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Thatch, MA Final Rule, and Dr. Oz Gets Confirmed to Lead CMS
April 7, 2025
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Together with
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“Health insurance in America wasn’t designed for humans. It was designed for HR departments. That’s why it feels so rigid. So confusing. So broken. If insurers sold to individuals, we’d have totally different products, incentives and experiences.”
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Thatch CEO Chris Ellis
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In the latest Digital Health Wire Show, Zus Health CEO Jonathan Bush walks us through what it’s going to take to bring healthcare up to information speed. As the industry starts moving beyond its “Big Dumb Product Era” with one-size-fits-all experiences, Zus is arming a new generation of nimble players with real-time insights from a longitudinal patient view of clinical, pharmacy, lab, and claims data sources.
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Help is on the way for employers grappling with rising healthcare costs after Thatch locked in $40M of Series B funding to help tailor benefits to the needs of employees.
Thatch is dislodging health coverage from employment by providing individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements (ICHRA) that let employees choose their own benefits.
- By blending fin-tech and health-tech tools, Thatch gives employers a way to “abstract away the complexity” of the ICHRA law that passed in 2020, which enabled them to provide a monthly budget to employees for selecting their own health benefits.
- The Thatch platform streamlines budget setting, plan selection, and lowers costs through pooled purchasing power. If employees spend less than their budget, they receive a Thatch debit card to use for things like prescriptions, copays, and therapy.
Thatch CEO Chris Ellis shared on LinkedIn that one of the reasons why health coverage feels so broken is because it wasn’t designed for humans, it was designed for HR departments.
- Ellis has a different vision, and it’s being met with open arms: “Imagine choosing your health plan like you choose your car. Imagine keeping it when you switch jobs.”
- Although Thatch hasn’t revealed any official revenue numbers, it’s reportedly onboarded over a thousand companies in the last 18 months – including big names like Jersey Mike’s and Dave’s Hot Chicken – and grown revenue by 8X year-over-year.
The Series B funding will allow Thatch to “double down” on its vision to make health benefits accessible for every American through deeper integrations with carriers and payroll systems.
- That includes an API service that allows partners to embed ICHRA directly within their own product, which already has QuickBooks signed on as a marquee client.
- Thatch is also bringing on Gary Daniels, the former CEO for UnitedHealthcare’s Pacific Northwest division, as its new Chief Growth Officer to help make it all happen.
The Takeaway
Most current health benefits solutions were designed for a workforce that stayed with a single company for most of their careers, and have had a tough time keeping up with today’s dynamic labor market. Thatch is among a new pack of startups building the infrastructure for a modern experience, and it seems like both employers and employees have a lot to look forward to.
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BPM Pro 2: Unparalleled Reliability
BPM Pro 2 increases data reliability with two new features that ensure patients are taking their reading properly and prompting them to rest and retake it if their first reading was abnormally high.
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How Abridge Scales for Diverse Health Systems
“Game Changer”: From the largest urban health institutions to sprawling rural systems that spread across several states and serve a diverse array of communities with varying levels of resources, Abridge is impacting the lives of clinicians and patients. Read why Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, Mo., and Deaconess Health System in Evansville, Ind., all chose Abridge. Learn more.
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- Medicare Advantage Final Rule: CMS released its Medicare Advantage final rule for 2026, but it opted to leave out the flashiest policy from the initial proposal: covering anti-obesity medications. The Biden administration attempted to improve access to GLP-1s for weight loss by having Medicare Part D and Medicaid cover them under the now-final rule, although some indications like diabetes and heart failure are still permitted despite the lack of coverage expansion. The rule also excluded an annual health equity analysis of utilization management policies, as well as any new guardrails on AI.
- New Dawn, New Daymark: Daymark Health launched with $11.5M in seed funding to better support cancer patients outside of the clinic. Endpoints News spoke with one of the investors about Daymark’s differentiators from startups like Thyme Care, who said that it’s the ability to “tackle multiple areas at the same time,” such as care navigation, mental healthcare, social support, and in-home care for day-to-day support.
- RN Shortage Shows Signs of Improvement: New data from Nursing Solutions Inc. showed that hospital turnover rates have finally returned to pre-pandemic levels for both RNs (16%) and all employees (18%). The findings are in line with other reports from Fitch and Kaufmann Hall suggesting that the labor shortage is beginning to ease up, with NSI’s data also showing that nearly half of hospitals had an RN vacancy rate under 7.5% in 2025 – a stark turnaround from upwards of 15% just two years ago.
