Katie Adams is a senior reporter for MedCity News covering providers and healthcare technology. Previously, she worked as a healthcare technology editor at Becker’s Hospital Review. Her journalism degree is from DePaul University in Chicago, where she is still based.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-adams-450775141/
About 31,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers plan to launch an open-ended strike over staffing shortages, wages and care access issues — potentially affecting dozens of hospitals and hundreds of clinics in California and Hawaii. While Kaiser blames unions for stalled negotiations, workers say the conflict reflects deeper concerns about patient safety, burnout and health systems’ shifting priorities.
Bessemer Venture Partners predicts that 2026 will be a breakout year for healthcare AI, driven by increased adoption of clinical AI, a new class of AI-first value-based care companies, and the emerging digital health category of data infrastructure tools.
In a landscape where complexity has long been the norm, the power of one lies not just in unification, but in intelligence and automation.
This week, Congress reached a bipartisan healthcare deal as part of a larger $1.2 trillion spending bill, combining funding increases, policy reforms and program extensions. The proposal maintains key programs like CMS coverage for telehealth and hospital-at-home care, but stops short of renewing enhanced ACA premium tax credits.
French startup Naox Technologies this month became the first company to receive FDA 510(k) clearance for an in-ear EEG device. The system seeks to improve care for neurological conditions like epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and sleep disorders by capturing brain activity in everyday settings that traditional scalp-based EEGs often miss.
This year's J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference brought a slew of news announcements — from acquisitions to partnerships to new products and more. This list compiles short summaries for six of the event’s most notable announcements.
Five Kaiser Permanente affiliates agreed to pay $556 million to settle allegations from the Department of Justice that they improperly inflated Medicare Advantage payments through inaccurate diagnosis coding. The case is one of the largest risk-adjustment settlements to date — and it signals continued federal scrutiny of the program.
Greenway Health blends smart technology with human expertise to elevate revenue cycle.
Private equity investment in healthcare hit a record $191 billion in 2025. But as more investors crowd into the sector, competition for high-quality assets is intensifying, driving up prices and increasing pressure to deliver successful exits.
Epic Systems and several healthcare providers have sued Health Gorilla and other companies, alleging they exploited interoperability networks to improperly access and monetize nearly 300,000 patient medical records without consent.
At JPM, Nvidia unveiled partnerships with Eli Lilly, Thermo Fisher and others that show how the chipmaker is pushing its AI beyond models and into the core infrastructure of drug discovery and research labs. The moves highlight Nvidia’s ambitions to become a foundational technology provider for the pharma industry.
AI rivals Anthropic and OpenAI are both expanding their large language models into healthcare. Anthropic is blending its enterprise and consumer tools in a single platform, while OpenAI is separating its consumer-facing ChatGPT Health from its industry-focused OpenAI for Healthcare. They are both targeting patients, providers and researchers with AI tools for tasks ranging from personal health insights to coding to prior authorization.
How can AI benefit and improve patient outcome in the emergency department? Watch the latest episode to find out.
Apella raised an $80 million Series B funding round to expand its AI-powered platform designed to help hospitals optimize their operating rooms. The startup’s tool promises to boost surgical volume, reduce clinician burnout and improve patient access without adding new staff or facilities.
Matt Holt, former New Mountain Capital executive, is exploring a $30 billion deal to combine five health tech startups into a single platform called Thoreau. The venture would set out to simplify and integrate services across payers, providers and data — and if completed, it would rank among the largest private equity-backed health tech companies ever. Time will tell if this massive consolidation ever gets completed or translates into real value — or if it's just another bet on scale.
OpenAI announced a new dedicated platform for health conversations. The company said the new offering is not intended for medical diagnosis or treatment — but rather to provide support for personal health navigation.
Virginia-based health system VHC Health teamed up with virtual physician practice HealthTap to expand access to on-demand care and keep patients within its care network. The collaboration aims to reduce care leakage while offering patients convenient, integrated virtual care backed by VHC’s in-person providers.
Agentic AI is emerging as “hireable” digital labor in healthcare, according to Nvidia’s Kimberly Powell. She argued that once health system leaders stop viewing AI as software and start treating it as a workforce asset, the technology could rapidly reduce burnout and expand access to care.