< + > The Power of Voice AI Agents in Automating RCM

In the not-too-far future, as envisioned by Sam Schwager, Co-Founder and CEO at SuperDial, most revenue cycle management (RCM) will be handled by an AI agent at the provider that communicates with an AI agent at the payer. SuperDial is on that path, handling large numbers of billing calls with its voice agent.

SuperDial entered the AI space in an unusual way. They were an RCM company themselves, focusing on behavioral health, and realized they could not grow unless they could automate the calls during which human agents would spend hours on hold and conduct “the same conversation 40 different times a day.” After successfully building the voice agent for their own needs, they started marketing their AI voice agent to other RCM vendors about two-and-a-half to three years ago. Their AI agents have now conducted more than seven million calls for their clients.

The benefits are experienced by providers and payers alike: faster payments and less overhead. In our interview, Schwager assures listeners that humans will still be needed for RCM. For example, many claims are currently abandoned because of complexities; these claims can now be examined and resolved by humans whose time was previously tied up calling payers.

SuperDial started by supporting smaller RCM organizations as clients and can now serve partners of any size. One customer mentioned by Schwager came to them with a backlog of 70,000 claims that the provider was behind on.  Once they partnered with SuperDial, they were able to get through those claims in a couple of weeks. Plus, now SuperDial is integrated into the provider’s claims process going forward so they can avoid that kind of backlog in the future.

SuperDial has also expanded to look at payer portals and policy documents. Often an AI agent will prepare for a call by examining these sources in order to provide a better interaction.

Some partners also use SuperDial’s voice agents for other purposes since it can be used for both outbound and inbound calls. For instance, payers are interested in using the agents to call providers to ensure provider directory information is up to date.

Schwager also noted that many potential standards are being developed to make agent-to-agent interactions more efficient.  He looks forward to using these standards as they become fully developed.  This type of payer-agent to provider-agent interaction could unlock a lot of efficiencies in healthcare.

Watch our video interview with Sam Schwager from SuperDial to learn more about how their Voice AI agents are saving RCM companies, payers, and provider organizations time sitting on hold on the phone.

Learn more about SuperDial: https://www.superdial.com/

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SuperDial is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

< + > Innovation Fatigue in Healthcare Is Real, Here’s How to Avoid It

The following is a guest article by Melissa Powell, President & Chief Operating Officer at The Allure Group

Healthcare has never lacked innovation. The industry is currently experiencing one of the fastest technological expansions in its history. Yet beneath this momentum lies an uncomfortable truth: innovation itself is becoming a source of strain. Across hospitals, clinics, and health systems, leaders and clinicians are confronting a growing phenomenon known as innovation fatigue, where continuous waves of new tools and transformation initiatives overwhelm the very people they are meant to support.

Innovation fatigue does not emerge because healthcare resists progress. It emerges because progress often outpaces systems, workflows, and human capacity to adapt.

When Innovation Becomes Overload

Healthcare professionals need to operate within an increasingly fragmented digital ecosystem. Clinicians are forced to navigate disjointed systems, duplicate documentation, and chase information across processes because many organizations use multiple platforms that don’t integrate properly. This fragmentation creates administrative friction over clinical efficiency, contributing directly to exhaustion and reduced productivity.

The result is paradoxical. Time-saving technologies frequently increase cognitive load. In order to continue providing continuous patient care, clinicians must constantly modify workflows, learn new interfaces, and adhere to changing regulatory standards. Skepticism toward innovations develops over time as a result of the continuous cycle of adoption without stabilizing.

Healthcare workers have been effectively “apped” for over 10 years, according to industry analysts, with each new solution promising transformation but frequently creating new workstreams instead. Innovation weariness has shifted from a nuisance to a systemic risk, as many employees are now reluctant to adopt new technologies.

The Human Cost of Constant Change

Innovation fatigue is a workforce issue. Healthcare workers are already overworked due to staffing shortages, increasing patient complexity, and increasing administrative demands. Instead of reducing stress, introducing misaligned tools into this setting increases it.

Front-line experiences frequently highlight a disconnect between what innovators provide and what physicians genuinely require. Healthcare IT specialists typically bemoan that flashy solutions often overlook common operational problems such as inefficient scheduling, fragmented patient data, or unnecessary logins. Rather than putting in place entirely new platforms, the greatest relief is often achieved by fixing these basic workflow problems. Businesses accumulate expensive but ineffective technologies as a result of innovation that ignores clinical reality, thereby lowering uptake and morale.

