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Current Health, CMS Gets WISeR, and Microsoft’s Medical Superintelligence
July 3, 2025
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Together with
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“What’s compelling about a strong infrastructure company is that it can behave like an index on a large, high-growth segment of the market.”
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a16z GP Julie Yoo
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Digital Health Wire will be off on July 7 in observance of Independence Day. We’ll be back in your inboxes after the holiday on July 10. Enjoy the long weekend!
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Sometimes the best M&A strategy is re-acquiring what you already built, and Current Health is once again an independent company after co-founder Chris McGhee decided to take back the reins from Best Buy.
Best Buy picked up Current in 2021. The pandemic boom in home health inspired the retailer to move into the space before the ink was done drying on hospital-at-home-waivers.
- The thesis was that Best Buy could leverage its logistics and consumer-tech expertise to supercharge Current’s services, giving it a way to diversify revenue as TV prices plummeted and people held onto their smartphones for longer.
- McGhee steered the ship as CEO before stepping away last year. By then Current had expanded to the point where it was managing about a third of all hospital-at-home volume in the U.S.
Hospital-at-home is a tough business. Best Buy sprinkled plenty of foreshadowing into its recent earnings call, revealing that it’s racked up $109M in restructuring costs as it scales back its healthcare business.
- It sounded like a lot of HaH partnerships have taken longer to develop than initially thought due to health system financial challenges and uncertainty around waivers.
- Medically Home sang a similar tune to investors when structuring its merger with Dispatch Health, then proceeded to leak all the details in a company-wide email.
Current is starting its next act. McGhee announced that he’s returning “to build Current Health into the world’s largest healthcare organization” by honing its focus on high-acuity services where payment models are crystal clear.
- Unlike the murky reimbursement pathways of RPM, high-cost / high-need areas like oncology-at-home (including cell and gene therapies) are where Current is finding its sweet spot of delivering meaningful outcomes through a scalable model.
- While Current will continue to operate HaH and RPM programs, it views leaning in on the highest impact areas possible as the best way to serve its customer base – and move the needle for patients – going forward.
The Takeaway
Current Health is looking to build a healthcare system centered on homes and communities rather than hospital hallways, and it turns out the fastest way to get there isn’t by waiting around for GeekSquad.
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Ensuring Compliance With Medical AI Scribes
AI scribes are transforming how providers document patient encounters, but new innovations come with new compliance risks. Head over to Playback Health’s quick-start guide to maintaining compliance in the age of AI, and see how Playback Health Pro is giving providers peace of mind with 100% data ownership, SOC 2 verification, and HIPAA-compliant encryption every step of the way.
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Elevate 2025: Medallion’s Virtual Conference Returns September 17
Now in its fourth year, Medallion’s annual conference is back – bringing together healthcare leaders to explore this year’s theme: Elevate the present. Reframe the future of healthcare. Hear from industry voices like Tom Lawry, author of Hacking Healthcare, UPMC Chief Medical Information Officer Robert Bart, and many more. Reserve your spot now.
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- Microsoft’s Medical Superintelligence: The talk of the town this week was Microsoft’s new MAI-DxO diagnostic AI, which achieved 85% accuracy on 304 complex cases from NEJM – over 4X the accuracy of human physicians (20%). We’ll be circling back with a deeper dive on this one after the holiday, but so far early reviews have been mixed. Proponents of the study praised its cost-benefit analysis, a surprisingly rare inclusion given AI’s potential to drive unnecessary testing without improving care. The skeptics pointed out that many aspects of the study design favor LLMs, such as not allowing the physicians to use any external resources.
- symplr Acquires Smart Square: symplr is leveling up its Operations Platform by acquiring Smart Square scheduling software from AMN Healthcare. Prior to the acquisition symplr already offered one of the most comprehensive people management systems in the industry, complete with everything from physician credentialing to scheduling. The addition of Smart Square enhances symplr’s existing suite with new AI-driven capabilities such as predictive analytics, real-time staffing adjustments, and open-shift management.
- Breakthrough Devices Lack Evidence: New research in JAMA Internal Medicine analyzed the first cohort of FDA breakthrough devices, counting 1,041 breakthrough designations from 2016 to 2024. Of those devices, 127 have successfully gained market authorization, although the authors highlighted a serious evidence gap for many of them. A vast majority of devices underwent premarket clinical testing (89%), yet nearly half of primary effectiveness end points used surrogate measures. On top of that, eight devices managed to hit the market without any clinical testing.
