Samwise Healthcare IT Newsletter
Sunday, June 28, 2026
One Medical legacy systems breached; ShinyHunters claims 8.8 TB stolen
ShinyHunters hackers breached legacy systems tied to One Medical’s former subsidiary Iora Health, accessing an archive untouched through three corporate transitions over five years. The threat group claims to have exfiltrated 8.8 TB of data during a June 8–11 access window, with a ransom deadline that passed June 22. Affected patients span clinics in Atlanta, Denver, Houston, Phoenix, Tucson, Seattle, and across Massachusetts and North Carolina. One Medical—now owned by Amazon—confirmed the breach involves inactive legacy infrastructure, not current systems. The incident underscores the lingering risk of orphaned data assets accumulated through M&A activity.
Sources: Healthcare IT News Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Health systems must shift AI investment from admin automation to clinical transformation
Health systems are investing in AI at two to three times the rate of other industries—but most of that spending targets administrative automation, not clinical transformation. That was the core message from a keynote by Dr. Michael Pfeffer of Stanford Healthcare and Dr. Eric Alper of UMass Memorial Health at the HIMSS AI in Healthcare Forum in Boston on June 25. The physicians warned that without a strategic pivot toward care redesign, AI will widen the digital divide between well-resourced academic medical centers and community hospitals. Edge computing was proposed as one path to cost-efficient AI deployment at scale.
Sources: Healthcare IT News Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Rhode Island passes ambient AI scribe opt-out law
Rhode Island is set to become one of the first states requiring healthcare providers to give patients an opt-out right for ambient AI scribe technology. The bill, sponsored by Senator Lauria and Representative Tanzi, passed June 11 and awaits Governor Dan McKee’s signature. The legislation responds to growing patient concerns about AI-powered clinical recording tools—tools that have expanded rapidly across health systems to reduce clinician documentation burden. A Verasight and University of Michigan survey of 3,000 adults found 54% preferred to control when clinical AI is used in their care. Industry observers expect other states to follow.
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Telehealth volumes up 79% since 2019, but health systems still losing money on virtual care
Telehealth visit volumes have climbed 79% since January 2019, and remote patient monitoring usage has surged nearly 4,000%—yet most health systems are still losing money on digital care services. A new Strata Decision Technology analysis finds operating margins for virtual care programs remained negative across every payer category throughout 2025, with overall health system operating margins sitting at just 0.2% in April. Drug cost inflation, up 8.9% year-over-year, compounds the squeeze. For healthcare IT leaders, the data poses a strategic challenge: how to sustain and scale digital health infrastructure when the business case remains financially fragile.
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AI-powered EHR tools cut clicks, speed payments, and reduce claim errors at Florida neurology group
Florida’s largest private neurology practice is realizing measurable returns from AI embedded in its existing EHR workflows. First Choice Neurology—100-plus providers across 60 locations, serving 1,600 patients daily—deployed eClinicalWorks’ Document AI Insights Assistant, a digital payment platform, and a Clinical Rules Engine. The documentation AI reduced per-task workflow complexity by nine clicks. Digital payments cut accounts receivable from 27 to 24 days, generating $8,000–$10,000 in monthly savings. The rules engine validates claims against 1,400-plus payer-specific requirements before submission. New Doximity data shows neurologists now lead all physician specialties in AI adoption at 64%.
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Owensboro Health deploys OR supply capture AI, achieving 24% gross revenue increase
Owensboro Health in Kentucky is using AI to solve a persistent OR revenue problem: accurately capturing and billing for surgical supplies used during procedures. Deployed across more than 13,000 surgical cases, the AssistIQ supply capture platform achieves 98–99% accuracy, yielding a 24% increase in gross revenue and 12% increase in net revenue from surgical services. Inventory depletion errors dropped 90%. For OR administrators and health system CFOs, the results illustrate AI’s power in the revenue integrity space—an area where manual processes have long led to significant undercapture of billable items and lost margin.
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Patient portal messages in Epic up 153% since 2020, phone calls down 6%, JAMA study finds
Patient portal messages sent through Epic increased 153% between 2020 and 2025, according to a large-scale analysis published in JAMA by researchers at NYU Langone Health and NYU Grossman School of Medicine. The dataset spans 140 million patient records across 2,067 hospitals and 47,100 clinics, capturing more than 8 billion interactions. Of Epic’s 42 million active portal users, 12.6 million sent at least one message in Q1 2025 alone. Traditional phone calls to providers fell 6% over the same period. The findings signal a fundamental shift in patient-provider communication with significant implications for clinician workload and EHR workflow design.
Sources: Healthcare IT News Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
18% of college students use AI for mental health support, with heaviest symptom burden leading adoption
Eighteen percent of college students use AI tools for mental health support, according to a Mass General Brigham study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders—and those with the heaviest symptom burden are twice as likely to use AI as their peers. Students with moderate-to-severe depression, severe anxiety, or suicidality appear drawn to AI’s anonymity, availability, and zero cost over campus counseling. Asian students showed roughly double the odds of AI use compared to other groups. Lead researcher Dr. Cindy Liu called on developers, health systems, and universities to embed crisis detection and professional referral pathways into AI mental health platforms.
Sources: Healthcare IT News Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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