What You Should Know

• According to the J.D. Power 2026 U.S. Pharmacy Study, overall mail-order pharmacy satisfaction rose 2 points year-over-year to 699 (on a 1,000-point scale), while brick-and-mortar satisfaction dropped 7 points to 669.
• The divergence is driven by weakening consumer trust and perceived value in physical retail stores, whereas mail-order growth is fueled by strong live-agent phone support and seamless digital tools.
• Good Neighbor Pharmacy ranked highest among brick-and-mortar chain drug stores with a score of 748, outperforming Health Mart (747) and CVS Pharmacy (653).
• Sam’s Club secured the top spot in the mass merchandiser segment for the 11th consecutive year with a score of 786, while H-E-B led supermarket pharmacies with a score of 773.
• Amazon Pharmacy earned the top rank in the mail-order segment with a score of 745, followed by Kaiser Permanente Pharmacy (733) and Walmart Pharmacy Mail Services (714).

J.D. Power 2026 Study Charts the Rise of Mail-Order Pharmacy Satisfaction

The J.D. Power 2026 U.S. Pharmacy Study highlights a widening performance gap between mail-order fulfillment models and physical drugstores. Driven by responsive live-agent support and digital experience tools, mail-order pharmacy satisfaction increased to 699 out of 1,000, while brick-and-mortar satisfaction dropped to 669.

The study data emphasizes that consumer loyalty relies on combining empathetic human interaction with frictionless digital workflows:

• Digital Front Doors with Live Escalation: Mail-order providers gained ground by combining automated order tracking with immediate access to knowledgeable pharmacists via phone, resolving patient queries without requiring physical store visits.
• Brick-and-Mortar Trust Deficit: Physical retailers face urgent pressure to rebuild customer trust and demonstrate value, even as their mobile apps and digital prescription refill features show operational promise.
• Problem Resolution Bottlenecks: While mail-order satisfaction improved overall, a declining ability to resolve complex prescription errors or claims disputes remains a key risk factor for remote fulfillment providers.
• Omnichannel Integration Mandate: Modern pharmacy operations require an integrated experience where digital refill notifications, transparent pricing tools, and accessible clinical consultation operate seamlessly together.

“In today’s pharmacy environment, the direct human interaction and effortless convenience are non-negotiable when it comes to customer satisfaction,” stated Meaghan Hafner, Senior Director of Healthcare Solutions at J.D. Power. “Whether customers are interacting with a pharmacist over the phone for a mail-order prescription or picking up medication at a brick-and-mortar location, they value empathetic, knowledgeable staff and easy access to services.”

With drug prices soaring, shortages intensifying, and government-mandated cost-sharing in question, hospital-system pharmacy procurement is becoming an increasingly fraught enterprise. Pharmacy leaders are routinely expected to deliver on critical outcomes, including financial performance, operational resilience, and regulatory readiness.

Health systems – with margins currently hovering around 2% and cash reserves plummeting – are pressuring pharmacies to shore up institutional viability. Unfortunately, too many pharmacy organizations lack the resources to deliver.

They tackle their challenges in silos with ad hoc spreadsheets and reflexive practices such as simply “reordering what we bought last time.” The fragmentation and inefficiency set hidden traps that can trigger overspending, drug-supply emergencies, and unintended regulatory violations. Even a minor spike in drug costs can erase a year’s worth of margin.

Pharmacies’ multifaceted duties

The challenges of pharmacy procurement are multifaceted. Let’s focus on three core functions: managing drug costs, avoiding catastrophic shortages, and securing federally regulated 340B group purchasing discounts to improve patient care. These functions are more intertwined than they appear on the surface.

Each drug purchase must balance acquisition costs, payor reimbursement, 340B savings potential, and supply chain stability, variables that traditional procurement systems cannot address.

Imagine you’re reviewing an NDC change that could save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. It looks like a win until you’re suddenly hit with an upcoming supply disruption. Similarly, a lower 340B price can jeopardize projected margins if reimbursement fails to keep pace.

Unfortunately, the most endangered institutions tend to be the least equipped to handle these thorny decisions, whether it be resource limitations or lack of solutions to support success

No system, however, can afford to continue making isolated purchasing decisions in an interconnected financial matrix. Instead, procurement must evolve into a strategic organizational capability that considers the operational, regulatory, and financial implications of every decision. It must enable unified decision-making. 

Prevailing forces

A perfect storm of forces has significantly complicated pharmacy procurement. 

• Drug prices are on the rise and are projected to rise by 3.35% to 4% this year, driven largely by explosive demand for a growing pipeline of expensive therapies and the increasing complexity of specialty drugs. For pharmacies, the focus has shifted from simple price negotiation to a survival-level need for total spend management.
• Drug shortages are the norm rather than the exception. We’ve entered an era of persistent scarcity, with the total number of active drug shortages reaching a new record high of over 270 medications at any given time and nearly 60% of current shortages persisting for two years or longer. Shortages act as a hidden spend driver, forcing systems to procure expensive off-contract alternatives or costly outsourcing facilities to fill the void. From 2019 to 2024, both labor hours and labor costs dedicated to shortage management more than doubled, significantly increasing operational strain.
• Regulatory scrutiny is intensifying. The 340B drug program has long served as a financial cornerstone of safety-net providers, enabling them to stretch scarce federal resources and expand care for underserved populations. As the market value of 340B purchases exceeds $80 billion, a proposal to shift up-front discounts to back-end reimbursements introduces the potential for unprecedented cash flow volatility. Health systems may be required to front the full cost of medication, sometimes seeing temporary drug spend spikes of 500% to 5,000% while waiting for manufacturers’ rebates.

Every procurement decision comes with a tradeoff. Compartmentalization creates “decision whiplash” – a cycle of reactive firefighting that drains labor hours and compromises institutional resilience.

Managing all these functions – drug spend, shortages, and 340B holistically as an integrated whole – will benefit operational and financial performance. Health care systems need to buy, build, or create a roadmap for acquiring unified decision-making capability.

Enter pharmacy intelligence

New pharmacy intelligence platforms are helping transform procurement from a transactional purchasing function to a data-driven strategy. By integrating supply chain visibility, contract analytics, and predictive shortage insights, pharmacy leaders are improving purchasing decisions, controlling acquisition costs, and building greater resilience into the medication supply chain.