- Commure Eyes More M&A: A great interview from Endpoints News revealed that Commure has every intention to acquire more businesses following its recent $200M funding round. General Catalyst’s AI darling has already been on a heater after merging with Athelas and scooping up Augmedix and Memora, but it’s looking to add to the momentum by acquiring a handful of AI scribed that it expects to start running out of runway in the next few years.
- Labcorp Launches Whole Health Solutions: Labcorp finally got tired of having its lunch eaten by DTC testing players like Function and Superpower. The incumbent diagnostics giant announced the launch of Whole Health Solutions, a tailored test menu of 1,000+ biomarkers for cardiometabolic health, hormones, micronutrients, and whole body wellness. The new solution is geared toward giving patients a more convenient way to inform holistic medicine, Labcorp will need to lean in on the consumer experience to compete with the new startups on the block.
- CMS Gets WISeR: CMS announced a new Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction model – WISeR – that includes a six-year pilot to test tech-enabled prior authorizations for traditional Medicare. The voluntary innovation model will add AI prior auth requirements to reduce fraud waste and abuse in Medicare, incentivizing participating orgs based on their reductions in inappropriate utilization – starting with high risk services like skin substitutes and electrical nerve stimulation.
- Puppeteer Gets Healthie: The Puppeteer Call Agent is now available as a native plugin within Healthie’s EHR, handling routine calls and notetaking without ever leaving the platform. By living directly inside Healthie, Puppeteer Call Agent leverages the EHR’s existing permissions and HIPAA controls, enabling it to write directly to the patient chart without any middleware and ensuring full compliance from day one.
- Caregility + Arkansas Children’s Hospital: Caregility teamed up with Arkansas Children’s to release a new connected care device tailored to the unique needs of Neonatal Intensive Care Units. The specialized Caregility NICU cart supports remote specialist consultations, tele-resuscitation, and tele-simulation efforts, while also marking the start of a broader collaboration to co-develop digital health solutions with the pediatric system.
- Altera Debuts Sunrise CarePath: Altera Digital Health debuted Sunrise CarePath, a mobile patient engagement platform designed to close communication gaps while reducing adverse events and readmissions. The new solution includes real-time secure messaging, self-scheduling, patient notifications,and online billing integration – all baked directly into Altera’s Sunrise EHR.
- Insight Health Intake Agents: Insight Health emerged from stealth with $4.6M in funding to extend its AI agents for patient intake to more clinics. The startup’s AI agents are designed to fill in the gaps in clinical conversations and patient histories by automating intake, surveys, and follow-ups, allowing providers to focus on care delivery while improving patient engagement between visits.
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Next Generation Ambient Tech and Agents
The ambient AI transformation is already sweeping across health systems, reducing administrative burdens and improving patient outcomes. So, what’s next? Tune into this on-demand session to learn how systems like Carle Health and Denver Health are leveraging Nabla to eliminate Pajama Time and build a future where agentic AI unlocks true workforce sustainability.
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Kennedy Community Health Finds RPM Success With Withings
When Kennedy Community Health needed a partner to support remote patient monitoring for its diverse patient population, it turned to Withings Health Solutions. See how Kennedy found success with its new program for uncontrolled hypertension using Withings’ RPM platform and connected devices, surpassing enrollment goals while unlocking better outcomes for its patients.
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- Create Efficient Primary Care Access With K Health’s Clinical AI: Keeping up with patient access feels like a losing battle? Hartford HealthCare, Cedars-Sinai, and Hackensack Meridian Health found a new approach. K Health partners with health systems to scale high-quality 24/7 primary care access without sacrificing quality. Learn how K Health’s peer-reviewed clinical AI and Virtualist model are transforming how leading systems deliver care.
- Abridge Fuels Next Phase of Ambient AI – RCM: The complexity of the revenue cycle creates friction that drives clinician burnout, delays reimbursement, and adds unnecessary administrative overhead. With $300 million in fresh funding from a16z and other leading investors, Abridge will embed revenue cycle intelligence earlier in the clinical conversation and eliminate the need for manual, delayed coordination between clinicians and billing teams. Learn more.
- Navina Ranks #1 Best in KLAS for Clinician Digital Workflow: KLAS ranked Navina’s AI copilot #1 for Clinician Digital Workflow in its 2025 Best in KLAS report. Navina’s AI copilot empowers the entire workflow from the exam room to the back office with a holistic solution for improving outcomes, physician satisfaction, and performance under value-based care. Discover why Navina is the market-leading clinical intelligence platform.
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