- UCI Health’s aha! Moment: UCI Health rolled out a sleek new website built on Abundant Health Acquisition’s (aha!) Health Experience Platform that’s geared toward streamlining patients’ search for services. aha!’s HXP platform is designed to help health systems modernize their digital front door without the cost of a full replatforming, and UCI’s website overhaul now gives over 4M patients access to a personalized experience with integrated provider availability, clinical trials, and education.
- Medicaid Fraud Stats: A Wall Street Journal investigation rocked the Medicaid boat after finding that payors received over $4B from duplicative payments between 2019 and 2021. Most of that stemmed from payors covering Medicaid patients that had moved states and not cancelled their coverage in the original state, although payors were quick to point out that several pandemic rules had limited disenrollments during the study period.
- WellSky CarePort Care Transitions Dashboard: WellSky launched a Care Transitions Dashboard Suite, which combines insights from its EHRs, other solutions, and claims data to equip acute care providers with referral metrics and trends. The Referral Summary dashboard provides real-time insights into metrics like response time and average length of stay, while the Clinical Performance dashboard allows hospitals to assess case management performance and identify areas for improvement.
- Telehealth Lifeline for Chronic Conditions: A large study of nearly 4M U.S. veterans found that telehealth is a lifeline for those managing chronic conditions with comorbidities that limit either mobility or cognitive functioning. The study of 7.1M outpatient primary care encounters showed that the conditions with the highest adjusted percentage of video-based care included dementia (10.7%), AIDS (8.8%), ulcers (8.0%), and Parkinson’s (7.5%) – all conditions that can make it difficult to seek in-person care.
- University Hospitals Expands Virtual Nursing: University Hospitals is expanding its hybrid virtual nursing model to two EDs and an entire hospital after early success with the program. The health system first introduced a model whereby nurses can work a hybrid schedule, splitting time between the bedside and a remote care hub, but it’s now looking “to move beyond nursing to include providers, consultants, families, as well as remote patient observers.” Transitional care coordinators and outpatient nurses have already been integrated into the program, with more roles on the way with the expansion into the ED.
- Americans Can’t Access Care: A Gallup poll found that the number of Americans who couldn’t afford necessary care reached a four-year high in 2023. Out of the 6.3k respondents, 11% were unable to afford medication or care within the past three months, and over a third said that they wouldn’t currently have the funds for quality medical treatment if they needed it. The lowest-income households were more likely to report new difficulty accessing healthcare compared to 2021, while there was little change among middle- and high-income households.
- WELL Health Acquires HEALWELL: Practice management software developer WELL Health is acquiring a majority controlling interest in precision care company HEALWELL AI. The move arrives alongside the closing of HEALWELL AI’s own acquisition of Orion Health, which gave it a new global distribution channel for its preventative care AI solutions through Orion’s health system partners and digital care record platform used across 11 countries – a benefit that WELL will also now enjoy.
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Top Systems Scale Primary Care With K Health
Leading health systems are turning to K Health’s AI-driven primary care solution to give their patients access to high-quality care with wait times measured in hours, not months. Find out why K Health is the only clinical AI company partnering with top systems to scale fully integrated primary care experiences.
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Transform Value-Based Outcomes With Navina
Navina’s AI copilot brings clinical intelligence directly to care teams, turning fragmented data into a concise patient profile with actionable insights to transform value-based outcomes. Designed for and loved by physicians, Navina’s Best in KLAS AI reduces missed diagnoses, improves quality metrics and risk adjustment accuracy, and alleviates the administrative burden—allowing providers to focus on what matters most: their patients. Learn more.
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- The First 30 Days: What to Expect With AI: Implementing AI documentation tools promises significant benefits, but how do you ensure a smooth transition? Playback Health has you covered with this comprehensive 30-day roadmap outlining what to expect, industry best practices, and its own proven implementation approach.
- The State of Payer Enrollment & Credentialing: Rising costs, slow automation, and evolving regulations are creating new challenges for credentialing and enrollment. Medallion’s latest report uncovers the biggest trends shaping the future – and how AI and automation are driving change. Don’t fall behind – get the full report now.
- How Nabla Transformed Care at Denver Health: As Colorado’s primary safety net health system, Denver Health knows that technology like Nabla’s ambient AI platform plays a vital role in keeping its patients healthy and its clinicians happy. Find out why Denver Health clinicians are calling Nabla “the most transformational technology they’ve seen in their medical practice, ever.”
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