< + > Making Sure a Physician Advisory Program Improves Both Care and ROI

Physician advisory programs, which educate clinicians in peer-to-peer fashion, are growing in several ways. This video at the AHIMA Annual Conference explores the many uses of these programs, as well as how to implement them and make sure they’re effective. The speakers are Dr. Adriane Martin, Vice President of Physician Services at Enjoin, a CDI consulting firm, and Shameka Hooks, Executive Director, Midcycle Operations: Coding, CDI, Revenue Integrity and HIM at WakeMed. WakeMed is a non-academic teaching hospital located in Wake County, North Carolina. It includes 3 hospitals, 970 beds, 6 Emergency Departments, and over 90 clinic locations. They employ 10,000 staff members and 1,200+ providers, serve as the 10th busiest ED in the United States, and provide $256 million in community benefit, delivering 80% of Medicaid care in the county.

Hooks said they started their physician advisory program with a single doctor, and experienced enough succes with it that they are now seeking to train a second one. The two key steps she identified, for starting such a program, are to find an interested physician and then to demonstrate the return on investment to management.

However, she says that she doesn’t want to focus on costs or revenue. Instead, doctors should be “telling the story of the patient”: making sure to document the severity of conditions and all the complications and comorbiditiies. She also advises not to just “optimize here and there,” but to look at patients in all their complexity.

By improving care, they strengthen the metrics that lead to financial success: their Observed vs. Expected Mortality Rate, their Case Mix Index (CMI), average length of stay, etc.

Patients look at such metrics when choosing a facility, and payers also reduce denials when clinician documentation demonstrates that they are treating all the patient’s conditions comprehensively.

Martin explains the history of physician advisory programs. They started with utilization management, and most still focus on that. Hooks said that utilization management was the first goal of their program, which was then “focusing on medical necessity.” But many institutions, including WakeMed, are moving to Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI).

There is also a move to using programs to build physician leadership. Physicians can learn to take more strategic roles and translate concepts from the C-Suite to clinical staff.

Physician advisory programs are also leading educational efforts, primarily for clinical staff, but also for those doing coding. WakeMed partnered with Enjoin to leverage their expertise with Physician Advsiory Programs.

Martin warned organizations to plan how they can best employ their advisors, having seen some programs “fizzle out” because the advisors weren’t placed strategically.

Watch the video for more details on these programs, as well as the contribution AI has made in documentation and CDI.

Learn more about Enjoin: https://www.enjoincdi.com/

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Enjoin is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

< + > Smarter Technologies Acquires Pieces Technologies and Launches SmarterNotes: The First Clinical AI Solution to Unite Inpatient Documentation with Revenue Cycle Intelligence

SmarterDx Will Integrate Pieces Technologies for a New Offering that Transforms Clinical Notes into a Strategic Asset — Capturing the Complete Patient Story and Connecting it to Quality and Reimbursement in Near Real Time

Smarter Technologies, the automation and insights platform for healthcare efficiency, today announced the acquisition of Pieces Technologies and the launch of SmarterNotes, the first and only clinical AI solution that fully integrates streamlined note generation with concurrent revenue cycle intelligence. SmarterNotes captures all the meaningful data from the patient record, not just voice, ensuring every note is accurate, compliant, and optimized for reimbursement from the start.

SmarterNotes combines SmarterDx’s proprietary clinical AI with Pieces’ industry-leading note automation workflows. SmarterNotes connects the dots from patient admission to final payment, proactively preventing queries and denials, while also identifying missed revenue opportunities. These insights, applied at the point of documentation, generate cleaner inputs for cleaner claims, delivering significant efficiency gains and revenue capture for health systems.

“Smarter Technologies is tackling the persistent and growing challenges every health system faces,” said Michael Gao, MD, President at Smarter Technologies. “With proprietary clinical and agentic AI, human expertise, and scale, we are reinventing revenue cycle processes and driving better financial outcomes. This partnership with Pieces enables us to redefine how clinical workflow connects to the revenue cycle.”