Why Healthcare is Especially Vulnerable

Unlike other industries, healthcare cannot pause operations during transformation. Innovation must be implemented by hospitals while upholding patient safety, legal compliance, and ongoing care. This poses a particular pressure: innovation initiatives often require behavioral and procedural changes, but those changes must happen without interruption.

Research also shows that workforce-driven innovation faces barriers such as limited resources, insufficient training, and financial constraints, all of which slow adoption and increase frustration among staff expected to execute change without adequate support.

At the same time, the pace of digital health investment continues accelerating, creating an environment where organizations feel compelled to adopt innovation competitively rather than strategically. The danger is not technological advancement itself but innovation pursued without prioritization.

Prioritizing Innovation Quality Over Innovation Quantity

Avoiding innovation fatigue requires a fundamental mindset shift. Healthcare leaders must move away from measuring progress by the number of technologies deployed and instead focus on measurable improvements in care delivery and clinician experience.

• Start with Workflow Instead of Technology: Successful innovation begins by identifying friction points in daily clinical operations; immediate trust and adoption are produced by solutions that lessen administrative duplication or coordination constraints
• Integrate Before Adding: Siloed systems are the root cause of many fatigue problems; it is frequently more beneficial to prioritize interoperability and consolidation than to introduce new stand-alone solutions
• Co-Design with Clinicians: Decisions about development and implementation must involve frontline staff; human-centered design guarantees that instruments are compatible with actual clinical settings and reduces resistance
• Adopt Gradual Change: Small-scale, ongoing enhancements work better than massive, overwhelming transformation rollouts; engagement is higher in organizations that view innovation as a developing skill rather than a collection of disruptive initiatives
• Measure Outcomes that Matter: Reduced documentation time, improved patient interaction, and clinician satisfaction should carry equal weight with financial or technological metrics

Healthcare does not need less innovation. It needs better-paced, better-designed innovation grounded in human experience. The goal is not technological acceleration alone but sustainable progress that strengthens both care delivery and workforce resilience.

Innovation fatigue is ultimately a signal that healthcare has reached a maturity point where success depends less on invention and more on integration, empathy, and execution. Organizations that recognize this shift will move beyond innovation for its own sake toward innovation that genuinely endures.

< + > Elation Health Acquires Aster | Vizient Acquires Empierus

Check out today’s featured companies who have recently completed an M&A deal, and be sure to check out the full list of past healthcare IT M&A.

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Elation Health Acquires Aster to Expand Agentic Capabilities in Primary Care

AI Technology Platform Co-Founded by Digital Health Leaders Bringing Experience from Meta, Y Combinator, and the UK’s NHS

Elation Health, the clinical-first technology platform for modern primary care success, today announced the acquisition of Aster, an AI-native EHR focused on women’s health. The acquisition brings expertise in autonomous AI agents and accelerates Elation’s development of the first agentic operating system for primary care: software that handles work on behalf of clinicians, not just assists them. This is Elation’s second acquisition, following the purchase of Lightning MD in 2023.

“The Aster team impressed us with their vision and creative inventions to support independent practices,” said Kyna Fong, Co-Founder and CEO at Elation Health. “Like Elation, Aster was founded by siblings with a personal mission to fix healthcare. That shared north star means they understand what we’re building and why it matters. It was clear right away they would significantly add to our capabilities.”

Aster’s team, including Co-Founders Fifi Kara and Dr. Lailah Kara-Newton and Chief Technology Officer Nacho Vazquez, are joining Elation. The team built Atlas, a voice agent that automates front-office tasks for healthcare practices. Founded in 2023, Aster raised $2.8 million from Zeal Capital Partners, Cornerstone Ventures, Octopus Ventures, and others.

Fifi Kara is a 2x founder, Y Combinator alum, and Fulbright Scholar who previously led design for Meta’s Health & Fitness organization. Dr Lailah Kara-Newton earned her MBBS from Barts and The London School of Medicine and has practiced Medicine, including Obstetrics and Gynecology for more than seven years, publishing research with the World Health Organization and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Nacho Vazquez architected Aster’s full-stack technology and AI capabilities.

“We’re joining forces with Elation Health at a moment of extraordinary change and opportunity in healthcare,” said Fifi Kara…

Full release here, originally announced June 2nd, 2026.

