Epic's AI Charting is here

Electronic health record giant Epic Systems is officially launching the AI charting feature it teased last summer. It will compete with Abridge, Ambience, Nabla, and a slew of other venture-backed companies and private equity rollups that have cropped up to automate elements of clinical documentation by using audio captured during clinical visits.

AI scribes and related administrative tools for coding and billing have emerged as the early winners in health care AI. But the power of defaults is tremendous. Are upstart tools so much better that Epic's customers wouldn't just use a native feature? We will see.

Read Brittany's exclusive on the new launch for more detail about the tech, who's using it, and more

Policy

Telehealth flexibilities nightmare ends?

It's on repeat. Every couple of months I'm talking to all my contacts in DC about the whether Congress will pass long-term extensions of telehealth flexibilities and the hospital at home waiver program that were created during the pandemic. Those flexibilities expanded what services Medicare would cover. The waiver allows approved hospitals to deliver care for certain patients in their homes.

Extensions passed in 2022 expired at the end of 2024 and got caught in the crossfire in a series of budget battles over the last year. The temporary flexibilities lapsed during the government shutdown in the fall, creating problems for providers and patients. Medicare in 2024 published data on how the hospital at home program had gone so far.

With the passage of a spending bill this week, the telehealth flexibilites were extended to December 31, 2027 and the hospital at home waiver program will now expire on September 30, 2030. (Read STAT's John Wilkerson o n the implications of the PBM provisions of the new law.)

There is broad support for flexibilities which make life easier for seniors and may lead to some positive health outcomes, but there are nagging questions about cost (expanding services increases use); safety (are there risk to delivering care in people's homes?); and the potential for misuse of taxpayer funds (fraud or otherwise).

See y'all in 22 months.

Health tech news roundup

Lotus Health, a telehealth startup that uses AI to chat with patients before handing them off to a clinician, raised $41 million led by Kleiner Perkins and CRV.
Midi Health, a women-focused telehealth company with an early emphasis on perimenopause- and menopause-related care, raised $100 million led by Goodwater Capital.
Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman announced their new company Luffu, which is focused on organizing and managing a family's health care. The plan is to start with a an app-based service, but the company promises an eventual "ecosystem of first-party hardware products designed to complement the service."
Humana and Google Cloud announced a multi-year partnership "to further modernize Humana's cloud infrastructure and leverage cutting-edge AI capabilities to accelerate innovation in healthcare."
A few weeks ago, I wondered why William Morris was leaving his post as chief medical officer of Ambience after just a year. According to LinkedIn, he's now the CMO of Andreessen Horowitz-backed Tennr.
Ruben Amarasingham is now the chief medical officer of AI payments rollup Smarter Technologies, he announced on LinkedIn.
Carbon Health filed for bankruptcy. Ouch.
For those following the Food and Drug Administration's TEMPO pilot, which will allow some manufacturers to temporarily market products before they've been cleared, the agency released an informative webinar. It also published a transcript and slides.

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What we're reading

HHS is making an AI tool to create hypotheses about vaccine injury claims, Wired
Inside HHS' anti-fraud efforts: An aggressive crackdown sweeps up mainly Democratic-led states, STAT
The FDA wants to rein in drug ads. On Super Bowl Sunday, it will be business as usual, STAT