Drug-spend management programs for the first time are providing 100% visibility into contracts and invoices, identifying optimal pricing options across primary and secondary wholesalers while managing complex 340B rebate comparisons and providing insights into shortage risk. The intent is to never leave savings on the table.

Drug-shortage technology acts as an early-warning system, forecasting supply

disruptions. It also offers visibility to site-by-site “days-on-hand” counts that automatically update, giving institutions time to prepare for substitutes if necessary. By integrating these predictive signals directly into the procurement workflow, procurement can prevent switching to “low-cost” drugs that are about to disappear from the market, anticipate manufacturer price increases on sole-source medications before they take effect, and plan ahead for predicted shortages.

340B compliance technology provides 100% transaction auditing, moving compliance from a retrospective “snapshot” to a continuous, real-time process, ensuring every claim is auditable and defensible. It offers continuous compliance monitoring and total rebate defense.

Some companies use their 340B compliance technology to enable consultants to conduct “mock audits” resembling those ordered by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the 340B regulatory body, giving them a singular snapshot in time of overall compliance. As an alternative, a solution specifically designed for a 340B compliance team instead allows for continuous compliance monitoring across the entirety of their 340B program.

Unified decision-making empowers pharmacy teams to act with confidence. They no longer have to choose between the cheapest drug and the most reliable one. Instead, they gain a single source of truth that balances price, availability, and audit-readiness in every transaction.

In an era of thin margins and persistent volatility, this connected approach is the only way to ensure that your pharmacy remains both clinically prepared and a financial lifeline to the health system in which it operates.

About Lauren Forni, PharmD

Lauren Forni, PharmD, MBA, is Senior Director of Clinical Strategy at Bluesight, where she works with health system leaders to modernize medication management, strengthen diversion oversight, and translate complex regulatory and operational challenges into scalable, data-driven solutions. As a former Assistant Director of Pharmacy at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, she brings frontline operational insight spanning pharmaceutical supply chain optimization and 340B program management to industry-wide strategy. She is also the co-founder of the Diversion Collective, a multidisciplinary collaborative designed to elevate how healthcare organizations measure, manage, and mitigate diversion risk through shared expertise and practical application.

What You Should Know

• Healthcare performance improvement company Vizient released its Summer 2026 Spend Management Outlook, projecting an overall supply chain, capital, and purchased services price inflation rate of 3.39% for 2027.
• Indirect spend and purchased services represent the highest growth category at 4.73% projected inflation, heavily driven by investments in IT hardware and software (6.29%), IT security (8.50%), construction (4.70%), and non-medical capital equipment (4.15%).
• Total pharmaceutical prices are projected to increase by 3.54% in 2027, with inflation shifting away from acute care settings (2.85%) and concentrating in ambulatory pharmacy (3.64%), self-administered therapies (3.62%), and specialty/complex medications (4.04%).
• GLP-1 therapies continue to reshape non-acute pharmacy spend, with tirzepatide climbing to the No. 2 self-administered drug (3.47% of spend) and semaglutide remaining in the top five (2.33%), together accounting for 5.80% of self-administered pharmaceutical expenditures.
• Two disease categories account for nearly half of analyzed pharmaceutical purchases: oncology therapeutics at 25.59% of spend (4.14% projected inflation) and autoimmune/anti-inflammatory drugs at 23.39% of spend (4.10% projected inflation).

Non-Labor Inflation Dynamics and Spend Category Breakdown

To equip health system executives with data-driven budgeting benchmarks, Vizient, Inc. has published its Summer 2026 Spend Management Outlook. Analyzing client purchasing data alongside macroeconomic indices, the report projects an overall supply chain, capital, and purchased services inflation rate of 3.39% for 2027, alongside a 3.54% projected increase in overall pharmaceutical costs.

The Vizient projections illustrate a marked bifurcation between lower-inflation acute care commodities and high-growth indirect operational infrastructure:

• Escalating Indirect Spend & IT Infrastructure: Indirect spend and purchased services reflect the highest category inflation at 4.73%. This increase is anchored by IT hardware and software (6.29%), IT security (8.50%), IT hardware/accessories (8.00%), IT software/licensing (7.50%), construction (4.70%), and food services (4.16%).
• Ambulatory & Specialty Pharmacy Acceleration: Acute care pharmacy inflation remains relatively controlled at 2.85%, while ambulatory care pharmacy rises to 3.64% and specialty/complex medications reach 4.04%. Contracted pharmaceutical products (2.73% inflation) continue to deliver significant savings compared to non-contract items (3.92% inflation).
• Concentration in Metabolic, Oncology, & Autoimmune Drugs: Tirzepatide and semaglutide now combine to represent 5.80% of self-administered pharmacy spend (with tirzepatide utilization soaring 101.2% year-over-year). Oncology drugs (25.59% of spend; 4.14% inflation) and autoimmune therapeutics (23.39% of spend; 4.10% inflation) account for nearly 50% of total health system drug expenditures.
• Capital, MedSurg, and Procedural Infrastructure: Medical-surgical products are projected at 3.05% inflation, capital equipment at 3.43%, and Physician Preference Items (PPI) at 2.55%—where ambulatory surgery center (ASC) migration, surgical robotics, and advanced orthopedic/cardiovascular implants are reshaping total cost of care.

“The drivers of healthcare spending continue to evolve,” stated Carina Dolan, associate vice president, clinical oncology, pharmacoeconomics and market insights at Vizient. “As care expands beyond the hospital and organizations invest in technology and infrastructure, spending decisions are becoming increasingly interconnected.”

With IT software, hardware, and security costs expanding at rates between 6.29% and 8.50%, digital transformation tools must justify their cost by eliminating operational bottlenecks and lowering administrative labor.

Similarly, managing specialty drug spend demands cross-functional alignment between pharmacy, revenue cycle, and managed care teams to navigate complex payer coverage controls and site-of-care mandates.

What You Should Know

• Wolters Kluwer Health has collaborated with Epic to offer an integrated suite combining UpToDate Lexidrug, Medi-Span, and UpToDate Patient Education directly within Epic EHR workflows.
• The combined offering targets safety-net institutions facing budget and resource constraints, including rural hospitals, Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), state hospitals, tribal healthcare organizations, and small ambulatory practices.
• The integrated bundle consolidates three distinct clinical decision support and medication safety tools into a single procurement, implementation, and support model.
• Native integration within Epic eliminates traditional standalone software testing and validation demands, reducing workload for internal clinical informatics and IT teams.
• The simplified procurement framework creates a single cost center for medication intelligence, evidence-based decision support, and patient education resources.

