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<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">Health Tech | Fierce Healthcare</span></td>
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<td><a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/sponsored/cost-center-command-center-how-health-systems-are-systematizing-innovation-support" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Cost Center to Command Center: How Health Systems Are Systematizing Innovation in Support Services</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 24th 2026, 13:44</div>
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<p><div class="col content" morss_own_score="5.926078028747433" morss_score="16.013882906796212">
<p>By Max Mosky, SVP Strategy & Innovation, <a href="https://www.compass-healthcare.com/">Compass Healthcare</a></p><p morss_own_score="7.0" morss_score="81.0">If you walk a hospital hallway in the morning, you’ll encounter the people who are making care possible: the environmental services professional turning a room with practiced precision, the food service worker delivering a patient’s first hot meal of the day, the biomedical technician running device checks to support clinical teams.<br></p><p>Each of these moments shapes something meaningful: a bed available sooner, a patient better nourished, a device ready when it needs to be. As health systems face growing operational pressure, the strategic relevance of support services is becoming a clearer focus. <br></p><p>Health systems today are managing simultaneous headwinds, such as higher patient acuity, persistent workforce shortages, rising costs, tightening margins, and rapid technological advancement.<br></p><p>But it also means more is possible. That is the shift. The organizations pulling ahead are not just adopting innovation, they are systematizing it. <br></p><p>In that environment, every function touching the patient experience must carry more weight. Support services can no longer be evaluated solely on siloed KPIs or whether they stay within budget. That’s expected. The real question is whether they are actively contributing to outcomes, throughput, safety, and the kind of patient experience that builds loyalty in an increasingly competitive market. <br><br><strong>How AI, Technology and Innovation Can Change the Equation</strong><br></p><p>The operational intelligence now available to support services teams is transformative. What does this transformation feel like? It’s predictive analytics that anticipate discharge patterns and pre-position environmental and transport resources before the surge arrives. It’s AI tools that analyze patient feedback and help apply proven solutions in similar settings. It’s menu and retail platforms that evolve based on what patients actually order, how they respond, and where waste and complexity are creeping into the operation. It’s equipment lifecycle platforms that can analyze real-world utilization and failure patterns to extend asset life and surface capital planning insights that finance and operations can act on together. <br></p><p>But technology alone won’t deliver this. Technology is the foundation. Data is how those systems learn. AI is how that intelligence becomes scalable. The organizations extracting the most value from these tools are doing more than just buying platforms; they’re investing in partners who combine analytical capability with institutional fluency to translate insight into action. <br></p><p>They are using it to continuously and relentlessly refine the operating model. Every room cleaned, every meal delivered, every task assigned, every delay avoided creates signal. The question is whether that signal is trapped in reports or translated into action. In high-performing systems, data is used prescriptively – to rebalance workloads, identify friction points, improve service recovery, refine menus, and help leaders make faster, more confident decisions.<br></p><p>And where AI becomes especially powerful is in scaling that intelligence across the enterprise. It reduces dependency on collective team knowledge, increases consistency, and gives frontline teams and leaders faster access to trusted answers in the moments that matter. It helps make systems more durable, especially in environments where turnover, variation, and complexity can otherwise erode performance over time. That is when innovation stops being episodic and starts becoming operational.<br><br><strong>The System Advantage</strong><br></p><p>When Compass Healthcare sectors operate inside a health system under shared governance – as they do for many major systems across the country – performance gains go well beyond efficiency. A unified analytics layer pulls environmental services turnaround data, meal quality scores, patient experience feedback, and labor metrics into a single view. Escalation paths are clear. Targets align. It’s system design. <br></p><p>Environmental services departments operating within this coordinated model have demonstrated room turnaround improvements of at least 14% compared to self-operated peers. These are real and measurable gains that translate directly into earlier admissions and improved capacity. On the food and nutrition side, menu engineering informed by live performance data reduces waste and remake rates while moving patient satisfaction scores in in very tangible ways.