SmarterDx’s AI algorithms provide insight into clinical data and can understand over 10,000 diagnoses and procedures, driving an additional 30–50 basis points of revenue for health system partners. When combined with Pieces’ AI-generated physician documentation, the result is a note that maximizes accuracy and revenue opportunities, while minimizing burden on providers.

Pieces leverages proprietary AI to condense and summarize clinical data directly within the electronic health record (EHR), pre-generating documentation such as progress notes, discharge summaries, and multidisciplinary care plans. The solution, used to produce more than 10 million AI-generated clinical documents to date, empowers care teams to reclaim valuable time while improving accuracy, reducing cognitive load, and enhancing care coordination.

“At Pieces, we’ve always believed that AI should work in service of clinicians, not the other way around,” said Ruben Amarasingham, MD, Founder and CEO at Pieces Technologies. “By joining forces with Smarter Technologies and launching SmarterNotes, we can make the clinical documentation process not just faster, but smarter. Now, documentation captures all the components that impact revenue and quality, while preserving the safety and transparency clinicians expect from technology that operates within the patient record.”

From Documentation to Intelligence

While many solutions stop at transcription, SmarterNotes transforms documentation into actionable intelligence. By embedding advanced clinical and financial insights directly into the note creation process, SmarterNotes bridges the gap between clinical documentation and revenue cycle performance. Every detail is accurate, complete, and aligned with best practice standards and reimbursement optimization — empowering providers to address gaps before they impact coding, workflow, or financial results. Learn more about the new SmarterNotes offering here.

Proven Results and Market Trust

Built on the proven capabilities of SmarterPrebill and the Pieces Platform, SmarterNotes delivers consistent, proven results:

• 12M+ cases analyzed — AI that understands physician reasoning
• 10% faster discharge summaries completed before discharge
• 69% – 76% fewer late nights spent on pajama-time documentation
• 36% of encounters with new CC/MCC opportunities identified
• 5:1 ROI from Day 1, with an average of $2.5M in realized annual net new revenue per 10,000 patient discharges

SmarterNotes yields transformative outcomes for providers, meaning health systems no longer have to choose between a better clinician experience and optimal revenue capture – they can achieve both.

About Pieces Technologies

Pieces Technologies is a physician-led AI company focused on improving care delivery through automation. Its flagship product, the Pieces Intelligence Platform, delivers AI-generated documentation and clinical summaries to assist physicians, nurses, and case managers within the EHR. Trusted by hospitals and health systems nationwide, Pieces is backed by NIH funding and industry partnerships that advance its mission of returning time to medicine. Learn more at piecestech.com.

About Smarter Technologies

Smarter Technologies, the automation and insights platform for healthcare efficiency, is a leading AI-powered revenue management platform that combines proprietary clinical agents, human-in-the-loop AI Agents, clinical ontology, and global financial and administrative services that allows healthcare organizations the flexibility to automate the entirety of their administrative and financial workflows to optimize operational outcomes and drive better patient experiences. For more information, visit smarter-technologies.com.

Originally announced September 30th, 2025

< + > This Week’s Health IT Jobs – November 5, 2025

It can be very overwhelming scrolling through job board after job board in search of a position that fits your wants and needs. Let us take that stress away by finding a mix of great health IT jobs for you! We hope you enjoy this look at some of the health IT jobs we saw healthcare organizations trying to fill this week.

Here’s a quick look at some of the health IT jobs we found:

