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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/ai-and-machine-learning/ccs-deploys-enterprise-wide-agentic-ai-across-chronic-care-operations" 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;">CCS deploys enterprise-wide agentic AI for chronic care patients</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 28th 2026, 13:46</div>
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<p><div class="col content" morss_own_score="5.722054380664653" morss_score="83.06475463906258">
<p>While some healthcare companies are testing out agentic AI tools, CCS is betting big on the technology as it developed an enterprise-wide, multi-agent network across its chronic care operations.</p>
<p>The company, a provider of chronic care management and home-delivered medical supplies, has rolled out an agentic AI solution, dubbed CeeCee, that's designed to streamline the patient experience, improve medical supply workflows and boost operational efficiency, executives said.</p>
<p>CeeCee can autonomously resolve routine patient interactions, speed up access to chronic care supplies and support personalized patient experiences. </p>
<p>"We see great opportunity and big promise in using agentic AI at an enterprise scale, and we embarked on an on a program over the past 12 to 15 months where we looked at a variety of ways that we could deploy generative and agentic AI specifically into our operations, and specifically those things that were more labor-intensive," Richard Mackey, chief technology officer of CCS, told Fierce Healthcare, giving a first look at the new technology.</p>
<p>"We saw that there is an opportunity to modernize and upgrade our patient operations and be able to streamline the way that we serve patients and be able to provide them with an increased level of service, but be able to do that in a way that also drives efficiencies," Mackey said.</p>
<p>The new agentic AI platform builds on CCS' work in the past several years, including the launch of an <a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/ccs-unveils-prophesee-hyper-personalized-approach-chronic-care">AI-powered predictive analytics model </a>and intervention platform called PropheSee in June 2024. PropheSee is designed to improve continuous glucose monitor device adherence and outcomes for people living with diabetes. The predictive tech can accurately flag patients at risk of discontinuing CGM therapy within 90 days, according to the company.</p>
<p>The company touts that its AI capabilities are delivering tangible, results as its AI-enabled predictive analytics have generated more than <a href="https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/rk_sC5yXMgfpVrvPCxtwTkiCF-?domain=businesswire.com">$10 million in Medicare savings </a>by proactively addressing CGM nonadherence in thousands of Medicare patients with diabetes.</p>
<p>The company's agentic AI solution is projected to is projected to save more than 30% in annual operating costs, according to executives.</p>
<p>The agentic AI tech was designed to simplify the complex patient experience for chronic care patients. It's being deployed for high-volume patient interactions that sit between clinical visits but directly impact adherence. And, unlike many current AI models, CeeCee is trained on CCS’s own proprietary knowledge and data to deliver empathetic, personalized support.</p>
<p>Within CCS' call center operations, the AI agents now answer patient inbound calls and resolve routine requests and questions, or, when needed, transfer those individuals to a human agent, Mackey said.</p>
<p>"We're also using generative AI and agentic AI capabilities in the interaction between the human agent and the patient over the phone. We're enabling them to better serve the patient by providing them with the answers more quickly, helping to summarize information about the patient at the start of the call and then also at the conclusion of the call," he said.</p>
<p>When patient needs exceed CCS’s autonomous capabilities, the AI surfaces consolidated patient profiles, call history and clinical context for human agents, reducing the need to navigate across disconnected systems. This consolidation reduces average customer service call handle time by up to 20%, according to the company.</p>
<p>Mackey noted that CeeCee and CCS' broader agentic AI platform aren’t pilots or proof of concepts. "This is agentic AI that is comprehensive, at scale and at an enterprise level," he noted.</p>
<p>He added, "More than 90% of our inbound calls related to current customers are being managed now by this AI agent."</p>
<p>The CeeCee platform is projected to autonomously contain 25% of relevant incoming calls in the initial four months, while reducing call handling times across all interactions, resulting in improved patient experience while supporting the real-time needs of frontline teams. </p>
<p>CCS has taken an innovative approach to AI in healthcare, noted Bill Fera, M.D., GenAI Health and Life Sciences Lead at Deloitte, which collaborated with CCS on building the agentic AI tech platform.</p>