<br></p><p>Health system leaders need a partner who understands the complexity inside their walls, anticipates emerging challenges, and accepts shared accountability for outcomes. That distinction matters more now than ever. A vendor manages a service line. A true partner solves problems that you don’t even know about yet. <br><br><strong>The Imperative</strong><br></p><p>If support services at your organization are still evaluated primarily as a cost management exercise, it’s worth asking harder questions. Are the partners operating inside your walls contributing to your brand experience or simply executing to spec? Is your operational data functioning as an integrated intelligence layer across functions, or siloed inside separate vendor portals? Are the people doing this meaningful work every day genuinely embedded in your mission, or treated like outsiders? <br></p><p>The health systems that will lead in the years ahead won’t be distinguished by clinical technology alone. They’ll be differentiated and drive customer preference by how intelligently every layer of their operation works together, including the layers that don’t appear on a clinical dashboard. And the organizations that pull ahead will be the ones that do more than innovate. They will be the ones that build systems that let innovation scale.<br></p><p>That’s a competitive advantage hiding in plain sight.</p><hr><p><em>Max Mosky is SVP of Strategy & Innovation at </em><a href="https://www.compass-healthcare.com/"><em>Compass Healthcare</em></a><em>, a leading provider of support services unifying the specialized expertise of Morrison Healthcare, Crothall Healthcare, Intelas, TouchPoint Support Services, and Unidine Healthcare. </em></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payers/look-how-optum-rx-using-ai-address-pharmacy-fraud-waste-and-abuse" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">How Optum is using AI to address pharmacy fraud, waste and abuse</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 24th 2026, 13:44</div>
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<p><div class="col content" morss_own_score="5.669291338582677" morss_score="54.423677303494955">
<p>Optum Rx is leaning on artificial intelligence as it looks to address costly fraud, waste and abuse in the pharmacy space.</p>
<p>The company is deploying real-time AI analytics that identify potential irregularities for auditors, who can then follow up with a pharmacist to address the issue. This process has historically been done manually, <a href="https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/newsroom/posts/2026/2026-3-05-using-ai-to-lower-costs-reduce-pharmacy-errors-and-protect-patients.html#footnote">Optum said</a>, and leaning on AI allows for quicker identification of risks and frees up auditors to focus on issues of the highest concern.</p>
<p>Mandy Rhubin, senior director of pharmacy network audit at Optum Rx, told Fierce Healthcare that fraud, waste and abuse (FWA) is on the rise across the healthcare system, and, given that costs are increasing across the board, there are plenty of opportunities for savings as well as to improve patient safety.</p>
<p>Optum notes a 2022 study that estimates pharmacy FWA costs the healthcare system $3.5 billion each year and can lead to issues like unnecessary refills or duplicate prescriptions.</p>
<p>"The traditional methods of identifying pharmacy FWA can be manual and time-consuming," Rhubin said. "And FWA is not stagnant. It continues to evolve, and we've got to stay on top of those issues now."</p>
<p>She said incorporating AI into the process allows for greater precision and accuracy and makes it easier for audit teams to stay ahead of the curve in terms of fraudulent behaviors. While something like a duplicate prescription can be accidental, intentional fraudulent actions include overbilling, billing for branded products when generics are dispensed or forged prescriptions.</p>
<p>Examples of the program in practice include a scenario in which Optum's AI identified that a patient was at risk for a double dose of their medication. The auditor was able to then quickly contact the pharmacist, who corrected the prescription and averted a potential adverse event for the patient.</p>
<p>In a second case study, Optum's platform flagged that a pharmacist had ordered an unusual quantity of a drug—more than 30 cases of a drug that was not in need. Once they were contacted, the pharmacist canceled the order, reducing unnecessary spend and inventory.</p>
<p>Rhubin added that the audit team has seen a 35% reduction in pharmacy audits that generated no FWA findings.</p>
<p>"Really, that helps the pharmacies, because it's reducing disruption and abrasion to pharmacies in our network," she said. "That way they can spend more time on their day-to-day activities and really focus on patient care."</p>
