Virtual care, remote monitoring, and patient engagement, covered for the teams building the next generation of connected health experiences.
12 stories in Digital Health
Capital is concentrating into a few AI-native platforms while M&A stays flat and the IPO window stays shut, leaving health systems exposed to mid-contract failure in scheduling, monitoring and virtual care.
Automated intake is scaling into enterprise virtual front doors faster than the governance, liability and reimbursement frameworks around it, leaving health systems holding standard-of-care exposure they did not fully price.
CMS has lowered the time thresholds for billing RPM while moving to restrict third-party monitoring arrangements, turning what looks like a coding update into a staffing and procurement decision.
A new national coalition is pushing federal legislation on cross-state care just as health systems and payers scale centralized virtual operations that cannot legally extend past state lines.
CMS wants new BB and BC modifiers on virtual visits, turning every platform-delivered encounter into traceable claims data that auditors, compliance teams and revenue cycle leaders will have to defend.
Late-2026 digital health capital is moving toward the plumbing layer of care delivery, and that shift changes how CIOs, CFOs and CMOs evaluate telehealth contracts, concentration risk and switching costs.
Five years of federal certainty gives health systems room to build owned virtual care infrastructure, just as CMS signals it will stop paying for remote monitoring delivered by third-party vendors.
Congress extended Medicare telehealth payment through 2027, but DEA's authority to prescribe controlled substances without a prior in-person exam still expires Dec. 31, 2026.
Sword Health's all-cash deal for Headspace pushes point solutions toward multi-condition platforms, forcing benefits, payer and health system leaders to reopen assignment clauses, outcome guarantees and pricing before renewal season.
Medicare's virtual care authority has lapsed and been patched at least three times in under a year, turning statutory whiplash into a permanent line item for staffing, claims and revenue cycle.
Teladoc's move to tie payment to results signals that virtual care buyers will soon need baseline data, attribution rules and downside modeling before they sign another telehealth renewal.
The CY 2027 Medicare physician fee schedule proposal would end payment for outsourced RPM, lower device reimbursement and consolidate codes, forcing health systems into a fast build-versus-buy decision.
