The Week in Hospital M&A
Hospital mergers accelerated this week as Atrium Health and WakeMed announced a $2 billion merger to broaden North Carolina care, while UPMC signed a definitive agreement to acquire CommonSpirit’s Trinity Health System in Ohio. A lawsuit in Tallahassee seeks to block the city’s transfer of its 772‑bed Memorial HealthCare assets to Florida State University. Christus Health completed its takeover of Titus Regional’s 174‑bed Mount Pleasant Hospital, adding a $33 million emergency‑care center. All transactions await regulatory clearance and reflect ongoing consolidation in U.S. health systems.
Willis Knighton Health Taps AI Scribe Vendor
Willis Knighton Health, a four‑hospital network in Shreveport, Louisiana, has chosen Commure as its enterprise ambient AI scribe vendor. The partnership integrates Commure’s AI‑driven documentation tool with the system’s Meditech Expanse EHR. A seven‑specialty pilot showed 88% of providers experienced...
‘Financially and Operationally Unsustainable’: North Carolina Hospital to Drop Blue Cross Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage Plans
CarolinaEast Medical Center, a 350‑bed hospital in New Bern, North Carolina, announced it will terminate its contracts with Blue Cross Blue Shield and UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage plans effective July 1. The hospital cited burdensome payment policies, frequent claim denials, and reimbursement...
Healthcare Adds 37,300 Jobs in April: 4 Things to Know
Healthcare employment rose by 37,300 jobs in April, aligning with the sector’s 12‑month average of 32,000 monthly gains, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Ambulatory services led the surge with 18,200 new positions, while hospitals added 4,300 and...
AI Struggles with Basic Data Tasks for Hospital Administrators: Study
A study by Mount Sinai and Mayo Clinic evaluated nine large language models on two basic administrative data tasks using 50,000 emergency department records. Simple prompts like “how many patients were admitted?” yielded poor accuracy across all models. Adding chain‑of‑thought...
What Intermountain’s CEO Didn’t Anticipate About Its Epic EHR Launch
Intermountain Health completed the largest single‑site Epic EHR rollout in September 2024, migrating all 34 hospitals and 400 clinics at once rather than in phases. CEO Rob Allen chose the “big‑bang” approach to avoid a multi‑year fragmented transition that would...
HCA, Tenet, CHS and UHS Stand Firm on 2026 Financial Projections After Q1
The four largest for‑profit health systems—HCA, Tenet, Community Health Systems (CHS) and Universal Health Services (UHS)—reaffirmed their 2026 financial guidance after reporting Q1 results. HCA posted $1.62 B net income and expects $6.5‑$7 B net income in 2026, while Tenet’s net income...
Pharmaceutical Supply Chain’s Strategic Moment: Lessons From Health System Leaders
Health system leaders at Becker’s 16th Annual Meeting highlighted a turning point in pharmaceutical distribution, emphasizing that poor data quality hampers AI forecasting and that clean, centralized inventory data is now a prerequisite. Executives described initiatives such as RFID deployments...
City of Hope Appoints Regional CIO
David Strickland has been named regional CIO of City of Hope, overseeing technology strategy for its cancer‑center sites in Atlanta, Chicago and Phoenix. He arrives from a 20‑year tenure at Kaiser Permanente, where he most recently served as vice president...
From 18 to 42 Epic Modules: 7 Notes on St. Luke’s EHR
St. Luke’s University Health Network has expanded its Epic electronic health record from 18 to 42 modules over the past decade, adding extensive clinical, financial and analytics capabilities. The health system delivered more than 121,000 Epic training classes to its 41,000...
What’s the Latest on Prior Authorization Reform?
Prior‑authorization reform is gaining traction as roughly 50 insurers covering 257 million Americans pledged to simplify requirements, cutting 11% of requests—about 6.5 million—since June. An AHIP‑Blue Cross survey shows a 15% drop for Medicare Advantage and a new 90‑day continuity‑of‑care rule for...
How Michigan Medicine-Sparrow Merger ‘Beat the Odds’ on Cost, Quality
University of Michigan Health merged with Sparrow Health System in April 2023, forming a $7 billion, 11‑hospital network. The combined entity reported measurable gains in clinical quality, operational efficiency, and care coordination, challenging the prevailing view that hospital consolidations raise costs...
Why the AI-Workforce Dilemma Looks Different for Health System CEOs
CEOs are split between cutting jobs or using AI to make existing staff do more, with no near‑term hiring plans. While tech firms like Coinbase are slashing headcount, many health system leaders are choosing the opposite path, leveraging AI to...
Regional One Health CEO on $900M Memphis Hospital Project: ‘We Want to Be the Impetus for Change’
Regional One Health received certificate‑of‑need approval to build a $900 million, 315‑350‑bed hospital in Memphis, adjacent to its historic Regional Medical Center. The existing campus, with facilities dating from the 1940s to the 1980s, is deemed beyond its useful life and...
Albany Med Taps Chief of Staff
Albany Med Health System has named Dr. Brittany Sheehy senior vice president and chief of staff. She will report to President and CEO Dan Pickett and help drive the system’s ambition to be the region’s first‑choice provider by 2030. Sheehy...