Transcarent announced a new provider network, which seeks to help its employer customers provide their staff with access to high-quality, affordable care. The network includes 10 health systems — including Mount Sinai, Mass General Brigham and Intermountain Health.

Cartwheel, a startup that partners with school districts to provide virtual mental health services, raised $20 million in Series A funds. The company is working with about 50 school districts and charter school networks across Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

The advancement of value-based care cannot and should not exist solely in a payvider model, Intermountain Health CEO Rob Allen argued in an interview last week. Having its own health plan made things “a little easier” when Intermountain began getting serious about at-risk contracts, but achieving success in value-based care “is more about your commitment to the approach” and forging strong relationships with payers of all types.

Zocdoc launched a new suite of tools to compete with the solutions sold by Phreesia, NexHealth and Solutionreach. The product suite, which is free for any provider to use, includes tools to streamline the patient intake process, facilitate online scheduling and enable video visits.

In order for health systems to “not be commoditized fully,” they need to collect data to know their patients’ behaviors better and build stronger relationships with them, argued Sara Vaezy, Providence’s chief strategy and digital officer. Consumer brands like Amazon have been doing this for years so they can deliver personalized experiences to their users, and it’s time hospitals take a page out of their playbook, she said.

As hospitals across the nation adopt more and more AI technology, there are some common hazards of which they should be wary. During a conference presentation on Tuesday, healthcare AI expert Suchi Saria laid out seven AI pitfalls hospitals should look out for — some of these include being duped by Big Tech companies’ marketing strategies and focusing too much on administrative use cases.

Gastroenterologist Dr. Austin Chiang has about a decade of experience as a physician influencer on social media. During a conference in Chicago, he encouraged more providers to share their expertise on social media. By having a presence on these platforms, healthcare professionals demonstrate their commitment to meeting patients where they are, he said.

Roberta Schwartz, Houston Methodist’s chief innovation officer, has had years of experience overseeing technology adoption at her organization. At a conference, she highlighted how important it is for digital health tools to have strong EHR integrations and encouraged hospital leaders to not be afraid of starting various technology initiatives in unrelated areas.

This year, HCA Healthcare and Google Cloud have expanded their partnership by exploring ways to integrate Google’s generative AI into HCA’s workflows. The most developed project under this initiative is a pilot that began in February in which HCA’s emergency department physicians are testing a voice-enabled medical dictation tool to save them time on clinical documentation.

CMS has fined two hospitals in September for alleged violations of its price transparency rule. This marks the third month in a row that the agency has issued fines against hospitals for price transparency noncompliance, following a yearslong period of light enforcement.

The federal government has warned hospitals that using third-party analytics tools on their websites could violate HIPAA, and more than 20 hospitals are facing class-action lawsuits over the use of these tools. But a recent analysis found that hospitals are doing a poor job of fixing their websites and preventing patient data collection.

This week, senators introduced a bipartisan bill that would make it a federal crime to assault hospital workers. Even though nearly 40 states have passed laws to intensify penalties for violent acts committed against healthcare personnel, there is currently no federal law protecting hospital employees from assault or intimidation. 

Even though providers and payers don’t always get along, they need to come together now more than ever. In the post-pandemic landscape, the healthcare industry won’t be able to maintain care quality and protect patient access without strong collaboration between these two parties, health system leaders said during a virtual panel.

Bold, a Los Angeles-based company offering a healthy aging platform for older adults, closed a $17 million Series A funding round. The startup seeks to improve the health of Medicare Advantage beneficiaries through personalized exercise programs designed to prevent falls, decrease musculoskeletal pain and boost physical activity levels.

Healthcare IT companies raised $1 billion in venture capital in Q2 — down slightly from the $1.3 billion raised in Q1 but up significantly from the $451.3 million raised in Q4 2022. Unsurprisingly, a lot of these investments were made in companies offering generative AI products. Another key trend was increasing cash flow to remote patient monitoring startups, likely caused by expanded reimbursement for these services.