<p>"They have been platform-based in terms of building this capability that's extensible, so rather than turning on single agent functionality within an application, they're building a capability with this cross-application in mind. It's also multi-agent. A lot of organizations that we see, I think, because most people are deploying within specific applications, they tend to be single agent types of workflows. What CCS is endeavored upon is much more ambitious and much more future-leaning in terms of their multi-agent, cross-application platform play. Those are the differences that we're seeing that put them out in front of the pack," Fera told Fierce Healthcare.</p>
<p>CCS is also using agentic AI to tackle operational bottlenecks such as documentation gaps. The AI agents can autonomously identify and close documentation gaps that delay referrals or reorders for patients waiting for continuous glucose monitor or insulin pump supplies. By the end of 2026, the company expects this capability to automatically process 70% to 80% of the more than 100,000 monthly intake documents, accelerating order fulfillment and getting patients on therapy weeks sooner, executives said.</p>
<p>“CCS’s platform shows how AI can deliver tangible results at scale today. This is a new level of integration and patient-centric design that is rare, even amid rapid AI advancements happening today, especially in healthcare,” said Jean-Claude Saghbini, president at Lumeris Technology Solutions and technology advisor for CCS.</p>
<p>Future capabilities for the agentic AI platform include collections and payment balances and patient onboarding.</p>
<p>"We see that CeeCee is a platform that can help in interactions with patients, ultimately with payers and providers as well down the line and a variety of other opportunities," Mackey said.</p>
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<td><a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/regulatory/big-companies-position-themselves-payday-50b-federal-rural-health-fund" 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;">Big companies eye payday from $50B federal rural health fund</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 28th 2026, 13:46</div>
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<p><div class="col content" morss_own_score="5.370417193426043" morss_score="134.56828511134074">
<p>Tory Starr is worried about the people who get medical care at Open Door Community Health Centers along California’s North Coast.</p>
<p>“They’re the folks that work at restaurants. They’re the teacher’s aides,” said Starr, a registered nurse who became Open Door’s chief executive more than six years ago. Those patients, he said, are “really the heart and soul of rural America.”</p>
<p>He said if his remote health centers don’t get a share of the billions of dollars Congress earmarked to transform healthcare in rural America, patients may soon lose services. About 50% of Open Door’s 60,000 patients are on Medicaid, the joint state and federal insurance program that, together with the related Children’s Health Insurance Program, covers <a href="https://www.kff.org/interactive/medicaid-state-fact-sheets/">about 76 million people</a> with low incomes or disabilities.</p>
<p>When Congress approved the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer, it cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade. Now, Starr hopes the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, which was part of the same bill, will help keep his patients covered.</p>
<p>Yet, small community healthcare providers, such as Open Door, may find they are sharing the billions with an army of corporate giants before it reaches their patients.</p>
<p>Months after federal leaders announced that all 50 states won first-year awards,<a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/providers/rural-health-transformation-program-awards-announced-heres-whos-getting-most"> ranging from $147 million for New Jersey to $281 million for Texas</a>, state plans reveal that a heavy dose of prescribed spending will go to companies that can increase the use of electronic health records, strengthen cybersecurity, and improve state and health system technology platforms.</p>
<p>And at least four large-scale coalitions of companies are now pitching multipronged services to the states. Many of the companies already work with regional health systems and states through Medicaid contracting or mobile and telehealth operations.</p>
<p>How those services will help improve the healthcare of rural Americans at places such as Open Door remains an open question.</p>
<h3><strong>States stare down reporting deadlines</strong></h3>
<p>Federal regulators were “really interested in seeing digital health investments” when they crafted the five-year rural health program rules last year, said Maya Sandalow, an associate director at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. She co-authored a recent report on how the 50 states plan to invest in technology, including modernizing healthcare infrastructure and expanding virtual care options such as telehealth and remote patient monitoring.</p>