Wolters Kluwer and Epic Unify Clinical Decision Support for Underserved Health Systems

Rural hospitals, Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), tribal healthcare providers, and community health systems frequently encounter substantial financial and administrative barriers when attempting to procure and deploy top-tier clinical decision support (CDS) platforms. While large academic medical centers routinely integrate complex, multi-vendor clinical intelligence tools into their electronic health records (EHR), smaller institutions are often constrained by fragmented vendor contracts, separate cost centers, and limited internal IT capacity to validate standalone third-party software.

To eliminate procurement friction and accelerate time-to-value for safety-net providers, Wolters Kluwer Health has partnered with Epic to offer a unified clinical content solution. By packaging UpToDate Lexidrug, Medi-Span, and UpToDate Patient Education into a single, pre-validated offering within Epic workflows, the collaboration provides resource-constrained healthcare organizations streamlined access to enterprise-grade clinical decision support.

The unified offering integrates three core Wolters Kluwer health solutions directly into Epic’s native user interface:

• UpToDate Lexidrug (Referential Drug Support): Delivers actionable, evidence-based drug referential content and clinical consult guides directly within ordering workflows to guide prescribing, dosing, and administration decisions.
• Medi-Span (Embedded Medication Safety Data): Functions as the underlying medication data backbone, screening orders in real time for drug-drug interactions, dose range appropriateness, and duplicate therapy alerts to prevent adverse drug events.
• UpToDate Patient Education: Provides individualized, multi-lingual patient leaflets and discharge instructions to drive medication adherence and support care transitions.
• Pre-Validated Epic Workflows: Because the solutions operate natively within existing Epic environments, safety-net institutions bypass extensive local IT testing, validation cycles, and ongoing maintenance overhead.

“Healthcare organizations serving rural and underserved populations need access to the same evidence-based resources used across the broader healthcare ecosystem, but often face significant financial and operational barriers,” stated Yaw Fellin, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Clinical Decision Support and Provider Solutions at Wolters Kluwer Health. “The result is faster onboarding, reduced administrative complexity and a single cost center for trusted solutions.”

What You Should Know

• Physician-founded revenue cycle vendor AMS Solutions published its State of Medical Billing 2026 benchmark report, detailing a rise in industry-wide claim denial rates to 9% (up from 7.5% in 2023).
• Increased Medicare Advantage penetration and automated machine-learning claim reviews by commercial payers are driving higher denial rates, extended days in accounts receivable (averaging 42 days, up from 38), and stricter documentation requirements.
• Neurology exhibits the highest initial denial rate among major specialties at 14%, primarily driven by professional-technical split errors (-26/-TC) on EMG and EEG procedures.
• Home health exhibits a 13% denial rate and 52 days in A/R, largely due to OASIS-E scoring errors, face-to-face encounter gaps, and missed 5-day Notice of Admission (NOA) filing windows.
• Chronic Care Management (CCM) enrollment in family practice remains under 15% nationally, representing a major untapped recurring revenue opportunity ($30–$50 per patient monthly) for primary care providers.

Specialty Breakdown and Key Code Adjustments

Analyzing performance metrics across home health, physical therapy, neurology, and family practice, the report details how increased payer scrutiny, CPT RVU updates, and expanded ICD-10 sub-classifications are impacting practice financial health. The benchmark report highlights distinct operational bottlenecks and revenue capture opportunities across four primary specialties:

• Neurology Billing Mechanics: Leads major specialties with a 14% industry denial rate. Professional-technical split errors (-26/-TC/global) on EMG/NCS and EEG represent the single largest denial driver, costing mid-sized practices $30,000 to $80,000 annually. Additionally, CPT 64615 (Botox chemodenervation) received a work RVU update (PFS national average professional component ~$173), leaving 10–18% per claim uncollected on outdated commercial fee schedules.
• Home Health PDGM & OASIS-E Impact: Home health exhibits a 13% denial rate and 52 average days in A/R. Under the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM), reimbursement variances of $200 to $800 per 30-day payment period stem from OASIS-E scoring inaccuracies, missing face-to-face (F2F) encounter details, and missed 5-day Notice of Admission (NOA) submission windows.
• Physical Therapy 8-Minute Rule & Thresholds: PT faces an 11% denial rate and 45 days in A/R, centered on 8-minute rule unit calculation errors, missing KX modifiers when exceeding the 2026 Medicare threshold ($2,330), and unsigned plans of care (CO-228).
• Family Practice & Chronic Care Management (CCM): Family practice maintains lower per-claim revenue but higher volume. National CCM enrollment remains under 15% among eligible Medicare panels; best-in-class practices achieving 40%+ capture generate $385,000+ in annualized incremental revenue through structured care coordination.
• Automated Modifier -25 Audits: Payers (including Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, and BCBS) have introduced automated retrospective reviews on modifier -25 claims, resulting in audit pull-backs 30 to 90 days post-payment when same-day E&M notes lack separately identifiable HPI, ROS, exam, and MDM sections.

With payer machine-learning models actively reviewing documentation precision, practices relying on broad ICD-10 codes (such as generic G43.909 or E11.9) face automated hold queues and revenue leakage. Proactively re-engineering front-end charge capture and dictation templates—rather than pursuing back-end appeals—establishes an effective defense against rising payer denial strategies.

As practices adapt to expanding Medicare Advantage market shares and strict algorithmic payer reviews, integrating specialty-trained coding intelligence directly into bedside and front-office workflows will remain essential to maintaining clinical financial sustainability.

What You Should Know

• VSee Health, Inc. signed a non-binding letter of intent (LOI) to acquire healthcare technology and operating assets valued at approximately $42 million.
• The target assets support an integrated healthcare commerce platform serving the U.S. clinic-based wellness market, generating an unaudited annual revenue run rate over $35 million and approximately $7 million in EBITDA.
• Operating via an asset-light framework, the platform coordinates cloud-based ordering, payment workflows, and supplier back-office operations while suppliers retain product and fulfillment liabilities.
• The transaction is part of VSee’s broader strategic review led by CEO Imo Aisiku, aimed at expanding its capital resources, diversifying growth engines, and complementing its existing API-driven virtual care platform.
• Final execution remains subject to customary due diligence, definitive documentation, and required regulatory, corporate, and stock exchange approvals.