• Cyber Security Specialist, Medical Device & IoMT Protection (Remote) – Community Health Systems
• HIM Director/Privacy Officer – Wray Community District Hospital
• Healthcare Encounter Data Analyst – Medica
• Epic Provider Efficiency Analyst – Baylor Scott & White Health
• Revenue Integrity Analyst – HIM Revenue Integrity – UNC Health
• Director, Digital Applications – Ambulatory and Population Health – Emory Healthcare
• Government Healthcare Data Manager – Mercer
• Enterprise Business Application Executive – Adventist Health
• Director – IT Procurement – Presbyterian Healthcare Services
• Chief Medical Information Officer – Community Care Cooperative (C3)
• Director, Reporting Analytics & Informatics – IEHP
• Health Information Systems and Analytics Manager – Partners In Health
• Vice President, Enterprise Transformation Office – Children’s Health
• Director, Health IT Project Management and Service Delivery – UCSF Health
• Patient Experience Analyst – St. Joseph’s Health
• Deputy CIO, Operations & Service Delivery – Information Solutions – MUSC Health
• Manager, IS Program Management – Cybersecurity – Tenet Healthcare
• Director, IT Security Provisioning – Endeavor Health
• Communication Operations & Optimization, Director (Technology & Innovation) – Aurora Health Care
• Rare Disease Health Information Technology Solutions Account Director – Central – Pfizer

If none of these jobs fit your needs, be sure to check out our previous health IT job listings.

Do you have an open health IT position that you are looking to fill? Contact us here with a link to the open position and we’ll be happy to feature it in next week’s article at no charge!

*Note: These jobs are listed by Healthcare IT Today as a free service to the community. Healthcare IT Today does not endorse or vouch for the company or the job posting. We encourage anyone applying to these jobs to do their own due diligence.

< + > From Ambient Voice Documentation to Care Partner at Heidi

Although ambient voice transcriptions driven by AI are seeing widespread adoption in healthcare institutions, only 20%-40% of clinicians adopt it in each institution, according to Dr. Thomas Kelly, CEO & Co-Founder at Heidi. However, when Heidi’s AI medical scribe is brought in, they achieve an average 60-70% adoption by clinicians.

This is because they focus directly on how to help clinicians do their jobs, according to Kelly, although they don’t ignore the larger issues such as compliance and integration with EHRs. By maintaining independence from the EHR, and by offering many different templates for each specialty, Heidi allows more customization.

Kelly also points out that high adoption is necessary if institutions want to add other tools that depend on the vist transcript, such as automated coding.

Equally important is their expansion into becoming a “care partner” that takes over tasks ranging from follow-up phone calls after discharge to checking whether symptoms are considered normal side effects before alerting a physician.

Kelly describes ambient AI transcription as “the first tool that works for the clinician” rather than requiring extra work to meet some external requirement.

Key capabilities include voice communication with the patient to handle coordination tasks such as scheduling and checkins, and evidence checking to let the doctor know when the guidelines call for intervention. With Heidi, the doctor can enter the interview already knowledgeable about the patient and their chief complaint.

Heidi can also aid billing by reminding the doctor that certain symptoms or previous treatments were needed in order to win a pre-authorization. In the future, Kelly hopes that Heidi can handled more care coordination.

Check out our interview with Dr. Thomas Kelly from Heidi to learn more about how they’re taking their AI assistant well beyond automating clinical documentation.

Learn more about Heidi: https://www.heidihealth.com/

Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.

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 Heidi is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

< + > Clearwater Receives Strategic Growth Investment from Sunstone Partners

New Partnership will Strengthen Clearwater’s Innovation, Expansion, and Ability to Secure Healthcare and Defense Industrial Base Critical Infrastructure Sectors

Clearwater, the largest pure-play provider of cybersecurity and compliance solutions for the healthcare industry, today announced a strategic investment from Sunstone Partners, a growth-oriented private equity firm focused on advancing technology-enabled services and software companies. Through the investment, Sunstone Partners has acquired majority ownership of the company from Altaris, LLC and other existing shareholders. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

With this partnership, Clearwater is poised to continue scaling its managed services, consulting, and software offerings to deliver even greater value to healthcare and defense industrial base clients (served by its Redspin division), all of which are navigating increasingly complex cybersecurity and compliance challenges.

As part of the transaction, Steve Cagle will transition from his role as Clearwater CEO to a Board advisory role. Baxter Lee has been promoted to company President. Lee has served as Clearwater CFO since May 2018, and he has been instrumental to the Company’s growth over his nearly eight years of service. He brings extensive financial and operational management expertise and a deep understanding of healthcare services and technology to the role.

