Cityblock to acquire Homeward Health

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Cityblock to Acquire Homeward Health, Secures $116M Series E

The skinny
Cityblock, a value-based provider, plans to acquire rural healthcare provider Homeward Health in an all-stock transaction and has raised $116 million in Series E funding, it announced on Thursday.

The acquisition
New York City-based Cityblock offers clinical care, behavioral health care and social care in patients’ homes, virtually and in community-based clinics. It primarily serves Medicaid and dual-eligible populations. The company’s AI-powered operating system aggregates physical, behavioral and social health data to provide care teams with predictive insights into members.

Homeward, meanwhile, is a value-based care company supporting rural patients through in-home and virtual visits. It connects patients to transportation services, nutritional and lifestyle support, home and community assistance and chronic condition assistance. The company serves nearly 50,000 members and has relationships with payers including Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Priority Health.

“Cityblock and Homeward are mission-aligned organizations serving complex, complementary populations. … For us, Homeward adds a major growth vector in Medicare Advantage and, for the first time, the operating model to go rural at scale,” Mike Roaldi, Cityblock’s president, told MedCity News.

Homeward will maintain its current brand to ensure continuity for members and the company’s CEO, Dr. Jenny Schneider, will remain connected with Cityblock as a “trusted advisor,” Roaldi added.

The funding
The acquisition is supported by Cityblock’s $116 million Series E round, which was led by General Catalyst. This funding will be used to invest in the combined platform, including optimizing operations, the care model, technology and data infrastructure, according to Roaldi.

— By Marissa Plescia

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Ambient Scribes Improve Clinician Retention, Cleveland Clinic Research Shows

The skinny
Cleveland Clinic onboarded more than 4,000 ambulatory care clinicians onto Ambience Healthcare’s ambient scribing platform in just four months — and it’s proven to be worth the money, according to a paper published this month in npj Health Systems.

The research found that 60% of Cleveland Clinic’s clinicians who used the AI scribe agreed it increased their likelihood of remaining in practice. This is a key data point — and a crucial metric for hospitals to focus on when it comes to their clinical AI deployments, given they spend millions per year on recruitment and retention efforts amid an ongoing workforce crisis. The paper also reported 97% clinician satisfaction and 70% encounter-level utilization among established users one year after Cleveland Clinic’s rollout.

The rollout
One of the reasons that the Ambience rollout was more successful than previous tech deployments was because the health system framed it as a gift rather than mandate, pointed out Eric Boose, Cleveland Clinic’s associate chief medical information officer.Clinicians weren't required to see more patients or take on additional work in exchange for access to the tool — it was simply theirs to use if they wanted to try it out.

Getting clinicians up and running quickly was just as important as getting buy-in, Boose said. Cleveland Clinic offered live virtual training sessions three times a day so that clinicians could complete onboarding whenever their schedules allowed. They also added an on-demand training option for those, like surgeons, who couldn't make a live session work.

The reaction
Once physicians tried the tool on one or two patients, most were quickly convinced, Boose declared. He noted that type of early hands-on experience will always be more effective than any top-down messaging.

Quantifying the technology's return on investment took more work. Some of it was straightforward. Ambience's platform also generates coding and billing suggestions, which helps ensure clinicians are reimbursed for the full scope of the care they delivered— which is a feature Boose said helped offset the cost of adopting the tool.

But the rest of the ROI picture was softer and more difficult to assign a dollar figure to. Cleveland Clinic surveyed clinicians directly to track measures like burnout and how much time the tool was saving them outside of their scheduled working hours. Several clinicians told the health system they planned to continue working full time or delay retirement because of the tool, according to Boose. To him, that retention signal carries real financial weight for a health system that would otherwise have to recruit and train replacements.

— By Katie Adams

A Bet on What Could Become the First Approved Drug for Rare Muscle Disease

The deal
Abcuro raised $66 million for a clinical trial expected to support a regulatory submission in inclusion body myositis (IBM), a muscle disease with no FDA-approved therapies. The disease is driven by immune cells that infiltrate muscle tissue and concentrate between muscle fibers. The resulting inflammation leads to progressive muscle weakness.

The drug
Abcuro’s ulviprubart is a monoclonal antibody designed to block T cells that highly express the protein KLRG1 on the cell surface. The biotech says its drug selectively depletes these cells and spares other types of immune cells.

Why this matters
Though Abcuro reported Phase 2/3 results earlier this year that were not statistically significant, the biotech also reported a trend showing slowing disease progression in the overall study population. In a subgroup of IBM patients with less severe disease, there was a 50% slowing of disease progression. The planned new trial will evaluate ulviprubart in patients with less severe disease.

—By Frank Vinluan

How to Prepare Your Hospital Before H.R. 1 Hits in 2027

The scale
H.R. 1 is expected to cut federal Medicaid and CHIP spending by approximately $990 billion over ten years – the largest reduction in the program’s history. Combine this with expiring ACA marketplace subsidies, more than 14 million Americans could be uninsured by 2034. The work requirement alone is projected to account for about 5.3 million of those losses.

The deadlines
States are already working on completing Medicaid member outreach, with required notices going out across late summer and early fall under the interim final rule. Every state is required to have work requirement infrastructure in place by December 31, 2026.

Redetermination cycles will go from 12 months to six months for renewals scheduled on or after December 31, 2026.

A deadline many are not tracking is October 1, 2026. It’s the day federal Medicaid funding ends for refugees, asylees, and humanitarian parolees.

The preparations
Start with proactive outreach. As a provider, you need to reach patients before state notices do, and for most states those go out in September. Then work with financial counselors to understand what the requirements actually demand, identify which categories are exempt, and determine how you can walk patients through the process during their visits.

Run eligibility checks before the appointment. You will need to check whether a patient still has Medicaid days or weeks before their scheduled appointment, instead of doing it as they walk in the door.

Get finance and billing into the room now. Your billing team now has 30 days instead of 90 to recover revenue from expansion adults who turn out to be Medicaid-eligible after their visit, and 60 days for everyone else. Missing that window effectively means the money is gone.

Track what is happening to your patient population. Eligibility and outreach data supports DSH status, 340B participation, and relationships with state agencies and community funders. Hospitals that kept accurate records during redetermination were better positioned for every difficult conversation that followed.

— By MedCity Influencer Scott Schrader

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Cityblock to acquire Homeward Health