Asset-Light Workflows and Platform Integration

The target operating assets serve the U.S. clinic-based wellness sector, operating at an unaudited annual revenue run rate exceeding $35 million and generating roughly $7 million in EBITDA.

The contemplated acquisition expands VSee’s digital infrastructure through a unified operating framework:

• Cloud-Based Ordering & Payment Layer: Connects clinics, suppliers, and commercial organizations via automated ordering, payment processing, and order reconciliation workflows.
• Asset-Light Operational Model: Coordinates front-end sales, account management, and back-office logistics without taking on heavy inventory liability—ensuring regulated suppliers retain product fulfillment responsibilities.
• API Virtual Care Convergence: Integrates commerce capabilities directly into VSee’s core platform—combining EHR integration, secure video, and remote patient monitoring (RPM) with outpatient wellness ordering.
• Growth Engine Diversification: Serves as a primary milestone in VSee’s strategic review, establishing non-dilutive EBITDA contributions to support platform growth.

“We believe VSee is entering a defining chapter in the Company’s evolution,” stated Imo Aisiku, Chief Executive Officer of VSee Health. “Our objective is not simply to complete acquisitions, but to build a larger, stronger and better-capitalized healthcare technology company with multiple engines of growth. This LOI is one example of that strategy in action.”

By adding $35M+ in revenue run-rate and $7M in EBITDA through an asset-light model, VSee transitions from a specialized telehealth technology provider into a multi-engine digital health platform.

Automating financial workflows and supplier coordination for clinic-based wellness providers creates high-margin software and transaction fees while avoiding the inventory drag that challenges legacy distributors. As VSee completes due diligence and negotiates definitive agreements, this transaction provides a clear case study in how telehealth companies can incorporate digital commerce to build a resilient, profitable healthcare tech platform.

What You Should Know

• AI-native primary care company Doctronic has acquired virtual, text-based pediatric care platform Summer Health to extend its clinical platform from birth through adulthood.
• The acquisition integrates Summer Health’s proprietary repository of more than 100,000 real-world pediatric text interactions into Doctronic’s clinical data architecture to train pediatric-specific conversational AI models.
• Summer Health founder and CEO Ellen DaSilva joins Doctronic as Senior Vice President of Partnerships, leading the expansion of the company’s enterprise and B2B health plan offerings.
• Doctronic has supported over 30 million health encounters across two years via its personal AI doctor chatbot and a nationwide network of licensed providers offering $39 telehealth visits across all 50 states.
• The combined platform establishes a unified digital front door for family care, combining text-based AI triage with rapid escalation to licensed pediatricians and general practitioners.

Conversational Data Ingestion and Pediatric Model Fine-Tuning

The acquisition combines Doctronic’s AI doctor architecture with Summer Health’s pediatric dataset and text-based workflow:

• Proprietary Pediatric Dataset Ingestion: Ingests Summer Health’s library of over 100,000 anonymized, real-world pediatric encounters to train pediatric conversational AI models on authentic parent terminology and clinical triage patterns.
• Integrated Escalation Pipeline: Connects initial conversational AI symptom intake directly to a nationwide network of licensed physicians, enabling text guidance and $39 video encounters when clinical intervention is required.
• B2B Partnership Expansion: Under the leadership of Ellen DaSilva as Senior Vice President of Partnerships, Doctronic will package its combined adult and pediatric primary care platform for health plans, employers, and enterprise channels.
• Continuous Multi-Generational Medical Records: Maintains unified family profiles within a single application, streamlining care continuity as children transition across pediatric milestones into adult primary care.

“Families don’t experience healthcare in silos,” stated Dr. Adam Oskowitz, co-founder and co-CEO of Doctronic. “Rather than requiring families to navigate separate systems, we’re building a single, trusted front door to healthcare where families can access timely, affordable, AI-enabled care through one continuous experience.”

As Doctronic integrates Summer Health into its core AI doctor engine, it sets a clear operational benchmark for how AI-native primary care platforms will capture full-household healthcare engagement.

Every time a patient visits a healthcare facility, there is a treasure trove of information about their experience that could improve patient safety measures and lead to better outcomes. 

Patients’ care experiences go far beyond clinical care. A patient recovering from surgery for a few days may interact with more than a dozen providers, specialists and staff. The patient may be moved from a surgical unit to a medical unit or an inpatient rehabilitation facility. They may be discharged to a skilled nursing facility for lower-intensity rehab. 

Depending on their length of stay and surgical acuity, there may be hundreds of experiences that shape that patient’s perception of the quality of care. An adverse event like a hospital-acquired infection will certainly impact their experience. So will the smaller details – how attentive and professional the clinicians, nurses and staff are, how clean the bathrooms are, whether staff practice good sanitation and cleaning protocols, if the space is free of potential hazards like cords or liquid spills. 

Patients will sometimes share extensive feedback about their experience that hospital risk and safety leaders can use to improve safety, mitigate risk and improve the quality of care. Unfortunately, much of the patient experience data goes unused today. 

By more effectively analyzing and interpreting this feedback, hospitals and health systems can identify patterns – e.g. staff making preventable mistakes or unsafe conditions that could lead to patient harm – and take preventative measures before accidents happen.  Digital survey tools with AI-powered sentiment analysis can help healthcare facilities surface those patterns in patient feedback and translate them into meaningful action.

The potential safety concerns hiding in patient experience data

Multiple studies have found that analyzing patient experience data can help identify strengths and weaknesses in both clinical effectiveness and patient safety.

Patient experience surveys can help healthcare leaders understand how well (or not) clinicians are delivering effective care and how strictly they are adhering to safety protocols.

These surveys can give a detailed perspective about the everyday quality of care based on numerous topics. How effective was communication between doctors and nurses? Was the environment clean and did staff practice good hygiene? Did the staff do a good job of communicating to patients about their medications and with helping patients manage pain? Was there effective care coordination between hospital departments and did patients receive clear care instructions when they were discharged? Healthcare leaders can also use patient surveys to evaluate key drivers of patient trust, such as access to care experiences, wait times for care, staff professionalism and patients’ likelihood of recommending a facility to friends or family.

By analyzing patient experience data, healthcare facilities can understand where the weaknesses are and take steps to advance the quality of care. Those measures could include more staff training on infection control and hygiene measures, better care coordination protocols, better discharge planning or adjustments to staffing to improve staff responsiveness. 

