< + > Switchboard Health Acquires Livara Health to Integrate Value-Based Musculoskeletal Care

Acquisition Brings Livara’s Virtual MSK Care Model Onto Switchboard’s Specialty Care Platform; Closes $5M+ Round of Funding

Switchboard Health, creators of a digital health platform connecting patients with high-value specialty care, today announced the acquisition of Livara Health, a leader in virtual orthopedics and musculoskeletal (MSK) management. The acquisition combines Switchboard’s referral management and care navigation platform with Livara’s proven MSK care model for health plans and risk-bearing providers. To fuel future growth, the company also closed a $5M round of funding.

Founded by Dr. Kamshad Raiszadeh, Livara Health delivers a virtual-first, value-based MSK care model that combines care planning, virtual care delivery, and care navigation. Through its multidisciplinary approach featuring physicians, PTs, and psychosocial providers, Livara cares for a broad set of care needs, including the most complex and expensive patients. Livara’s results are independently validated: a 2024 Validation Institute review found that participants in Livara’s program achieved a 43% reduction in musculoskeletal spend, driven largely by reduced surgical utilization.

Through this acquisition, Switchboard Health will embed Livara’s virtual MSK program in its automation platform for referral management and care navigation. The combination will enable Switchboard’s provider and health plan clients to seamlessly enroll patients in Livara Health. For nearly 4 years, Switchboard has connected people to specialty care; now it will also deliver care.

“The Livara care model, technology, and team members start an exciting new chapter in our work to transform specialty care,” said Derek Baird, Co-Founder and CEO at Switchboard Health. “Now a primary care provider, right within her EHR, can refer qualified patients to our Livara MSK providers for convenient, evidence-based care.”

“Our mission is to transform patients’ and providers’ experiences with MSK care, delivering convenient, effective, virtual support to patients,” said Rob Cohen, CEO at Livara Health. “We’re excited to see Switchboard integrate Livara Health into its referral and care navigation workflows to scale the delivery of high-value MSK care.”

In conjunction with the acquisition, Switchboard closed an oversubscribed round of more than $5M in equity financing, drawing participation from existing Livara and Switchboard investors as well as new backers. New and returning participants include First Trust Capital Partners, LLC, Route 66 Ventures, A1 Health Ventures, Allumia Ventures, and Martin Ventures.

“We’re grateful to our new and current investors for funding our expansion into care delivery and the next phase of growth,” said Baird. “The number of patients coming through the Switchboard is up 500% over the past 9 months. We see even faster growth ahead of us.”

About Switchboard Health

Switchboard Health helps providers, health plans, and employers deliver high-value specialty care services. Our software platform and national specialty care network deliver improved access, reduced costs, and much-needed support to patients seeking care. For more information, visit switchboardhealth.com.

About Livara Health

Livara Health (formerly SpineZone) is a value-based MSK management solution for providers, health plans, and employers. By combining care planning, virtual-first care delivery, and care navigation, Livara has delivered exceptional patient outcomes for nearly two decades. Livara offers flexible payment arrangements, including assuming total cost of MSK care. More information can be found at livarahealth.com.

Originally announced August 25th, 2026

< + > Inside Epic’s Push to Help Customers Build Their Own AI Agents Using Agent Factory

Epic Agent Factory, a tool for Epic users to build their own AI agents, was announced this past January. Now, according to Derek De Young, Software Developer at Epic, the tool is moving into a new stage where Epic will quickly put it into the hands of their customers.

Agent Factory provides a platform to leverage 129 of the AI features in Epic. De Young describes three stages in its use. First, he expects organizations to shape existing AI features to the organization’s policies, guidelines, data, and workflows. Next, they will build new agentic features for revenue cycle management, clinical decision making, patient engagement, etc. In the future, Epic will expand the scope of Agent Factory to use external connectors and run on partner platforms outside Epic, including Care Everywhere.

At first, the developers who are expected to use Agent Factory will probably be senior analysts who best understand its potential, have a thorough understanding of what Epic already does, and where it could be expanded. Eventually, users might include clinicians and even back office workers. A conversational interface might be developed, and AI might be used to rewrite workflows. They plan to interact with the Medicaid submissions portal and other government sites.