Brian McManamon will continue to serve as President of Clearwater’s Redspin division and General Manager of the company’s Managed Security Services and Managed Cloud Services unit.

“There has never been a more critical time to help organizations secure their data and operations,” Lee said. “Sunstone Partners’ investment is a powerful endorsement of Clearwater’s strategy, people, and impact. It gives us the resources to expand, innovate, and strengthen our role as a trusted cybersecurity and compliance partner. Most importantly, we remain committed to delivering the same exceptional service and outcomes our clients have come to expect.”

The partnership builds on Clearwater’s reputation as a leader in the healthcare cybersecurity and compliance market. Earlier this year, Clearwater was recognized as the leading cybersecurity consulting firm specializing in healthcare in Black Book Research’s Top 100 Healthcare IT Advisory and Consulting Project Areas in Highest Demand for 2025. Clearwater was also recognized in Modern Healthcare’s 2024 Best in Business Awards in the Cybersecurity category.

The Company’s Redspin division is a leader in Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) services for the defense industrial base. In October 2024, Redspin was the first CMMC Third-Party Assessment Organization to receive re-certification, and soon after, the Redspin Ready-managed cloud program was named “Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Solution of the Year” in CyberSecurity Breakthrough’s 8^th Annual Awards.

“Clearwater has built an extraordinary platform for driving cybersecurity and compliance excellence across the healthcare ecosystem and the defense industrial base,” said Gustavo Alberelli, Managing Partner & Co-Founder at Sunstone Partners. “We are thrilled to partner with the Clearwater team to help accelerate their growth and deepen their impact on key critical infrastructure sectors.” Alberelli joins the Clearwater Board, along with Ankur Rathi, Partner at Sunstone Partners.

Scott Hammack, Operating Partner at Sunstone Partners, has been appointed Executive Chairman of Clearwater’s Board of Directors. Hammack brings decades of experience leading and growing technology-enabled cybersecurity and compliance businesses, most recently serving in Executive Chairman roles at VCheck and NETSPI.

Stephens served as exclusive financial advisor, and ArentFox Schiff served as legal advisor to Clearwater and Altaris, LLC in the transaction. Choate Hall & Stewart LLP acted as legal advisor to Sunstone Partners.

About Clearwater

Clearwater helps organizations across the healthcare ecosystem move to a more secure, compliant, and resilient state so they can achieve their missions. The company provides a deep pool of experts across a broad range of cybersecurity, privacy and compliance domains, purpose-built software that enables efficient identification and management of cybersecurity and compliance risks, managed cloud services, and a 24/7 Security Operations Center with managed threat detection and response capabilities. To learn more, visit clearwatersecurity.com.

Redspin, a division of Clearwater, specializes in enhancing the cyber readiness and resilience of federal and Defense Industrial Base (DIB) organizations. As one of the first Authorized CMMC 3rd Party Assessment Organizations (C3PAOs) and one with the most assessment experience, Redspin provides guidance to federal organizations seeking CMMC certification to reduce cyber risks and protect sensitive information. To learn more, visit redspin.com.

About Sunstone Partners

Sunstone Partners is a growth-oriented private equity firm that invests in AI- and Technology-enabled services and software companies. The firm seeks to partner with exceptional management teams, often as their first institutional capital partner, to help accelerate organic growth and fund acquisitions. Founded in 2015, the firm has $1.7 billion committed capital to its three funds. Sunstone Partners has been recognized as one of Inc. Magazine’s “Founder-Friendly Investors” list in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. For more information, visit sunstonepartners.com.

Originally announced September 30th, 2025

< + > Hyro Sees Health System Call Centers as Potential Revenue Generators

Hyro’s Responsible AI Agent platform enables health systems to safely automate patient workflows and conversations across key channels such as call centers, websites, SMS, and mobile apps, supporting use cases like scheduling, appointments, and prescription refills and more. But CEO and Co-Founder Israel Krush thinks that providers should look beyond just the high costs of call centers toward their potential for generating revenue.

