Samwise Healthcare IT Newsletter
Tuesday, June 23, 2026
19 State AGs File to Block DOJ Subpoenas for Minors' Medical Records
California Attorney General Rob Bonta and attorneys general from 18 additional states filed in federal court to block the Department of Justice from demanding minors' medical records from healthcare providers. The DOJ served Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford with a federal grand jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas, seeking information related to gender-affirming care provided to patients younger than 18 between 2020 and 2026. NYU Langone Hospitals also received a similar subpoena. The multistate coalition asked the court for a temporary restraining order barring the DOJ from obtaining the patient records while litigation proceeds.
Sources: Healthcare IT News
Anubis Ransomware Gang Claims 2TB Data Theft From Signature Healthcare
Ransomware-as-a-service group Anubis has claimed responsibility for stealing two terabytes of sensitive patient data from Signature Healthcare in Brockton, Massachusetts, where a cybersecurity incident first disrupted operations on April 6, 2026. Unlike traditional ransomware attacks, Anubis says it did not encrypt the health system's computer systems, focusing instead on data exfiltration to maximize disruption. Signature Healthcare continued diverting ambulances and operating on downtime procedures, with chemotherapy treatments previously canceled before partially resuming. Requests for patient medical record copies and new prescription orders remained unavailable. Patient surgeries and inpatient emergency services continued as scheduled while the incident response proceeded.
Sources: GovInfoSecurity
Houston Methodist Achieves 85% Clinician Adoption in Enterprise Ambient AI Rollout
Houston Methodist has scaled its ambient AI documentation platform enterprise-wide, reporting utilization exceeding 85 percent across encounters. The health system deployed Ambience Healthcare's platform across ambulatory, emergency, and inpatient settings after evaluating multiple ambient AI solutions and measuring clinician adoption and care delivery improvements. The enterprise rollout delivered a 40 percent reduction in documentation time, a 33 percent decrease in after-hours documentation time, a 27 percent increase in patient face time, and a 13 percent improvement in time to close encounters. The platform integrates directly into the EHR, allowing notes to flow into existing documentation workflows without requiring manual copy-paste or duplicate systems.
Sources: Healthcare IT News
HHS Proposes to Eliminate 34 of 60 EHR Certification Requirements Under HTI-5
The Department of Health and Human Services' technology office proposed HTI-5, a rule that would eliminate 34 of 60 existing certification requirements for electronic health records and revise seven others, altering nearly 70 percent of the current health IT certification framework. Among the most significant changes, the proposal would remove requirements for clinical decision support algorithm disclosures, which currently require vendors to publish model cards detailing AI source attributions. HHS said the goal is to establish a new foundation for FHIR API requirements to support AI-enabled interoperability solutions while reducing regulatory burden on health IT developers. The proposal represents the largest rollback of health IT certification criteria in years.
Sources: Fierce Healthcare
Salesforce Launches Six Healthcare AI Agents With HealthEx, Verily, and Viz.ai
Salesforce unveiled six new Agentforce Health AI agents built on integrations with healthcare data partners HealthEx, Verily, and Viz.ai, designed to automate administrative and clinical workflow tasks around the clock. The agent library covers closed-loop referral expediting, patient deductible and cost-sharing explanations, hospital bed logistics management, and disease trend analysis for public health agencies. HealthEx and Verily contribute a unified health record combining patient-controlled digital health wallets with wearable and clinical intelligence, while Viz.ai supplies AI-powered disease detection from medical imaging and EHRs. Referral triage, root cause analysis, and patient engagement campaign agents became generally available in June 2026.
Sources: Fierce Healthcare
Enterprise Debt Is Undermining Healthcare's AI Investments, Study Warns
New research from Genpact and HFS Research warns that accumulated enterprise debt is undermining healthcare's AI investments. The report identifies four forms of enterprise debt, covering data, technology, process, and trust, that collectively stifle AI value. Forty-two percent of AI and analytics initiatives are already failing across industries because of data debt alone, and healthcare carries higher enterprise debt than most peer sectors. Healthcare and life sciences face $1.2 trillion in recoverable revenue impact and $2.1 trillion in cost impact, driven by siloed patient and claims data and disconnected clinical systems. The researchers said AI readiness in healthcare is at a notable deficit.
Sources: Healthcare IT News
ONC Opens $2M LEAP Grant for Open-Source Clinical AI and Lab Interoperability
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT launched its 2026 Leading Edge Acceleration Projects grant cycle, making $2 million available for healthcare interoperability and AI innovation. This year's program prioritizes three areas: developing open-source clinical AI tools, eligible for up to $1 million; improving API-driven data exchange by enhancing the Lantern monitoring tool and addressing laboratory interoperability gaps; and creating laboratory data quality assessment tools, funded at up to $500,000. Public and private universities, Native American tribal governments, and nonprofits may apply, though for-profit organizations may only participate as consortium members. Letters of interest are due June 30, with applications due July 16.
Sources: Healthcare IT News
Mass General Brigham Releases BRIDGE Leaderboard to Rank LLMs on Clinical Text
Mass General Brigham researchers released BRIDGE, Benchmarking Large Language Models for Understanding Real-world Clinical Practice Text, an online leaderboard that evaluates more than 100 large language models on their ability to comprehend clinical patient-care text. The benchmark tests AI models across nine languages, assessing how well LLMs understand language routinely found in electronic health records and other clinical documentation. MGB designed BRIDGE to help clinicians select appropriate AI tools for their workflows and to guide AI developers toward improving model performance in real-world healthcare settings. The tool arrives ahead of HIMSS's AI in Healthcare Forum, scheduled for June 25 and 26 in Boston.
Sources: Healthcare IT News
Survey: 75% of U.S. Health Systems Now Use AI, Up From 59% in 2025
Three-quarters of U.S. health systems now use at least one artificial intelligence application, up from 59 percent in 2025, according to a survey published by Fierce Healthcare. Clinical note-taking leads adoption at 68 percent with 62 percent year-over-year growth, followed by AI-based clinical documentation improvement at 43 percent adoption with 59 percent growth. The surge reflects health systems moving past AI pilots toward tools delivering measurable value. AI companies are also expected to consolidate in 2026, with investment concentrating in a smaller number of scaled platforms as healthcare organizations shift from evaluating point tools to demanding comprehensive integrated solutions from their AI vendors.
Sources: Fierce Healthcare
Mobile Health Tops 42-State Rural Health Transformation Funding Plans
Forty-two states included mobile health initiatives in their Rural Health Transformation Program funding plans, making mobile health the most common technology investment across submissions to the Department of Health and Human Services. Rural communities typically carry higher rates of chronic conditions including diabetes, hypertension, and obesity, driving demand for mobile tools that extend monitoring and care delivery beyond clinic walls. States are pursuing regionally customized mobile health programs tied to telehealth expansion and remote patient monitoring, particularly for rural residents who face significant geographic barriers to in-person care. The trend signals growing consensus that mobile technology is essential infrastructure for healthcare access in underserved communities.
Sources: Healthcare IT News
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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