<p>Optum said these audits recover an average of $2 million for clients that deploy advanced pharmacy services. In the announcement, an Optum Rx client said that while the program is effective at identifying FWA, it "does not overwhelm the good actors."</p>
<p>The program is one of more than 1,000 AI solutions currently deployed across UnitedHealth Group. Rhubin said the team is focused on governance, and each final outcome is a decision made by a human.</p>
<p>"This is part of a broader commitment to apply AI, really, in responsible ways to improve the healthcare experience for everyone," she said.</p>
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<td><a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/trump-admin-unveils-national-policy-framework-ai" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Trump admin unveils national policy framework for AI</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 24th 2026, 13:44</div>
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<p><div class="col content" morss_own_score="5.526813880126183" morss_score="58.33334068665299">
<p>The Trump administration on Friday unveiled legislative framework for a single national policy on artificial intelligence.</p>
<p>The aim is to create security and safety guardrails for the use of AI while also preventing states from enacting their own laws. The legislative framework is intended to be a blueprint for Congress to guide AI regulation.</p>
<p>The<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/president-donald-j-trump-unveils-national-ai-legislative-framework/"> framework</a> builds on an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in December that aims to challenge state laws on AI. The order did not contain any healthcare-specific provisions but rather aimed to constrain states from enacting or enforcing state AI laws, many of which also apply to the healthcare industry.</p>
<p>The Trump administration would like to see Congress "in the coming months" turn the framework into legislation the president can sign.</p>
<p>State lawmakers have pushed back on efforts to curtail state AI laws. In 2025, 38 states adopted or enacted measures related to AI, according to a National Conference of State Legislatures <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/artificial-intelligence-2025-legislation">database</a>. </p>
<p>In a letter to Congress in November, 280 state lawmakers voiced their opposition to legislation that would curtail state AI laws. "As AI evolves rapidly, state and local governments may be better positioned than Congress or federal agencies to respond in real time. Freezing state action now would stifle needed innovation in policy design at a moment when it is most needed," the lawmakers wrote.</p>
<p>"After years without comprehensive federal action on privacy and social media harms, a broad preemption of state and local AI laws until Congress acts would set back progress and undercut existing protections," the state lawmakers wrote in the letter.</p>
<p>The Trump administration, however, believes a national legislative framework can succeed only if it is applied uniformly across the U.S. "A patchwork of conflicting state laws would undermine American innovation and our ability to lead in the global AI race," the Trump administration wrote in an announcement about the federal AI legislative framework.</p>
<p>"The Federal government is uniquely positioned to set a consistent national policy that enables us to win the AI race and deliver its benefits to the American people, while effectively addressing the policy challenges that accompany this transformative technology," the Trump administration wrote.</p>
<p>The six-pronged outline tackles issues such as protecting children, enabling innovation and boosting AI development, laying the groundwork to develop AI data centers, respecting intellectual property rights, preventing censorship and protecting free speech, and developing an AI-ready workforce.</p>
<p>The framework did not specifically address the use of medical or healthcare AI but will likely have far-reaching impacts for the healthcare industry.</p>
<p>Tina Joros, chair of the EHR Association's AI workgroup, speaking on behalf of the EHR Association, said the national AI policy framework released by the White House is an "important and promising step toward urgently needed regulatory clarity."</p>
<p>"The EHR Association has consistently supported a federal approach to AI governance to prevent the rapidly emerging patchwork of conflicting state requirements that complicate compliance, increase provider burden and impede innovation. In addition to acting on this general policy framework, we urge Congress to include healthcare-specific AI governance requirements that differentiate between low- and high-risk use cases in any federal framework that is put forward," Joros wrote.</p>
<p>"We will continue collaborating with federal and state leaders to ensure that healthcare AI policy protects patient safety, fosters provider and patient confidence, supports clinical workflows, and enables responsible progress," Joros wrote.</p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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