But it’s difficult for healthcare leaders to not only analyze the data to identify those gaps, but to proactively take action to mitigate the risk of patient safety incidents. Healthcare leaders can use patient experience insights to understand why preventable patient harm is happening and implement effective protocols.

Using digital tools and data analytics to streamline patient surveys

Patient experience data remains largely unused, which impacts the quality of patient care and safety. This is because many facilities still use paper-based, manual surveys, which are time consuming to analyze, and either have low response rates or are lost or forgotten.

The key to streamlining the survey process, and making data more actionable, is using digitally-based tools to automate patient data collection and analysis.

For example, by offering mobile-friendly surveys that are simple to understand and take 5 minutes to complete, hospitals and other facilities will see higher response rates.

Let’s say a hospital wants to understand patients’ opinions of their experience with MRI or CT services. Within 24 hours of a patient receiving diagnostic imaging services, a digital tool automatically sends that patient an email with a link to complete a survey on their phone. It includes a set of straightforward questions. How easy was it to schedule their appointment? Were you comfortable? How professional and friendly were the staff? How well did the staff explain the process?

A digital survey platform with AI-powered sentiment analysis can give hospital leaders a clearer view of the full diagnostic imaging experience. By scanning open-text comments across hundreds of responses, the platform surfaces recurring themes including common patient concerns, staff training opportunities and service gaps that point to process improvements. 

Finally hearing the patient’s voice – thanks to digital technology and analytics

The benefits of digitizing patient surveys go beyond addressing safety concerns. Today’s patients carefully research providers, read patient reviews and have higher expectations for transparency from healthcare organizations. If patients find it difficult to navigate a hospital and easily find the department or unit to receive care, they may become frustrated and leave negative reviews. Hospitals can use patient surveys to understand which departments patients may be struggling to access, and take measures to make their experience smoother. These measures could include renaming service lines, relocating units or changing signage.

By using digital tools to streamline the process of sending and collecting patient feedback, and utilizing AI-powered sentiment analysis, healthcare organizations can better understand potential safety risks. They can design a comprehensive experience that meets patients’ expectations for safe, convenient and high quality healthcare delivery.

About Sloane White

Sloane White is the Director of Communications & Business Development, Tennessee Orthopaedic Alliance, the largest and most comprehensive orthopedic surgery group in Tennessee.

What You Should Know

• The latest CB Insights report, Q2 2026 State of Digital Health reveals global digital health deal activity reached a decade-low of 228 deals in Q2 2026, marking a 36% decline quarter-over-quarter and a two-thirds drop from the Q2 2022 peak of 688 deals. 
• Total equity funding fell 24% quarter-over-quarter to $5.7 billion, with capital concentration escalating as a small handful of mega-rounds anchored overall venture volume.
• Isomorphic Labs’ $2.1B Series B single-handedly represented 37% of total global digital health funding in Q2 2026, followed by Chai Discovery’s $400M Series C.
• Despite falling deal counts, median deal sizes climbed 54% year-to-date in 2026 to $7.7 million, with early-stage medians rising to $4.8M and late-stage medians reaching $50M.
• M&A exit volume continued its post-Q3 2025 slide to 47 deals in Q2 2026, though billion-dollar transactions occurred, including Celerion ($1.8B) and Eucalyptus ($1.2B).

Concentration Metrics and Valuation Bifurcation

CB Insights finds Investors are backing drastically fewer digital health startups, pulling back from broad early-stage bets and instead pouring massive reserves into proven AI drug discovery engines, infrastructure layer tools, and high-conviction clinical models. While total quarterly equity funding dropped 24% quarter-over-quarter to $5.7B, the headline figure conceals the reality that a single mega-round accounted for over a third of all capital invested globally. 

The Q2 2026 data illustrates a sharp structural divergence between transaction frequency and deal sizing across global venture tiers:

• Isomorphic Labs’ Outsized Impact: Isomorphic Labs secured a $2.1 billion Series B round—more than 5x the size of the quarter’s second-largest deal—to finance its proprietary drug pipeline expansion alongside existing pharma partnerships.
• AI Drug Discovery Dominance: Combined with Chai Discovery’s $400 million Series C, computational drug discovery platforms anchored the top of the deal matrix, attracting commitments from Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, General Catalyst, and Thrive Capital.
• Rising Funding Thresholds: Median deal size across the market expanded 54% year-to-date to $7.7 million (up from $5.0 million in 2025). Early-stage median rounds expanded to $4.8 million, raising the minimum capital threshold required for early startups to launch.
• Exits and M&A Contraction: Mergers and acquisitions continued to cool from their Q3 2025 high of 68 exits down to 47 in Q2 2026. However, major strategic acquisitions still occurred, highlighted by Thomas H. Lee Partners acquiring clinical research group Celerion for $1.8 billion and Hims acquiring consumer telehealth platform Eucalyptus for $1.2 billion.

The concentration of 37% of all quarterly funding into Isomorphic Labs proves that investors prefer high-conviction, asset-generating AI bets over broad digital health point-solution portfolios. Furthermore, as early-stage median deal sizes rise to $4.8 million alongside declining deal volumes, young startups face a far stricter institutional bar. Only platforms offering immediate administrative offloading or defensible AI data pipelines will successfully clear funding thresholds moving into the second half of 2026.

As the venture ecosystem enters H2 2026, the digital health sector is settling into a dual-track market: mega-cap AI infrastructure leaders capturing the majority of equity value, while point-solution startups face consolidation, down-rounds, or M&A absorption. 

For more information about the report, visit https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/digital-health-trends-q2-2026

What You Should Know

• Mayo Clinic and Brazil’s Einstein Hospital Israelita completed a technological integration milestone to make de-identified clinical data from South America accessible via Mayo Clinic Platform_Connect.
• The collaboration expands global demographic, genetic, and regional clinical representation within Mayo Clinic’s privacy-preserving healthcare innovation ecosystem.
• Einstein Hospital Israelita joined Mayo Clinic Platform’s Early Adopter Program to establish secure, cloud-based data architecture and prepare for multicenter AI validation studies.
• Mayo Clinic Platform_Connect now spans eight member health systems across seven countries and three continents, including Sheba Medical Center, Mercy, University Health Network, Aga Khan University, and Seoul National University Hospital.
• All clinical data within the Connect network remains fully de-identified and under the strict governance and control of each participating health system.