As health systems shore up their defenses against cybercriminals, they should openly communicate with their third-party vendors about data security risks and work together to actively manage those risks. That was some of the advice given by Aaron Miri, Baptist Health’s chief digital and information officer, during a Tuesday webinar.

U.K. doctor David Watkins has been a public critic of Babylon Health and its AI technology for years, during which has received anonymous emails from Babylon employees who shared his concerns but feared to speak out publicly. After Babylon collapsed, a former employee publicly declared that the AI engine was indeed faulty. As a longtime skeptic of Babylon’s claims surrounding its technology, Watkins said that Ali Parsa, the company’s CEO, shouldn’t be treated any differently to Elizabeth Holmes.

Over the past year, Meditech has deepened its relationship with Google Cloud by exploring ways to embed Google’s generative AI into its EHR. Some of the use cases the EHR vendor is exploring include an enhanced search and summarization tool that would present clinicians with a longitudinal view of their patient and a tool that would auto-generate clinical documentation for the hospital course summary.

HHS released a new proposed rule to update nearly 50-year old regulations protecting people with disabilities from discrimination while seeking healthcare. With its new proposal, HHS is amending the regulations to be clearer in their language, as well as more aligned with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act and amendments to the Rehabilitation Act.

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) issued a report that laid out four recommendations to improve patient safety across the nation. Some of these included creating federal leadership positions focused on advancing patient safety and hastening research on systems of safe care.

This week, Abbott announced its plans to acquire Bigfoot Biomedical — a startup selling a “smart” insulin pen cap, which collects data from a user’s CGM to help them calculate the right dose. Most analysts were unsurprised to hear of the acquisition given that the two companies have been collaborating for more than six years, but they said the deal reinforces the steady pace of digital innovation in the diabetes care space.

Integral raked in $6.9 million in seed funding in this week. The San Francisco-based startup is developing technology that seeks to speed up the process of exchanging sensitive health data while still maintaining robust privacy protection.

Pitango Venture Capital, one of the largest venture capital firms in Israel, announced the first closing of a new $175 million healthcare technology fund. With the new fund, the firm plans to build a portfolio of approximately 15 new companies over a period of three to four years.

Novartis became the seventh drugmaker to legally challenge the White House’s Medicare drug pricing negotiation program. The company filed its lawsuit three days after HHS announced the first 10 drugs that were selected for the program — its heart failure medication Entresto was one on the list. HHS can expect to face more lawsuits from the manufacturers of the 10 drugs it named last week, experts have warned.

CMS released a proposed rule to establish staffing standards among the nation’s nursing homes. Reactions have been mixed — but mainly negative. Long-term care facilities say that they can neither find nor afford more workers. On the other hand, some lawmakers argue the proposed rule doesn’t do enough to protect care quality for patients. As for labor unions, they seem generally happy with the rule.

A new report predicted that generative AI tools will increasingly streamline many aspects of a clinician’s day in the next five to 10 years — and that this is particularly true for tools that can automate diagnoses and respond to patients’ questions.

As the value-based care market gets more crowded, startups in this space will have to nail down the fundamentals in order to attract capital from investors, healthcare business expert Paul Campbell said during a virtual conference. He encouraged startups to be crystal clear about what their value proposition is for three main stakeholders — patients, providers and payers.

Beginning September 1, HHS’ Office of the Inspector General will begin enforcing the anti-information blocking regulations laid out in the 21st Century Cures Act. EHR vendors are the entities that are most at risk of being fined — they could face penalties up to $1 million.

During past recessions, the healthcare sector remained relatively immune to economic downswings — but things are different now that a sweeping labor shortage and lower patient volumes have been added to the mix.

Hospital finances worsened in July as volumes dropped, according to a new report. Following four months of growth, hospitals’ median year-to-date operating margin index fell 1.3%, down from 1.4% in June. Hospital finances still remained in a better place than they were last year, given hospitals’ median operating margins were -0.98% in July 2022.