Autonomy will differ for different applications of AI. Certainly, for the foreseeable future, any clinical decisions will be approved by a doctor or nurse. But some organizations are considering fully autonomous agents for some less critical functions such as routine billing. The AI agent itself tends to be able to rate its own confidence in its conclusions.

Because agents monitor their responses to every prompt, the tool is expected to improve continuously. Users can add their own evaluations.

A recent “buildathon” invited groups who had innovative suggestions to work with Epic developers. One of these, for instance, evaluates measles outbreaks and uses CDC guidelines to do outreach for vaccinations. Another application speeds up transfers to community hospitals. The agent makes sure that the important questions are asked, such as whether the patient is stable enough for the move and whether the community hospital has the necessary equipment. Successful agents can be added to a community library so they can be shared with other Epic customers.

Because Agent Factory is hosted in Nebula, Epic’s managed cloud, Epic can add 50 to 60 enhancements per week. Customers can benefit from those enhancements without an upgrade because Agent Factory takes place in Epic’s cloud.

Watch our interview with Derek De Young from Epic to learn more about Epic Agent Factory.

Learn more about Epic: https://www.epic.com/

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< + > Scaling the Platform Custom-Built for the Biggest Challenges in Healthcare

A Note from Toyin Ajayi, Co-Founder and CEO at Cityblock Health

The last few years have been brutal for value-based care. Some of the most well-intentioned companies in this space have sold off assets, wound down, or quietly retreated from the highest-need patients they were built to serve. Amidst this, we have a different story to share: today, Cityblock is announcing that we have signed a definitive agreement to acquire Homeward Health in an all-stock transaction, alongside a $116 million Series E led by General Catalyst. We’re doing this from a position of real momentum: we now serve almost 200,000 members across the country, and our annualized revenue is $2.2 billion—up 77% year-over-year, and more than 4x what it was at our last fundraise in 2021. We are positioned to be the leading outcomes-based provider platform serving government programs: caring for populations who are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or both—and in particular those with the most complex and difficult-to-manage needs. That’s the position we’ve spent almost a decade building toward, and we certainly don’t intend to slow down now.

Under Dr. Jenny Schneider and Amar Kendale, Homeward built something significant: a rural-first Medicare Advantage model that has deep ties with plans like Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, nearly 50,000 members, and rural care expertise few competitors match. Like Cityblock, Homeward went after a space with the biggest challenges in our health system at a time when the stakes couldn’t be higher, where funding challenges and rural provider access shortages have resulted in a desperate need for care, particularly among the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations. And they did the work of figuring out how to engage populations in relationships tailored to their needs and capable of improving access, cost, and outcomes. Homeward has built a company that, when combined with Cityblock’s deep experience serving urban Medicaid and dual-eligible populations, means we now have the scale and capability to reach deeper to serve the nation’s 120 million people receiving government-funded healthcare.

The timing couldn’t be more critical. Federal Medicaid funding is being cut significantly over the next decade, reimbursement rates for Medicare Advantage are tightening, and healthcare costs are rising faster than the system is built to absorb. That’s real pressure on exactly the members both Cityblock and Homeward have spent almost a decade learning how to serve in trusted, longitudinal relationships. We think the answer to funding pressures in government programs isn’t to retreat from them—it’s to get radically better and more efficient at delivering outcomes for the people who depend on taxpayer-funded healthcare.

That’s exactly why we’re going to serve more Medicare Advantage members alongside continuing to serve individuals who are dual-eligible and those who receive Medicaid. We believe the same AI-native, outcomes-first model that has enabled us to win in Medicaid is exactly what rural Medicare Advantage and dual-eligible populations need too. These aren’t three separate bets. They’re one bet: that scaling provider capability, which improves outcomes, is the only way to make government-funded healthcare sustainable for the people who need it most, at a moment when access and affordability are getting harder.