Mayo Clinic Platform and Einstein Integrate South American Datasets

The integration strengthens South American clinical representation within Mayo’s secure global data architecture, allowing researchers and digital health developers to validate and scale algorithms against a truly global patient cohort.

The integration of Einstein Hospital Israelita into Mayo Clinic Platform_Connect expands the infrastructure for global AI development:

• Federated Data Governance: Participating institutions retain full control over their underlying health records; data is analyzed in a secure, privacy-preserving cloud environment without transferring raw patient identity files.
• Early Adopter Adaptation Stage: Einstein completed a technological adaptation phase through Mayo Clinic Platform’s Early Adopter Program to optimize cloud access protocols, data standardization, and security pipelines.
• Multicenter Algorithm Validation: Enables multi-institutional research teams to test clinical algorithms against diverse clinical environments before commercial deployment.
• Global Network Expansion: Connect’s network footprint now spans eight major institutions across seven nations, including Sheba Medical Center (Israel), University Health Network (Canada), Mercy (US), Aga Khan University (Kenya), and Seoul National University Hospital (South Korea).

“Working with leading hospitals around the world, like Einstein Hospital Israelita, Mayo Clinic Platform is curating the world’s data and assembling the world’s innovators,” stated John Halamka, M.D., Dwight and Dian Diercks president, Mayo Clinic Platform. “By building a global health data network, we can accelerate the discovery, development and deployment of trusted AI-enabled solutions.”

Incorporating South America’s leading hospital network into its federated architecture will enable Mayo Clinic to address the data diversity deficit that has historically limited international software deployment. Furthermore, establishing secure, multi-country validation pipelines creates an operational standard for how medical AI will clear global regulatory scrutiny.

What You Should Know

• A joint report by the Urban Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation analyzes five major federal policy shifts threatening hospital financial stability and operational sustainability.
• Medicaid work requirements and semi-annual redeterminations under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), combined with ACA Marketplace subsidy expirations, are projected to cause millions to lose health coverage.
• State-Directed Payment caps and provider tax reductions under OBBBA will cut hospital Medicaid revenues by over 20% in multiple states starting in 2028.
• Increased H-1B visa fees and heightened immigration enforcement risk worsening severe clinician shortages across safety-net and rural institutions.
• The $50 billion Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Program limits provider direct spending to 15%, rendering it insufficient to offset long-term Medicaid funding losses.

Beyond Safety Net Cuts: Urban Institute Report Outlines Fiscal Threats to Hospitals Under OBBBA

The hospital executive, health policy, and revenue cycle management sectors are bracing for systemic fiscal pressures as major federal statutory changes converge. Hospitals nationwide continue to face lingering workforce shortages, elevated labor costs, and thin operating margins. Prior analyses show nearly 4 in 10 U.S. hospitals operated with negative margins even before the full implementation of recent legislative overhauls.

The risk of escalating uncompensated care is growing significantly. As federal policies reduce enrollment in publicly subsidized coverage and restrict state financing mechanisms, health systems face compounding revenue reductions alongside mandated emergency care obligations under EMTALA.

To evaluate this changing landscape, researchers at the Urban Institute, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), released a comprehensive analysis detailing how recent federal policy developments—most notably the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)—will strain hospital operating budgets, workforce availability, and clinical service lines.

Policy Drivers and Systemic Impact Vectors

The Urban Institute report categorizes five main federal policy levers driving operational and financial friction across health systems:

• Medicaid Eligibility and Enrollment Restrictions: OBBBA introduces mandatory 80-hour monthly work requirements and 6-month redetermination cycles for expansion enrollees. Projections indicate 5 to 10 million enrollees could lose coverage by 2028, driving sharp increases in uncompensated care and bad debt.
• State-Directed Payment (SDP) & Provider Tax Caps: OBBBA caps SDP rates to 100% of Medicare in expansion states (110% in non-expansion states) starting in 2028, ending previous caps tied to higher commercial averages. Provider tax safe harbors will also drop from 6.0% to 3.5% in expansion states.
• Marketplace Affordability Expirations: The expiration of enhanced Premium Tax Credits (PTCs), paired with new administrative enrollment barriers, is estimated to drop Marketplace coverage by over 9 million enrollees by 2028, disproportionately shifting patients into high-deductible or uninsured categories.
• Workforce & Immigration Constraints: Increased filing fees for H-1B visas and aggressive enforcement actions threaten clinical capacity, particularly given that foreign-born physicians comprise 27% of all hospital-based doctors nationwide.
• Rural Health Transformation (RHT) Program Limits: While appropriating $50 billion over five years (2026–2030), the RHT Program caps direct payments to care providers at 15% and capital investments at 20%, limiting its ability to cushion rural hospital closures.

“Hospitals are facing a host of serious financial headwinds, which for some will have existential implications,” stated Katherine Hempstead, senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “Loss of federal funding and growth in uncompensated care coupled with inflation and labor force problems will raise costs and reduce revenue.”

As state-directed payments shrink and uncompensated care surges, health systems that optimize administrative workflows through clinical automation and robust workforce optimization platforms will be best equipped to protect operating margins. 

As federal provisions continue their multi-year phase-in, health system leaders must aggressively realign capital expenditure, automate front-door access workflows, and modernize revenue cycle frameworks to maintain clinical stability amid sweeping statutory change.

A year ago, integrating AI-powered clinical workflow tools could take months of review and planning across disparate teams within a pharmaceutical company’s IT, security, and risk teams. Today, with the proliferation of tools that have less than a month of onboarding and can provide immediate value to clinical teams, the way risk is approached has changed. For better or worse, AI capabilities are outpacing the security programs meant to govern them, and many companies are simply assuming risk that they have not quantified or do not fully understand. 

I have built security programs across half a dozen regulated companies, and the bottom line is always the same: you can’t eliminate all risk, but you will be in a much better place if you understand the risk and manage it. 

Most conversations about AI in pharma focus on what it can do: automate tasks, save time, accelerate development. Far fewer discussions focus on how such systems can be deployed securely. In regulated environments, leveraging AI tools represents a point of great risk for organizations. If pharma organizations understand the risk, they can take action to reduce it while also realizing the immense value AI will bring to the industry. Simply stated, ignoring risk should not be an option.