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Vizient Acquires Empierus to Expand IT Spend Management and Cost Optimization Capabilities

Vizient today announced it has acquired Empierus, a healthcare-focused advisory firm specializing in information technology (IT) contracting, healthcare technology management, and cost optimization. The acquisition builds on Vizient’s continued investment in specialized expertise across indirect spend categories as healthcare organizations face mounting financial and operational pressures across all areas of non-labor spend, including technology-related categories.

As technology investments expand across areas such as cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation, healthcare organizations need greater visibility, contracting discipline, and proactive management of IT spend. With healthcare organizations spending more than $55 billion annually on IT, the acquisition strengthens Vizient’s ability to help clients bring more technology-related spend under contract, reduce avoidable costs, and manage a growing area of operational and financial pressure.

Through an established partnership with Vizient, Empierus helped deliver more than $36 million in savings for Vizient clients in 2025. Empierus employees will join more than 250 experts across indirect spend and purchased services categories to help healthcare organizations optimize spending across a broad range of non-labor areas.

“IT is one of the fastest-growing areas of spend, with much of it unmanaged and off contract,” said Simrit Sandhu, President, Spend Management at Vizient…

Full release here, originally announced June 11th, 2026.

< + > Revenue Cycle Management – Healthcare IT Today Podcast Episode 196

For the 196th episode of the Healthcare IT Today Podcast, we are talking about revenue cycle management! We kick this episode off by sharing what we have been hearing at the recent conferences we’ve both been attending in the RCM space. Next, we talk about what technology actually helps the coding personnel shortage we are currently facing. Then, we discuss what we think the reality and the promise of AI is in RCM. Lastly, we debate whether we are heading towards having totally autonomous coding/RCM one day.

Here’s a preview of the topics and questions we discuss in this episode:

• We’ve both been to conferences recently in the RCM space; what are you hearing?
• We are facing a coding personnel shortage. What technology actually helps?
• What is the reality and promise of AI in RCM?
• Are we heading for a day when we have totally autonomous coding/RCM?

Now, without further ado, we’re excited to share with you the next episode of the Healthcare IT Today podcast.

We publish a new Healthcare IT Today podcast every ~2 weeks. Thanks to our friends at Healthcare Now Radio, you’ll be able to listen to the latest episodes of Healthcare IT Today on their radio station for the first two weeks. Then, we’ll be publishing each episode as a podcast and YouTube video here after it finishes on the radio.

You can also subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today podcast on any of the following platforms:

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Thanks for listening to Healthcare IT Today and if you enjoy the content we’re sharing, please rate the podcast on your favorite podcasting platform.

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If you work in Healthcare IT, we’d love to hear where you agree and/or disagree with the perspectives we shared. Feel free to share your thoughts and perspectives in the comments of this post, in the YouTube comments, with @Colin_Hung or @techguy on Twitter, or privately on our Contact Us page. Let us know what you think of the podcast and if you have any ideas for future episodes.

Thanks so much for listening!

Listen to Our Latest Episodes:

< + > Assort Health Raises $120 Million Series C | Telepatia Raises $33 Million Series A

Check out today’s featured companies who have recently raised a round of funding, and be sure to check out the full list of past healthcare IT fundings.

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Assort Health Raises $120 Million Series C to Scale Largest Deployment of AI Agents for the Patient Journey

Assort Health, the most widely used AI agents platform for the patient journey, today announced a $120 million Series C led by Menlo Ventures at a valuation of $1.2 billion. Assort has now raised more than $222 million to become the standard for healthcare organizations wanting to transform the patient journey with AI.

Healthcare providers now spend nearly twice as much on administration as on direct patient care. That $1.1 trillion in annual administrative burden, from scheduling calls to intake forms to referral loops, is one of the most consequential and correctable failures in modern healthcare. Assort was founded on a simple, uncomfortable conviction: the industry would never fix this problem from the middle. You had to start at the front door.

What began as the first voice AI agent to schedule a specialty appointment is now a platform spanning scheduling, intake forms, referrals, document processing, medication refills, real-time eligibility, lab requests, and payments. That expansion has been powered by more than 190 million patient interactions, 62,000 care protocols, and 1.6 million decision pathways, creating the largest proprietary specialty dataset in healthcare.

Synapse, Assort’s proprietary AI model, learns the patterns of specialty workflows across every deployment, then generates the edge cases, tests, and simulations each one has to handle. Even the most complex, provider-specific workflows go live with high automation and resolution rates. That advantage compounds with scale. In the last 15 months, revenue has grown 20x.

