exams in Valvular Heart Disease Screening
What You Should Know
The Breakthrough: A new study published in the European Heart Journal - Digital Health reveals that an AI-enabled digital stethoscope is twice as effective as a traditional stethoscope at detecting valvular heart disease (VHD).The Data: In a real-world trial of 357 patients over age 50, the AI tool achieved a 92.3% sensitivity rate, compared to just 46.2% for standard exams. This suggests that half of significant heart valve issues are currently being missed in primary
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Why Autonomous AI Is Failing and Hybrid Models Are Winning
Good AI is not good enough.
Healthcare leaders have largely moved past the belief that fully autonomous AI can solve their hardest problems. With an estimated 95% of generative-AI initiatives never progressing beyond the pilot stage, they’ve learned that simply “adding AI” does not translate into real-world impact.
Healthcare is no exception. AI is now deeply embedded across the health system, from documentation and scheduling to risk prediction and clinical decision support, forcing the
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2026 Best in KLAS Awards: The Full List of Software & Services Winners
What You Should Know
The Report: Today, KLAS Research released its 2026 Best in KLAS reports, and the message from the data is clear: The market rewards vendors that use technology to restore the human connection, not complicate it.The Dynasty: Epic has won "Overall Health System Suite" for the 16th consecutive year, winning 11 individual segments. athenahealth secured "Overall Independent Physician Practice Suite" for the third year in a row.The Services: Chartis (IT Services), Optimum
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HHS Launches 9 Pilots to Solve the Behavioral Health Data Crisis
What You Should Know
The Launch: HHS Secretary Kennedy has announced nine nationwide pilot programs across 9 states to test new data standards that bridge the gap between physical and behavioral healthcare.The Tech: The pilots will test the USCDI+ Behavioral Health dataset and FHIR® implementation guides in real-world settings, specifically addressing complex privacy rules like 42 C.F.R. Part 2.The Timeline: Funded by a $20M+ SAMHSA investment, these pilots will run through the end of 2026.
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Vulnerability Threat Management 2026: How CISA KEVs Are Reshaping Healthcare Security
Vulnerability threat management (VTM) in the healthcare space is too important to be conducted haphazardly. It’s critical to find software tools that let you prioritize vulnerabilities, spot trends instantly, and quickly filter by vulnerability type and severity.
Without such tools, managing vulnerability threats is a daunting task. Here’s what healthcare organizations are currently facing:
Scanners routinely find thousands of vulnerabilities across a typical healthcare environment –
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Alaffia Health Raises $55M to Fix Claims Waste with “Agentic AI”
What You Should Know
The Funding: Alaffia Health has raised a $55M Series B led by Transformation Capital, bringing its total funding to over $73M.The Tech: The company uses "Agentic AI"—autonomous software paired with human clinicians—to forensically audit medical claims against patient records, targeting the estimated $570 billion in annual administrative waste.The ROI: Unlike "black box" automated solutions, Alaffia’s transparent model has already saved health plans over $100M, delivering
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Application Rationalization Is No Longer IT Housekeeping—It’s a Cybersecurity Survival Strategy
Anyone who has worked in healthcare IT for any amount of time knows this: we’re all carrying more applications than we can reasonably manage. Some of these systems are critical. Some are helpful. And some have simply hung around longer than they should because nobody has had the time, data, or political capital to shut them down.
For years, application rationalization was a manual, spreadsheet-driven exercise that demanded a lot of effort and delivered very little insight a leadership team
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MultiCare Health System to Deploy Ambience Healthcare for Enterprise AI Rollout
What You Should Know
The Win: After a year-long, head-to-head evaluation of three leading AI vendors, MultiCare Health System has selected Ambience Healthcare for an enterprise-wide deployment to 1,500 clinicians.The Data: The evaluation was massive (550 clinicians across 20 specialties). Ambience emerged as the clear favorite, scoring an NPS 63 points higher than the next best solution and reducing after-hours documentation ("pajama time") by 38%.The ROI: Beyond burnout, the system drove
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