Crew Talk

All 50 states applied for CMS’s $50B Rural Health Transformation Program, awards due Dec 31: A massive bet with a year end clock, where the real question is whether states build the boring foundation that makes change stick, or just dress up a plan with buzzwords. Hospital CIO priorities for 2026 shift from new tools to scale and govern: Big systems are moving from “more AI” to “make it work,” foc...

Headline 1: Trump Signs Executive Order Blocking State AI Regulations in Healthcare (STAT News, Dec 11, 2025) — A messy state by state AI rulebook may get replaced by one lane, which means your internal governance becomes the real guardrail. Headline 2: HHS Proposes Radical Overhaul to EHR Certification, Slashing 34 Criteria (STAT News, Dec 11, 2025) — If the federal checklist shrinks, this is you...

In this episode we pull apart Rock Health’s new 2026 innovation map, walk through the six lanes they say actually mattered in 2025, then camp out in the AI lane to ask a simple question: what’s your park, and where do you need to stop pretending you belong?     AI Implementation Toolkit 

Headline 1: 40+ Health Systems Drop Medicare Advantage Contracts for 2026 The MA growth story runs into its first real return line, as hospitals decide they would rather walk away than keep eating losses and fighting denials while seniors try to hang on to the doctors they trust. Headline 2: Harvard Study Finds GLP-1s Have Little Impact on Obesity-Related Cancer Risk The cancer halo around GLP-1s...

Headline 1: Brown & Brown 2026 Employer Survey Employers hand CFOs a permission slip to make cost control priority number one and quietly move “nice to have” benefits off the table. Headline 2: Lin Health’s 11M Series A and Mayo Partnership Behavior-first chronic pain care tries to prove it can live on real health system and payer rails, not just in the wellness tab. Headline 3: WellSky 2025 E...

In this episode of Health Tech Bites unpacks ACCESS, Medicare’s new chronic care model aimed at paying for what actually happens between visits, not just inside the clinic. The conversation digs into how ACCESS could reshape chronic care from punch-card phone calls to ongoing support woven into Tuesday afternoon life – and what that means for health plans, providers, and digital health vendors. Ex...

Story 1: UnitedHealth to wind down most non-Optum revenue cycle contracts by 2026 Story 2: Elevance to roll out $0 primary care copays across its national ASO book in 2026 Story 3: Nvidia launches edge-based “AI doctor” toolkit with pilots at five major health systems      

Today’s Bite Local coalitions are hacking their own benefits, employers are staring down rude 2026 cost projections, and Gen AI scribes just got their first real report card. The real question is not “what is new,” but “who actually gets equipped, encouraged, and empowered by all this.” The Stories • Story 1: SF Chamber Care and the rise of local, chamber-backed coverage models • Story 2: Employer...

Story 1 (Curative $150M Raise): Curative’s $150M Bet: Zero-Dollar Plans That Could Kill Deductibles Forever Story 2 (Oscar Survey): 53% Will Quit for Better Insurance: The Benefits Exodus No Employer Can Ignore Story 3 (Clinician-First AI): AI That Clinicians Actually Trust: The Burnout Fix Hiding in Plain Workflow

Story 1: Yara AI shut down its own mental-health chatbot after realizing the model worked too powerfully in contexts it couldn’t safely control. Story 2: A surge of holiday health gadgets is creating a massive wave of unregulated health data as consumers build their own personal health stacks faster than the system can protect them. Story 3: Tampa General transformed its call center almost overnig...

Today’s Bite: Today healthcare didn’t speed up — it jumped a gear and pretended nothing happened. The Stories: • The White House activates the CMS Health Tech Ecosystem – Real-time patient data just went from “someday” to “start preparing now.” • Cleveland Clinic collapses oncology turnaround times with Google Cloud AI – When results move from days to hours, expectations move with them. • House Rx...