Instead of being a “black box,” a call center that leverages technology like that offered by Hyro measures how many calls were made and what the conversion rate (appointments scheduled) was.

To handle detailed and specific workflows (such as “I’m looking for a dermatologist in a specific area”) Krush says that Hyro supplements the traditional large language models (LLMs) with “small language models.”

Hyro is in a growth phase, fueled by a recent round of funding that Krush says will help Hyro improve even more thanks to the funders’ strategic support. Besides expanding into mid-market providers and more complex specialties, they plan to provide more intelligence to reduce readmissions and no-shows, and to increase access to important preventative care such as colonoscopies and mammagrams.

This will require their system to go beyond the traditional, reactive role of call centers and chat bots, and to initiate calls to patients to provide that continuity of care.

Watch the video for more insights into “responsible AI agents,” governance, and Hyro’s growth with Israel Krush from Hyro.

Learn more about Hyro: https://www.hyro.ai/

Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.

And for an exclusive look at our top stories, subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube.

Tell us what you think. Contact us here or on Twitter at @hcitoday. And if you’re interested in advertising with us, check out our various advertising packages and request our Media Kit.

Hyro is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

< + > Sanofi and QuantHealth Team up to Advance AI-Powered Digital Twins and Clinical Trial Simulation

Sanofi and QuantHealth Team up to Advance AI-Powered Digital Twins and Clinical Trials Simulations to Accelerate Drug Development

QuantHealth, a pioneer in AI-driven clinical trial simulation, announced a strategic investment from Sanofi Ventures, the venture capital arm of global healthcare leader Sanofi. The investment will accelerate QuantHealth’s efforts to bring scalable, patient-level simulations and digital twin technologies to the forefront of drug development, bringing its total funds raised to $30 million.

QuantHealth’s platform enables pharmaceutical companies to virtually simulate clinical trials using real-world data and advanced AI models. By generating millions of patient-level digital twins, the platform predicts trial outcomes and optimizes protocol design, aiming to improve trial success rates, timelines, and cost efficiency.

The investment has further catalyzed an enterprise strategic relationship that supports Sanofi’s focus on integrating advanced AI and digital technologies to drive transformation across its R&D ecosystem. As part of the investment, Cris De Luca, Partner at Sanofi Ventures, will join as an observer on QuantHealth’s Board of Directors.

“We’re proud to welcome Sanofi Ventures as an investor and strategic ally in our journey,” said Orr Inbar, Co-Founder and CEO at QuantHealth. “Sanofi is at the forefront of digital transformation in pharma, and this relationship will help us scale our impact and bring more predictive, AI-driven approaches to clinical development.”

“QuantHealth has the potential to transform how clinical trials are designed and optimized,” said Cris De Luca, Partner at Sanofi Ventures. “Their approach to leveraging digital twins and real-world data is advancing the next generation of R&D, and I look forward to supporting the team.”

“At Sanofi, we are building an AI-first organization, and engaging with innovators like QuantHealth is central to our strategy,” said Emmanuel Frenehard, Chief Digital Officer at Sanofi. “Their platform represents an important opportunity to reimagine clinical trial design through simulation, and we’re excited to explore this capability together.”

This investment and enterprise relationship underscores a shared commitment to advancing drug development through the responsible use of artificial intelligence in life sciences.

About QuantHealth

QuantHealth is an AI-driven clinical trial simulation company that helps pharmaceutical companies design faster, more successful trials using real-world data and predictive modeling. With access to over 350 million patient records and proprietary AI algorithms, QuantHealth’s platform simulates trials at scale to optimize protocols, reduce risk, and accelerate timelines.

About Sanofi Ventures

Sanofi Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Sanofi, investing globally in early-stage biotech and digital health companies aligned with Sanofi’s mission to chase the miracles of science. Areas of focus include immunology, oncology, rare diseases, vaccines, and digital innovation.

Originally announced October 1st, 2025