Every healthcare company says it’s ‘AI-native’ now. Here’s what that actually looks like inside ours: CORE—our Care Orchestration and Resourcing Engine—the operating system underpinning our outcomes-based care platform. Instead of simply flagging a member as ‘high-risk,’ CORE uses our almost ten years of member data to predict which specific action will close a specific care gap for that specific member. It weighs that across our entire population at once, and turns the answer into a ranked worklist for care teams—why this member, why this action, why now.

And it’s working. Our predictions are right 62-87% of the time. CORE doesn’t operate alone. We are building and deploying a growing ecosystem of AI tools handling routine engagement and administrative work that have already freed up 44,599 hours of clinician time this year, including 42,148 calls handled by AI agents. This is the resource-matching vision in practice: routine work increasingly flows to AI, while CORE directs human hours to the moments where judgment and relationships matter most.

Imagine you are a care team member reaching out to a high-need patient. In the past, you’d be working off a directional algorithm alerting you that the person might be at high risk. Now imagine having specific, AI-driven intelligence on that exact person—insights gleaned from their entire medical history, any calls they’ve had with their care team, missed gaps in care, and specialist visits. Insights that would otherwise take hours of chart review to piece together.

The proof is in the numbers: since our last fundraise in 2021, we’ve grown the business in ways that we’re truly proud of. We have increased revenue by 323%, improved corporate opex as a percent of revenue by 64%, scaled from five to 18 customers, improved EBITDA margins by 81%, and delivered positive operating margins in our markets. All of this while maintaining industry-leading net promoter scores, delivering meaningful improvements in quality and member retention, and hearing directly from our members about the life-changing impact of Cityblock’s care model. And we have attracted the best and brightest tech, clinical, and operational talent to drive this work. While the past five years have exposed many of the deep flaws in our traditional fee-for-service healthcare delivery system, we’ve been hard at work building proof points that demonstrate how a focused, AI-native, human-centered approach to care delivery can drive real results, at scale.

In this next chapter, we’re excited to continue on the trajectory we’ve established. To continue to be the company that shows, rather than tells. To continue to do the hard and essential work of delivering for the populations with the most complex health and social needs, producing results for payers, providers, patients, and taxpayers alike. We’ll take the experience from this first acquisition to do more: grow our platform, organically and inorganically, so that we can serve as many people as we can, wherever they may be.

We called our company Cityblock because a block signifies the unit of measurement in a community where people know who lives next door, where someone notices when a light’s been off too long, where folks know their neighbors and look out for one another. That idea holds just as true on a county road in rural Michigan as it does on a block in Brooklyn. What makes it a block isn’t the skyline—it’s the fact that someone is paying attention to the people who live there. That’s what Homeward has built for communities in rural counties, and it’s exactly what we mean when we say Cityblock.

Onwards!

Originally announced August 20th, 2026

< + > Why Healthcare Needs Coordinated Infrastructure, Not More Point Solutions

Cotiviti ties together providers and payers, including the top 25 US health plans, that collectively serve 300 million members in the United States. In this video, CEO Ric Sinclair describes how the “friction” between providers and payers can be resolved by leveraging smarter infrastructure like what Cotiviti provides.

Sinclair looks beyond technology and data, even beyond the use of AI, to talk about how an underlying platform can bring together all the expert insights and reduce the waste in health care. Ultimately, he wants to eliminate denials and appeals by “getting it right the first time” in billing. This requires more than the application of AI in “silos,” which he predicts are not sustainable. “Coordination” is a key concept he shares while talking about being a healthcare infrasrtucture company that creates value for its users.

He stresses that Cotiviti connects other solutions, rather than providing another point solution on top of the technology healthcare institutions already use. It aims to apply intelligence earlier in financial and clinical processes, embedding it “where decisions actually happen.” He envisions a future where, even if we can’t eliminate all waste, costs will be “flat or down.”

An interesting moment in our interview comes when Sinclair talks about the ongoing “convergence” of providers and payers. He claims that “payers will continue to move closer to care delivery while healthcare providers increasingly assume financial risk.” Another key idea Sinclair shares is “fairness,” which he applies to patients, providers, and payers alike.