“After investing in Anthropic, our thesis was simple: find the best application-layer companies in every category,” said Matt Murphy, Partner at Menlo Ventures…

Full release here, originally announced June 24th, 2026.

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Telepatia Raises $33 Million Series A

Brazil-Based Telepatia Raised $33 Million in Series A Funding Led by Andreessen Horowitz

Telepatia, a São Paulo, Brazil-based healthtech startup that provides an AI-native clinical platform, has raised a $33 million in Series A funding.

Investors

The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation from Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar, Rappi founder Simón Borrero, and Nubank founder David Vélez.

Telepatia Use of Funds

The funding will be used to scale Telepatia’s AI-powered healthcare platform, expand deployments across Latin America, and further develop its suite of AI healthcare employees, including AI doctors, nurses, and auditors…

Full release here, originally announced June 19th, 2026.

< + > Bonus Features – July 5, 2026 – 58% of dermatology practices see patients daily with AI-generated diagnoses, 94% of CIOs say AI delays would put their orgs at a competitive disadvantage, plus 27 more stories

Welcome to the weekly edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features. This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT that we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job.

Stats

• HHS announced TEFCA has reached 1 billion health records exchanged.
• A Clarity RCM survey found 88% of dermatology practices are currently using AI tools; meanwhile, 58% said patients arrive to their practice with AI-generated diagnoses or treatment ideas on a daily basis.
• A PerfectServe survey found 85% of healthcare organizations want to switch contact center vendors but are held back by switching costs and vendor lock-in.
• A Qventus survey found nearly 45% of CIOs are now the primary decision makers on AI purchasing, and 94% say delays in operationalizing AI would put their organization at a competitive disadvantage.

Partnerships

• Sharecare and Amazon Web Services are collaborating to launch of AskMD by Sharecare, a care navigation platform for patients. In addition, AWS announced support for the Fleming Initiative‘s global antimicrobial resistance intelligence platform.
• Health Samurai’s FHIR platform Aidbox is now available on Databricks.
• CompuMed and 3DR Labs are expanding their partnership to analyze and extract data from existing donor CT imaging studies.
• RxInform from DrFirst is now integrated with Elation Health‘s EHR for physician practices.
• RCM software from Inovalon is now integrated with eMedicalPractice‘s EHR platform.
• Medbridge and Tandem RTM are partnering to help healthcare organizations boost remote therapeutic monitoring revenue.
• Large quantitative models from SandboxAQ are now accessible through Google Cloud’s Marketplace.
• Prescription drug cost data from SmithRx is now integrated with Transcarent‘s WayFinding platform for medical care and pharmacy navigation.
• Temperature-controlled medication solutions provider TempraMed Technologies expanded its partnership with McKesson Medical-Surgical.

Products

• Anthropic announced Claude Science, an AI workbench for science research. Claude Sciance integrates with NVIDIA BioNeMo Agent Toolkit to bring NVIDIA models and services into the research environment.
• Clinical Solutions announced enhanced risk-based quality management features in its elluminate Clinical Data Intelligence Platform.
• Medical review technology company Humata Health announced a standalone prior authorization platform for independent practices, regional health centers, and specialty clinics.
• OptimizeRx launched CopayCue to make savings opportunities more transparent for physicians at the point of prescribing.

Implementations

• Alabama-based FQHC HAPPI Health selected CareImpact.ai to support patient engagement and care coordination using agentic AI.
• Illinois-based OSF HealthCare selected TRIMEDX to manage medical devices and other clinical assets.
• The University of South Alabama, Feeding the Gulf Coast, and Watershed Health are partnering to provide direct referrals to resources to address food insecurity.

Company News

• The Sequoia Project released guidance for evaluating and implementing automated, computable consent processes for sharing health information.
• R&D decision support vendor VeriSIM Life is collaborating with the FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research.

People

• The American Hospital Associated appointed Steve Walsh as President and CEO.
• Population health vendor Azara Healthcare announced Mary Lantin as President and CEO.
• Autonomous medication management company Omnicell appointed Nnamdi Njoku as President; he’ll retain his role as Chief Operating Officer.
• RCM vendor EnableComp appointed Maureen Ladouceur as Chief Commercial Officer.
• Healthcare operations software maker symplr named Andrew Langford as Chief Financial Officer.
• Senior living technology company Inspiren named Gabrielle Fernandes as CFO.
• DirectTrust announced new and returning members of its Board of Directors and updates to its Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC).