<p>“The rural health fund isn’t really designed to directly replace or offset the lost Medicaid funding,” Sandalow said, noting that the federal staffers in charge of the program <a href="https://www.cms.gov/files/document/provider-payments-fact-sheet.pdf">capped provider payments</a>—money that could help rural hospitals and clinics pay for patient care—at 15% of the total funding awarded to a state.</p>
<p>Federal regulators also established tight reporting deadlines, forcing states to move quickly.</p>
<p>States must file progress reports <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28059042-rht-program-reporting-and-rescoring-webinar-022526/#document/p9/a2811963">by the end of August</a> and obligate all first-year funding <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28059042-rht-program-reporting-and-rescoring-webinar-022526/#document/p12/a2811962">by Oct. 30</a>, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency overseeing the program. States could see their awards decreased or terminated at any time if they fail to follow federal requirements, according to the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28059045-cms-rht-26-001-final/#document/p60/a2811964">CMS notice of funding opportunity</a>.</p>
<p>As of early April, CMS had not approved or had only partially approved some state budgets, including those of Wyoming, Colorado, and Vermont, according to state officials. CMS spokesperson Catherine Howden, who declined to say which states still needed revised budgets approved, said the agency does not provide “state-by-state updates.”</p>
<p>In Alaska, the budget is approved but the state has not announced when it will release full grant proposals and awards, said Tricia Franklin, program coordinator for Alaska’s rural health transformation.</p>
<p>“Early summer was the target,” Franklin said. But the response from vendors and applicants has been "much greater than expected, so it may take us a little longer.”</p>
<p>Working with consulting companies is an established way for states to “quickly and effectively” meet federal deadlines and roll out grant money, said <a href="https://www.milbank.org/author/morgan-mcdonald/">Morgan McDonald</a>, national director for population health at the Milbank Memorial Fund, a nonprofit focused on state health policy work.</p>
<h3><strong>Upgrading technology, modernizing rural health</strong></h3>
<p>Science Applications International Corp., a Fortune 500 government contractor, pulled together the <a href="https://investors.saic.com/news-releases/news-release-details/saic-launches-alliance-accelerate-state-led-execution-50-billion">Alliance for Advancing Rural Healthcare</a>. SAIC does a variety of technology work such as cybersecurity and engineering support. The alliance also includes Walgreens and Mission Mobile Medical, which turns RVs into primary care clinics. A data analytics company, a telemedicine and software company, and a company that helps place medical graduates in health systems are also part of the coalition.</p>
<p>The SAIC alliance offers “an ecosystem” of companies that can coordinate the work states have promised, said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/suresh-soundararajan-a7925712/">Suresh Soundararajan</a>, SAIC’s Rural Health Transformation Program lead and a former chief information officer for the Virginia Department of Health. Each of the companies has representatives focused on the rural program, he said.</p>
<p>A lack of digital infrastructure—such as electronic health records at different clinics and hospitals that can talk to one another—has been a consistent barrier for rural medical care teams, said the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Sandalow.</p>
<p>“The funding hasn’t always been there in order for rural areas to create the infrastructure that’s needed to fully adopt remote patient monitoring, telehealth, artificial intelligence in ways that will really be supportive,” Sandalow said. “It takes things like updating infrastructure, changing workflows.”</p>
<p>Sandalow’s <a href="https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/advancing-technology-innovation-through-the-rural-health-transformation-program/">recent report</a> found that Maine and Utah are investing in cybersecurity; Indiana, Missouri, and New Mexico plan to modernize their electronic health records; Oklahoma plans to buy hardware and software, subsidize subscriptions, and give technical support to rural providers; and states such as Arizona and South Carolina will use funds to create telehealth hubs or buy remote patient monitoring equipment.</p>
<p>Federal regulators, when creating the rural program’s spending rules, also said no more than 5% of a state’s total funding awarded could be used to replace electronic medical records systems that already meet federal standards. Sandalow said that means states will focus on enhancements and upgrades to their current systems.</p>
