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September 27, 2026

Takeaways from the most recent news in the technology and policies shaping healthcare.

Health IT

St. Luke's, UnitedHealthcare Automate 88% of Claims via Epic

By Healthcare Technology News ·

St. Luke's University Health Network in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and UnitedHealthcare have automated claim status updates for 88% of the claims exchanged between them, using Epic's Payer Platform, according to Epic's newly released 2026-2027 Almanac reported by Becker's Hospital Review. The two organizations turned on Epic's Claim Status feature, giving St. Luke's staff real-time visibility into where claims stand instead of calling payers or logging into separate portals.

The move reflects a broader push to connect providers and insurers directly inside the electronic health record. Epic's Payer Platform lets health systems and health plans share data, verify coverage, and exchange claim and prior authorization information without manual intervention. UnitedHealthcare, the country's largest insurer, is a frequent participant in these integrations.

In practice, automation like this reduces staff time spent chasing claim statuses, speeds up reimbursement, and cuts administrative friction between providers and payers. As more health systems adopt shared payer connections, the manual back-and-forth that slows revenue cycles could shrink significantly.

Sources

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Health IT

Pointcore Launches Perception to Turn Hospital Data Into Action

Pointcore's Perception platform aggregates hospital operational data and uses AI modeling to help leaders make faster, better-informed operational decisions.

Why it matters: Hospitals sit on vast operational data but rarely turn it into action, and tools that close that gap could reshape how systems manage cost and capacity.

Health IT

Tennr Hires CRO John Capaldi to Scale Sales Push

Patient orchestration platform Tennr hired John Capaldi as CRO and two enterprise sales executives to scale its go-to-market organization.

Why it matters: The hires show a well-funded health-tech startup pivoting to aggressive enterprise sales, a sign of maturing competition in referral and intake automation.

Health IT

AI Turns Messy Clinical Data Into Research-Ready Variables

AI and natural language processing are being deployed to convert fragmented, unstructured clinical data into structured, research-ready variables, easing a core bottleneck in clinical research.

Why it matters: Faster, cleaner data extraction can shorten trial timelines and unlock real-world evidence from records healthcare organizations already hold.