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.

Costco is partnering with Sesame to offer Costco Members discounted pricing on virtual health services, including primary care and mental health. But the move is a little different from other retailers like CVS Health and Walgreens.

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.

Digital therapeutics will be one of the topics discussed at INVEST Digital Health scheduled for October 26 at Health Wildcatters headquarters in Pegasus Park in Dallas. Register today!

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.

San Diego-based Equip, which was founded in 2019, previously focused on those ages 6 to 24. The startup is now expanding to serve people of all ages, it announced Tuesday.

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.

For the gridlock in mental healthcare to be resolved, 100% of mental healthcare providers must practice measurement-based care, utilizing validated rating scales to monitor and measure longitudinal outcomes for every patient. And payers then must offer reimbursement that appropriately rewards providers for delivering high-quality, effective care, and incentivize proactive mental health management.

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.

Postpartum Depression has been a recognized — but stigmatized — possibility during the so-called “fourth trimester of pregnancy” for generations. However, it is now being firmly addressed through femtech innovations.

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.

CardioOne, a startup built at Redesign Health, partners with independent cardiology practices to help them transition to value-based care. On Monday, the company announced it has raised $8 million in seed funding and has three new partners.

A recent academic study of the leading LLM AI models’ ability to read and interpret clinical information demonstrates the incredible power of these tools to support healthcare, but concludes that LLMs should be used as “a supplement to existing workflows rather than as a replacement for human expertise.”

It is no longer a question of whether we should use automation for care orchestration. The technology for intelligent automation of care coordination is available now and can help providers reduce costs, generate revenue, and overcome understaffing.

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.

MedImpact and GoodRx are teaming up to lower costs for MedImpact members. When eligible MedImpact members refill a generic prescription, the companies’ savings solution will compare the member’s benefit to GoodRx’s price and will automatically apply the lowest one.

By making large amounts of diverse data widely available, healthcare institutions can feel confident about the evaluation, creation, and validation of algorithms as they’re transitioned from ideation to use.

By leveraging technology and strategies used within the gig economy—and even tapping into the talent pool of gig workers themselves—healthcare organizations can address staffing shortages, retain and motivate more workers, and ultimately deliver better patient care.

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.

Through a new partnership with Walgreens, Pearl Health will work with primary care providers by offering its technology and data insights to help them better their care and transition to value-based payment models. Walgreens is then providing prescription fulfillment, medication adherence, immunization and diagnostic testing services.

Talkiatry, Array Behavioral Care, Iris Telehealth and Quartet Health sent a letter to the DEA asking for a special registration process that would allow for the prescribing of certain controlled medications via telemedicine.

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.

Pumpspotting’s funding round was led by Sincere Corporation and Maine Venture Fund and included participation from Unum Business Ventures and Maine Technology Institute. In total, pumpspotting has raised more than $3.3 million.

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.