Artificial Intelligence

Trends

1) Northwestern Medicine became the first health system to integrate Tempus generative-AI clinical copilot into its EHR for point-of-care use aimed at optimizing decisions, reduce administrative burden, and improving patient outcomes. Given Tempus' core strength, oncology the first focus, with expansion to other service lines expected. Early capabilities include:

• Rapid retrieval of relevant chart data

• Pre-visit summaries

• In-visit support (e.g., note drafting)

• Post-visit tasks such as documentation assistance

• Clinical-trial matching

2) Health system leaders continue to digest the implications of Epic's AI portfolio, Art (clinician), Penny (RCM), Emmie (patient) and a Cosmos-trained model suite. Together, these tools signal not just incremental upgrades, but a fundamental reshaping of workflows across care, finance, and engagement. Vendor briefings this week are less about “if” and more about “when” and “how fast” these capabilities will hit production.

3) Hospitals must prepare to implement model risk management practices and maintain human-in-the-loop oversight for any AI used in clinical or administrative workflows. This aligns with CMS' recent emphasis on anti-fraud AI initiatives, which highlight explainability, transparency, and auditability. While not yet a binding requirement, hospitals should anticipate these principles shaping future CMS policy.

Patient Experience

Trends

1) Epic's UGM recaps continue to frame MyChart Central and Emmie as a proactive outreach stack (SMS scheduling, bill-pay, reminders) versus legacy “static inbox” portals. The expectation is higher self-service completion rates (scheduling, payments) where nudges and SMS are enabled;

2) Contact-center deflection is emerging as a core performance KPI for hospitals, shifting the focus from vanity portal metrics (sign-ups and logins) to outcome-driven measures that directly capture digital ROI. Instead of tracking how many patients merely access the portal, executives are now monitoring the percentage of high-volume transactions that are successfully completed through self-service digital channels (portal, SMS, chatbots, AI assistants) without requiring a live call. These include metrics such as:

• Scheduling

• Bill pay

• Prescription refills

• Test result requests

Each deflected call reduces labor costs, shortens patient wait times, and frees contact-center staff to focus on complex or high-value interactions, making deflection rate a critical metric for both financial efficiency and patient experience. It will also put more emphasis on IT support for patients.

Health Tech Adoption

Trends

Ambient Clinical AI solutions that originally focused on ambient documentation continue to evolve. They are now layering reasoning and decision support features on top. These next generation tools act as "Chart copilots" inside the EHR. In addition to writing the note, they also

• Surfacing relevant labs, meds, or imaging from the record

• Suggesting diagnoses or order sets based on encounter context

• Linking to evidence or guidelines to support decision-making

• Drafting patient instructions or referral letters

EHR Optimization

Trends

Organizations are engaged with content hygiene projects. They are systematically trimming:

• Templates (many outdated, duplicative, or specialty-specific variants rarely used)

• Smart phrases / dot phrases (often bloated, encouraging copy-paste and note bloat)

• In-basket routing rules & notifications (excessive alerts, FYIs, and CCs that overwhelm providers).

IT Application Strategy

Trends

At UGM 2025, Epic positioned itself not just as an EHR vendor, but as a broad healthcare platform. This “all-in-one” approach is pushing CISOs, CTOs, and CIOs to rethink long-term application strategy. As a result:

• Health systems that once ran best-of-breed (Workday for HR, Oracle for finance, ServiceNow for ops) now face pressure to evaluate consolidation onto Epic’s platform to reduce integration complexity.

• Epic’s deeper partnerships with Microsoft Azure and the integration of Nuance tools mean leaders must align their cloud roadmaps with Epic’s trajectory or risk duplicative spend.

• Platform consolidation raises vendor concentration risk (more reliance on one vendor) even as it reduces integration costs.

RCM Modernization

Trends

Hospitals are exploring a new class of RCM-specific AI agents and copilots to reduce administrative burden and accelerate cash flow. Two major streams stand out - Epic's Penny and agentic automations for multi-payer portals.

Epic’s Penny (RCM Copilot) 

Epic has begun extending its AI footprint into revenue cycle operations with Penny, a copilot designed to automate some of the most resource-intensive functions in billing and reimbursement. Penny currently supports denials management by drafting appeals letters and aligning documentation with payer-specific rules, while also handling claims follow-up by retrieving status updates and surfacing exceptions for human review. Epic’s UGM 2025 briefings positioned Penny as a key piece of the company’s platform-first strategy.

Its roadmap includes:

• Autonomous coding powered by Art/Chart Copilot and CoMET foundation models

• Expanded denial prevention through proactive documentation alerts.

The strategic implication is significant — Penny could reduce hospitals’ reliance on third-party RCM vendors by consolidating revenue cycle functions directly into the Epic ecosystem.

Agentic Automations for Multi-Payer Portals

One of the most pressing inefficiencies in revenue cycle is the need for staff to spend hours logging into dozens of disparate payer portals to check eligibility, submit prior authorizations, verify claim status, or download remittance advice. Agentic AI automations are now addressing this pain point by mimicking human staff activity: bots log into payer sites, enter required information, retrieve updates, and feed results back into the RCM or EHR system. Northwell Health recently demonstrated the scale of impact, cutting prior authorization cycle time from two hours to just six seconds using this approach. The benefits are multi-fold — less

manual data entry, fewer repetitive logins, faster time-to-approval (which directly reduces inpatient length of stay and improves cash flow), and the creation of full audit trails that support compliance and payer negotiations. Together, these agentic tools are reshaping revenue cycle efficiency while unlocking significant financial margin improvements.

ERP and Workforce Planning

Trends

At UGM 2025, Epic signaled its Epic signaled ambitions in workforce and operations management, positioning its modules as potential alternatives to traditional ERP vendors. This can be interpreted as a direct challenge to incumbents like Oracle , Workday, and Infor, who have historically controlled the ERP and back-office domain.

Rural Hospitals

Trends

Rural hospital stability remains highly sensitive to federal policy decisions, as even small shifts in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement can significantly impact facilities already operating on razor-thin margins.

Analyses warn that reductions in programs such as disproportionate share (DSH) payments or changes to cost-based reimbursement could push hundreds of rural hospitals closer to closure, especially in regions with high Medicaid or uninsured populations.

To offset these pressures, many hospitals are pursuing Critical Access Hospital (CAH) or Rural Emergency Hospital (REH) conversions as stabilization strategies.

• CAH status provides cost-based reimbursement at 101% of Medicare reasonable costs, while REH designation eliminates inpatient services but secures a 5% outpatient payment boost plus a monthly facility payment.

U.S. Regulatory

Trends

Federal advisories warn hospitals are increasingly targeted by state-sponsored actors (Russia, China, North Korea) and sophisticated ransomware crews.

Attacks now combine double extortion, supply chain compromise, and rapid dwell times (2–5 days), leaving little margin for response.

CISOs are urged to expand tabletop exercises to simulate complex multi-vector attacks, tighten vendor access controls with zero-trust principles, and adopt financial risk quantification models to communicate cyber exposure at the board level.