AI-powered tools can directly affect patient safety and trial outcomes in clinical use cases; use cases such as protocol design, endpoint selection, and data analysis all have a regulatory impact. Unfortunately, vendors are rushing to ship products built over a weekend, creating immense security and compliance risk that will become costly to remediate downstream. By the time this risk is realized and has a negative impact on an organization, the tools are already embedded and an investment has already been made. 

In April, the FDA gave out its first warning letter for the improper usage of AI. The result? The FDA ordered drug production halted and put a recall on the table. The question is not whether a submission for a new drug will be denied but when. What looks like speed early on often turns into downstream liability when that risk becomes a reality.

Security questions pharma should be asking 

Pharma organizations need to perform rigorous security reviews, streamline the risk evaluation process, and define their organizational risk tolerance before deploying AI solutions. That due diligence comes down to a pair of questions that many procurement and evaluation processes are not asking today.

Has the system been assessed by an independent party for its security and compliance posture?

A vendor pointing towards internal benchmarks does not adequately address security in practice and risks the organization’s posture being nothing more than security theater. A credible evaluation requires an independent third party who evaluates the system against a documented standard, defines expected secure and compliant operation for a given use case, tests against those expectations, and identifies conditions that fall outside of them.

An attestation of a trusted AI governance standard such as ISO 42001 can help confirm that a vendor is managing risk appropriately, but the story does not end there. Pharma organizations should, at a minimum, spot-check vendors to ensure they have the correct mechanisms in place to control the risks related to AI. 

What level of risk has been defined for each deployment?

Different workflows carry different levels of exposure. A tool with access to patient health information, addresses, and contact details operates at a fundamentally different risk level than one for ideating on the design of a clinical trial. The problem lies when a vendor’s risk appetite doesn’t match your organization’s internal culture or standards. 

If you have clinical trial design software that doesn’t have the proper controls in place or isn’t designed to keep risk within acceptable bounds, there’s a chance that your organization will be the next one with a warning letter from the FDA or in the news as the latest breach. Before any deployment, teams should understand their baseline level of risk. Companies that haven’t defined their risk threshold often minimize the threat or actualization of incidents after the fact, but once an incident happens, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.

Security defines what comes next 

It’s tempting to respond to these risks by turning away from AI entirely, a path that most pharma companies initially took. But it’s become increasingly clear that AI has real potential to bring incredible speed and efficiency to drug development and, ultimately, to patients who will benefit once the drugs go to market. For that potential to become progress, pharma needs the proper risk management and security evaluations in place. 

A prototype built in a few days is not a secure system and a compelling demo doesn’t replace the necessary rigor of managing AI risk.Even established tools and market leaders deserve scrutiny, so imagine the scrutiny needed for a vendor with no security or governance posture.

The gap between a product built with a solid foundation of security and governance and one without is where many AI implementations in regulated industries will fail. Unfortunately, failure tends to only surface when the cost is at its greatest.

About Alexander Neff

Alex Neff leads security, IT, and compliance at Faro, an AI-native life sciences SaaS company. He has spent 15+ years building security programs at the cutting edge of regulated tech.

What You Should Know

• WellSpan Health expanded its multi-year partnership with Hippocratic AI, transitioning from single use cases to a platform-wide deployment across inbound, outbound, ambulatory, and inpatient settings.
• The health system currently operates “Ana,” a generative AI voice agent handling over 160,000 monthly patient calls and 7,000 conversational hours for appointment management and digital access queries.
• New workflow expansions will focus on proactive outbound care gap closures, starting with outreach for missed imaging appointments, post-discharge follow-ups, and chronic disease check-ins.
• WellSpan will serve as a primary co-development partner to trial clinical voice triage tools and deploy the Hippocratic AI Orchestrator to assist care teams with care plan navigation and clinical history coordination.
• Hippocratic AI is embedding a dedicated team of engineering, clinical, and deployment specialists onsite at WellSpan’s York, Pennsylvania campus to co-develop and refine new AI agents in real time.

Multi-Touchpoint Voice Agents and Clinical Orchestration

Transitioning from individual use cases to system-wide deployment, the agreement embeds generative voice AI agents across WellSpan’s inbound, outbound, ambulatory, and inpatient care settings. The expansion transforms WellSpan’s primary AI agent, “Ana,” into an orchestrated clinical engagement tool:

• Inbound & Outbound Patient Access Automation: Expands Ana beyond handling 160,000+ monthly inbound calls to executing proactive outbound outreach for missed imaging appointments, post-discharge follow-ups, and chronic disease monitoring.
• Hippocratic AI Orchestrator Integration: Deploys a specialized orchestration layer that synthesizes patient health history, care plan objectives, and care team workflows to guide clinical navigation.
• Regulated Clinical Triage Co-Development: WellSpan clinicians will co-develop and test regulated voice AI tools designed to assist care teams with clinical triage and care coordination tasks.
• Onsite Co-Development Center: Hippocratic AI is deploying a dedicated, embedded team of engineers, clinicians, and implementation specialists directly at WellSpan’s York, Pennsylvania campus for real-time iterative deployment.

“At WellSpan, we’ve been intentional about creating this foundation, so innovation advances safely, strengthens clinical excellence and earns trust,” stated Roxanna Gapstur, Ph.D., R.N., president and CEO of WellSpan Health. “Our expanded partnership with Hippocratic AI is an investment in the future of care — one that expands access, supports our care teams and creates a more personalized experience.”

WellSpan establishes a co-development model that bridges vendor technology with frontline clinical governance by embedding an onsite Hippocratic AI engineering team at its York campus. Furthermore, proving that a voice agent can scale to manage 160,000 monthly calls while expanding into regulated clinical triage creates a clear benchmark for health system digital access transformations.

What You Should Know

• Akido announced the expansion of its proprietary ScopeAI technology across 100 clinics, virtual care operations, and field medicine services, serving 1 million patients across California, New York City, and Rhode Island.
• The company dropped “Labs” from its corporate name to become Akido and debuted “Akido Medical” as the brand for its AI-native physical and digital clinics.
• ScopeAI operates during visits by organizing real-time clinical pictures and providing diagnostic assistance, yielding five times more face-to-face patient engagement and a 96 Net Promoter Score.
• Deployed in Los Angeles street medicine encampments via iPads, the technology achieved a 55% reduction in Emergency Department utilization alongside 53% same-day care access.
• The expansion is backed by new technical leadership—including former Goldman Sachs VP Matt Rothstein and Pearl co-founder Cambron Carter—plus a newly formed independent AI Clinical Advisory Council.