If you have news that you’d like us to consider for a future edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features, please submit them on this page. Please include any relevant links and let us know if news is under embargo. Note that submissions received after the close of business on Thursday may not be included in Bonus Features until the following week.

Happy day after the Fourth of July! Give yourself 15 bonus points if you remembered that today is, in fact, Sunday.

< + > Weekly Roundup – July 4, 2026

Welcome to our Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup. Each week, we’ll be providing a look back at the articles we posted and why they’re important to the healthcare IT community. We hope this gives you a chance to catch up on anything you may have missed during the week.

Relieving the Burden of Release of Information Requests. Kaylan Blice-Mullins at Sherpas Healthcare Solutions and Brian Sitongia at Wills Eye Hospital joined John Lynn to talk about outsourcing records retrieval and cutting response times from hours to minutes. Read more…

The Hidden Link Between Legacy Data and Patient Safety. Justin Campbell at RLDatix chatted with Colin Hung about technical debt’s role in increasing burnout, because staff need to hunt for necessary information, and bridging gaps between incident reports and EHRs with AI’s help. Read more…

Reducing Hold Times and Staff Burnout With AI Call Automation. Tracy Causey, CEO of Virginia’s Capital Area Health Network, sat down with John to discuss using healow Genie to handle 80% of all inbound patient calls and connect patients to agents in less than 90 seconds if necessary. Read more…

Optimizing End-to-End Revenue Cycle Workflows with Health IT Solutions and AI.  Hear from a variety of experts on things you can do to optimize your RCM (Revenue Cycle Management) by leveraging AI and other health IT solutions. Read more…

Life Sciences Today Podcast: Why Pediatrics Poses the Hardest Problem. Danny Lieberman caught up with Dr. Darren Klugman at Alumni Ventures to address a difficult topic: Bringing value to pediatrics, where the market is structurally small and the patients are the most vulnerable. Read more…

CIO Podcast: An Inside Look at Being a CIO. Jeff Sturman at WittKieffer (and a former CIO) spoke to John about what today’s health systems are looking for in a CIO. They also debate an emerging concern: Are IT leadership teams getting too crowded? Read more…

Building Real-Time Medication Visibility Across the Enterprise. For many organizations, the hardest part of drug scarcity is that availability signal arrives too late or in the wrong place. Real-time visibility, exception-based workflows, and practical analytics can help bring order, said Kilee Yarosh at Omnicell. Read more…

Navigating EMR Implementation in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom’s Vision 2030 plan for healthcare envisions secure and integrated systems. Dr. Rohin Rameswarapu at InterSystems said overcoming these obstacles will require change management, infrastructure modernization, and staff training. Read more…

Less Charting, More Care: Ambient AI’s Promise for Rural Clinicians. Christopher Rogowski at Pivot Point Consulting laid out six keys to success for deploying ambient AI in a rural setting. They include governance, incident response, and effective change management. Read more…

The Real Problem With Healthcare Data? No One’s Connecting It. AI’s role in supporting care delivery is synthesizing fragmented data and surfacing what’s already knowable but not easily visible, according to Steve Brown at CureWise. Read more…

How to Migrate Healthcare Infrastructure Without Disruption. Kelly Goolsby at Nexcess outlined the benefits of mapping out what infrastructure is in place, and who owns it. This can reduce downtime, migration costs, and above all frustration with the process. Read more…

This Week’s Health IT Jobs for July 1, 2026: MarinHealth, just north of San Francisco, is looking for a CIO. Read more…

Bonus Features for June 28, 2026: Third-party failures disrupt operations at 85% of practices; nearly 60% of nurses say their tech training falls short. Read more…

Funding and M&A Activity:

• Health plan benefits management company DUOS acquired Linkwell Health, a member engagement platform.
• Withings acquired Biosency, which specializing in monitoring patients with respiratory insufficiency.
• Healthcare operations management company Sagility acquired CareSeed, which specializes in HEDIS quality reporting and regulatory analytics for health plans.
• Life sciences commercialization support company Model N acquired Kalderos, which provides visibility into 340B drug discount programs.
• Physician engagement platform H1 received a $40 million investment.
• Administrative workload automation company Lassie raised $35 million in Series A financing.
• Anxiety and OCD care platform InStride raised a $30 million Series C funding round.
• Frontier Health raised a £9.7 million funding round; the startup is using AI to automate administrative tasks for NHS.

Thanks for reading and be sure to check out our latest Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundups.

Happy Fourth of July! We’re celebrating by making a red, white, and blue gingerbread house, as one does.