Check out our interview with Ric Sinclair from Cotiviti to learn more about the unique ways Cotiviti is solving real problems by serving healthcare’s infrastructure needs.

Learn more about Cotiviti: https://www.cotiviti.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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Cotiviti is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene.

< + > This Week’s Health IT Jobs – September 2, 2026

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:

• Healthcare Integration Analyst – Origin Medical
• Clinical Engineering Cyber Specialist – Belle Sisters
• Patient Access Specialist – Emory Healthcare
• Healthcare Revenue Cycle Manager (RCM) – Thrive Therapy Center
• Clinical Data Manager I – Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center
• Mental Health Clinic Operations Manager – Health Synergy Clinical Research
• Senior Privacy Specialist – Hartford HealthCare
• Medical Device Cybersecurity Specialist – Premier Global Links LLC
• Clinical Trial Associate/Senior Clinical Trial Associate – BioSpace
• Health Information Management Associate – Regions Hospital
• ROI Medical Records Specialist (Remote) – Sharecare
• Health Information Specialist I (Hybrid, North Carolina Based) – Alliance Health
• VP, Omnicare, Chief Information and Digital Officer (CIDO) – CVS Health
• Healthcare Data Entry Coordinator – Alcanza Clinical Research
• Credentialing Specialist I – Boston Children’s Hospital
• Clinical Engineering Cyber Specialist – Tech Health Connect
• Health Information Analyst/HIM Operations – Hartford HealthCare
• IS Project Manager II – Digital Health – Cincinnati Children’s
• Director IT Project Management Office (PMO) – Powers Health
• CIO, Optum Care at Home – Optum

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.

< + > Anita Ghose Shares Real-World Tactics for Women in Health IT Leadership

Retaining female talent in healthcare IT requires more than basic networking events. It demands practical skills, global perspectives, and direct access to leaders who have survived large-scale transformations.

At HIC2026 in Sydney, Australia, I sat down with Anita Ghose, CEO at InventiveX and Program Lead and Facilitator – 2027 Women in Digital Health Leadership at Australasian Institute of Digital Health (AIDH), to discuss her work. We explored how this specialized program prepares women for the realities of digital health leadership and tackled the broader AI challenges facing the Australian healthcare market.

Core Insight: Practical Experience Over Theory. Effective leadership programs must bypass theoretical concepts and deliver actionable, real-world lessons from executives who have navigated actual digital health deployments.

Confronting the Data Head-On

The motivation behind building a dedicated leadership pipeline is grounded in stark workforce realities. Health systems cannot afford to lose experienced professionals mid-career. Ghose pointed directly to the numbers driving this initiative. “30% of women are represented in the tech workforce in Australia, and we know that by the age of 35, about 50% of them have actually left,” Ghose noted. “Now, there is a clear diversity issue here, but in addition to that, this is actually about the future of health. This is actually about the digital economy. This is actually about economic prosperity, productivity, workforces of the future.”

The Value of Real-World Evidence

Professional development often falls into the trap of being purely aspirational. Ghose noted how this specific program avoids that pitfall by focusing on immediate, practical application. “What they [other women in health IT programs] don’t have is the rich experiences of someone who’s tried and tested, that’s actually done the hard yards, where it has or hasn’t worked,” Ghose explained. In light of that, the program that she and AIDH have put together has emphasized real-world experience of women who have been through the gauntlet and emerged successful on the other side.

Focusing AI on Clinical Relief

Beyond leadership development, the Australian market is shifting its focus toward pragmatic technology applications. The priority is finding ways to reduce the cognitive load on frontline clinicians facing high-pressure environments. “Our workforces are under pressure in terms of our frontline clinicians. There’s cognitive load. There’s decision making that happens very fast in fast-paced environments with complexity,” Ghose observed. “How do we actually support our workforces through AI with tools and techniques and productivity opportunities that can actually make their lives easier?”