Real-Time Diagnostic Pre-Processing and TAMSS Benchmarking

Operating across 100 clinics, virtual care networks, and mobile field medicine units, Akido provides care access to 1 million covered lives across California, New York City, and Rhode Island. Alongside the expansion, the organization dropped “Labs” from its parent name and launched Akido Medical as the clinical brand for its facility network.

ScopeAI operates as an ambient clinical intelligence engine that transforms raw visit dialogue into structured diagnostic frameworks:

• Ambient Investigative Intake: Listens continuously during patient encounters, organizing scattered patient histories, symptoms, and clinical data to give physicians an immediate diagnostic head start.
• Street Medicine Field Deployment: Deployed on iPads in Los Angeles encampments to deliver continuous care to unhoused populations lacking prior medical records.
• TAMSS Stress-Testing Framework: Evaluated against 203,000 real-world encounters using the Total Addressable Medical Situation Space (TAMSS) benchmark to ensure model accuracy across complex chronic conditions and unscripted patient presentations.
• Strengthened Engineering Infrastructure: Led by newly appointed VP of Engineering Matt Rothstein (formerly of Goldman Sachs and NIH) and Principal AI Architect Cambron Carter (co-founder of Pearl).

“Doctors are leaving medicine because the system asks them to do more with less every year,” stated Prashant Samant, CEO and co-founder of Akido. “ScopeAI removes the administrative weight of the visit and supports investigative intake, so physicians can spend their time on what only a human doctor can do.”

As Akido scales Akido Medical across its multi-state clinic footprint, it provides a functional blueprint for how AI-native health systems will redefine medical access and physician practice nationwide.

Combined GI endoscopy is already standard practice across many US health systems. When both procedures are clinically indicated, around 65% of patients undergo them in the same session or close window: one prep, one sedation, consolidated throughput.

The efficiency logic is sound, but what the operational analysis hasn’t fully accounted for is the risk that sits inside that efficiency gain. Upper GI and lower GI are not equivalent procedures in their quality infrastructure. Colonoscopy has decades of standardized performance metrics and a now-documented AI-assisted detection record. Upper GI has neither at equivalent maturity. That gap isn’t new, but the scale at which health systems are now running combined procedures is. And scale changes what a quality gap means institutionally. 

The Rules Are Being Written. Now.

The colonoscopy component of a combined session has standardized performance benchmarks, documented outcomes, and an established record to point to if a result is questioned. The upper GI component, in many programs, does not. That asymmetry is the exposure, and most health system risk frameworks have not yet named it.

Upper GI cancer miss rates exceed 8%, with some estimates reaching 11.3% over a three-year window. In 69% of missed cases, the endoscopist had already recorded an abnormality at the exact anatomical site where cancer was later diagnosed. The failure mode is not detection, but systematic coverage: whether every required anatomical landmark was examined before the scope was withdrawn. Without a structured quality program for the upper GI component of combined sessions, there is no mechanism to demonstrate that standard was met.

That is the context in which the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy published new upper GI quality indicators in early 2025, the most comprehensive attempt to standardize performance measurements for the procedure. The clinical community has recognized the gap and is working to close it. The operational implications for health systems are less well understood. Quality indicators, once published and adopted by professional societies, tend to follow a predictable trajectory: they inform credentialing standards, shape accreditation expectations, and establish the benchmark that risk and legal teams reach for when outcomes are questioned. Health systems building toward those standards now are in a stronger position than those waiting for them to carry formal weight. 

Volume Turns a Gap Into a Pattern

A single missed upper GI finding in a combined session is a clinical question about an individual case. A health system running thousands of combined sessions without a defined quality assurance mechanism for the upper GI component is a different category of question: whether the institution had the processes in place to meet an emerging standard of care, applied consistently, across its entire program. One is an adverse outcome. The other is an institutional policy question, and the two land differently when results are reviewed.

The reimbursement structure explains why that pattern forms and goes uncorrected. US endoscopy billing is largely binary: a base payment for the diagnostic procedure, with an increment if biopsy or resection occurs, and no financial signal for thorough anatomical landmark coverage in the upper GI component. In practice, the colonoscopy carries the clinical weight; the upper GI exam is completed first and quickly. Without a mechanism to flag incomplete coverage, that tendency accumulates across every combined session a program performs without producing a visible signal until an outcome forces the question.

At scale, that is what converts a documented clinical gap into a consistent institutional practice. And consistent institutional practices are what risk and legal teams are asked to defend. 

What Getting Ahead of It Looks Like

AI-assisted colonoscopy gained institutional traction because quality metrics and detection technology were developed in parallel, creating an auditable record of procedural performance that served both clinical improvement and institutional accountability. A 2024 meta-analysis of 28 randomized controlled trials involving nearly 24,000 patients found a 20% increase in adenoma detection rate and a 55% reduction in miss rate with AI assistance. That evidence base gave health system operators a defensible basis for adoption and gave risk teams something concrete to point to.

Upper GI AI is earlier on that curve, but it is being built on the same logic. Landmark verification comes first: real-time confirmation that all anatomically required areas were examined before scope withdrawal, creating a structured coverage baseline that did not previously exist. Detection of precancerous conditions, dysplasia in Barrett’s esophagus and gastric intestinal metaplasia, follows from that baseline. The sequencing is deliberate because coverage and detection are not interchangeable; you cannot reliably catch what you have not systematically examined.

What that sequence produces, for a health system running combined sessions at scale, is an auditable record that the upper GI examination met a defined standard, generated at the point of care, for every procedure performed. That record has institutional value before upper GI quality indicators carry formal weight. It has considerably more once they do. Health systems that build toward it now are establishing that standard on their own terms, before volume makes its absence a harder conversation to have. 

Act Before the Window Closes

Consolidating GI procedures was a rational operational decision, and it remains one. What has changed is what that decision now requires. Combined GI endoscopy at scale is not just a scheduling and throughput question. It is a quality assurance question, and for the upper GI component of every combined session being run, most health systems do not yet have a complete answer to it.

The standards are being written. The evidence is forming. Neither will wait. Health system leaders who treat this as an institutional risk question now, rather than a clinical consideration for later, are the ones who will have a defensible answer when it is asked of them.

About Dror Zur

Dror Zur, PhD, is the CEO of Magentiq Eye, an AI-powered colonoscopy platform focused on improving procedural quality in GI endoscopy.