Questions Healthcare IT Leaders are Asking

Why is a global perspective necessary for local digital health leadership?
Understanding the global landscape helps leaders anticipate demand and supply trends within digital health. Incorporating international expertise allows local cohorts to learn from large-scale transformations and apply those insights directly to their day-to-day operations.

Where should health IT vendors focus their AI efforts in the Australian market?
Vendors should target solutions that address clinical workforce pressure and cognitive load. AI tools must deliver immediate productivity gains for frontline staff while providing intelligence that aids clinical decision-making and mitigates risk.

Learn more about InventiveX at https://www.linkedin.com/company/inventivexai/about/

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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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.

< + > Aligned Marketplace Raises $20 Million, Achieves Measurable Outcomes with Large Employers

A Third-Party Validated 12 Percent Reduction in Total Cost of Care Delivered in Year One for a Large Fortune 500 Company Proves the Independent Primary Care Model Works at Scale

Aligned Marketplace, the marketplace connecting self-insured employers to independent advanced and direct primary care, today announced an additional $20 million of investment with the Series A led by Venrock. The company has experienced tremendous growth and cost savings for its employer customers over the past 18 months, having achieved measurable outcomes with large Fortune 500 employers. The recent funding will help bring advanced primary care to more employers and Third Party Administrators (TPAs), improving member access and affordability while reducing employer spending. At the same time, the company is expanding its marketplace to include value-based specialty care.

Advanced primary care aligns everyone’s interests. Members get high-quality care at little or no cost, doctors stay independent as they grow, and employers improve member health while reducing downstream spend.

In a program launched on January 1, 2025, engaged members at a Fortune 500 company with a national footprint cost 12 percent less than a risk-matched national benchmark built by a third-party actuarial firm, a savings of $96 per member per month. Members at the same company who did not engage with an Aligned doctor came in at benchmark. 70 percent of engaged members were identified as high risk, and those members moved their care toward their Aligned doctor, averaging 4.7 visits with that doctor and 1.6 fewer visits elsewhere. More time with a primary care doctor showed up in preventative care, with engaged members roughly doubling their mammogram rate and nearly tripling their colonoscopy rate after their first visit. Members noticed the difference: 94 percent said they could get care when they needed it, and rated the experience a 9.2 out of 10.

“Employers continue to struggle with rising healthcare costs and poor access to primary care. Fortunately, better primary care lowers healthcare costs by making people healthier. Aligned Marketplace has built a national network of exceptional primary care providers who are super accessible to patients and deliver on the promise of making people healthier, which also lowers costs for employers and patients,” said Bob Kocher, Partner at Venrock.

More than 80 percent of physicians now work for hospital systems or large corporate entities that profit when care is delivered inside their facilities. Primary care, the first line of defense against hospital costs, has been absorbed into the same machine. Aligned is the alternative: a marketplace of independent advanced and direct primary care and specialty care providers, curated practice by practice, and fees tied to engagement and outcomes. With more than 3,000 in-person clinics across all 50 states, Aligned sits atop employers’ existing carrier or Third-Party Administrator, so there is no platform switch and no disruption to existing benefits.

“Our mission is to increase America’s healthy years. Unfortunately, the healthcare system was built to treat illness and generate volume, not to keep people healthy, control costs for the employer who pays the bills, or let independent doctors practice the way they want. We’ve proven that a different model works — one where keeping people healthy actually saves money,” said Patrick Nelli, Founder and CEO at Aligned Marketplace.

About Aligned Marketplace

Aligned is an advanced primary care marketplace that helps self-insured employers reduce healthcare costs. Aligned curates independent advanced primary care doctors who operate outside the traditional, volume-driven hospital system and outside traditional insurance networks, so until now, employers could not reach them at scale. When members need more than primary care, their doctor refers them to high-value downstream care, including specialists on Aligned Marketplace. Aligned connects members to the right care and measures performance against meaningful outcomes. Through a single contract that scales across all 50 states, employers gain access to the full marketplace, with Aligned’s fees tied to measurable performance. To learn more, visit alignedmarketplace.com.

Originally announced August 13th, 2026