<p>Gainwell Technologies, which operates the systems for dozens of state Medicaid programs, is spearheading <a href="https://www.gainwelltechnologies.com/resources/news/gainwell-expands-rural-health-transformation-collaborative-with-new-partners-advancing-a-connected-ecosystem/">another coalition</a>. Rushil Desai, a Gainwell senior vice president, said states’ detailed spending plans are “changing in real time.”</p>
<p>Maine’s Medicaid plan contracts with Gainwell, and the state’s initial application listed four contracts worth more than $16 million over five years for the company. The state confirmed it has received federal approval for only its first year of spending, which includes a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28051622-maine-25mar2026-som-rhtp-y1-budget-narrative/#document/p14/a2811659">$250,000 contract</a> to implement changes to the state’s Medicaid claims system.</p>
<p>James Lomastro, a senior-care advocate in rural Massachusetts with the nonprofit <a href="https://dignityalliancema.org/james-a-lomastro-ph-d/">Dignity Alliance</a>, said he worries that large vendors and health systems will get the state’s transformation dollars.</p>
<p>Clinics, home care agencies, and nursing homes that “actually provide day-to-day support in the community are mostly on the margins” of state discussions about how to spend the money, he said. A spokesperson for Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Health and Human Services, Olivia James, said state officials would “ensure that everyone has a seat at the table” with training, financial incentives, and direct investments.</p>
<p>Arizona’s rural fund budget, which is $167 million for the first year, allocates <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28035460-arizonasapprovedbudgetnarrative/#document/p56/a2811240">up to about $30 million</a> for medical diagnostic equipment and technology upgrades, including to electronic health records, specifically for rural healthcare facilities.</p>
<p>But it also <a href="https://crh.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/2026-02/2.260130_AZRHTP_RevisedProject_Narrative.pdf">prioritizes grants</a> for county public health departments, said Pima County Public Health Director Theresa Cullen. The approved budget includes up to $4 million for grants to support community health workers.</p>
<p>“In these rural communities, you need to be present,” Cullen said.</p>
<p>Alina Czekai, director of the CMS rural health transformation office, said her team plans to visit all 50 states. She spoke at the National Rural Health Association’s policy conference in Washington, D.C., in February and told the audience that her team wants “the money to go to rural communities, rural providers, rural patients.” The association’s members include rural hospitals and clinics, which are expected to suffer big losses under the Medicaid cuts.</p>
<p>In California, Open Door’s Starr said he provided input on his state’s initial application, which won $234 million in first-year funding, but he is not clear on what the next steps will be for getting money from the program.</p>
<p>For his patients, Starr said, money is needed for technology upgrades. After all, he said, updated electronic health systems could operate seamlessly and store the documentation needed to keep a patient enrolled in Medicaid.</p>
<p>Updated technology could be exactly what Open Door and other area clinics need to “help keep people covered,” Starr said.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>KFF Health News senior correspondent Phil Galewitz and rural health care correspondent Arielle Zionts contributed to this report.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://kffhealthnews.org/about-us"><em>KFF Health News</em></a><em> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about </em><a href="https://www.kff.org/about-us"><em>KFF</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/health-tech/iks-health-acquire-trubridge-557m-deal" 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;">IKS Health to acquire TruBridge for $557M</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 28th 2026, 13:46</div>
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<p><div class="col content" morss_own_score="4.898263027295286" morss_score="34.43031430934657">
<p>Inventurus Knowledge Solutions (IKS) Health <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260423560977/en/IKS-Health-Announces-Agreement-to-Acquire-TruBridge-to-Strengthen-Access-to-Rural-and-Community-Based-Healthcare">entered into a definitive agreement</a> to acquire TruBridge to expand health tech access to rural and community hospitals.</p>
<p>IKS Health, the U.S. subsidiary of IKS Limited, will buy TruBridge for approximately $557 million in a deal initially funded by an approximate $600 million loan over the next five years, according to an IKS SEBI disclosure presentation (<a href="https://ikshealth.com/ir/sebi-disclosures/20260423-conference-call-presentation.pdf">PDF</a>). Financing was secured through Citibank, JPMorganChase and Deutsche Bank. </p>
<p>The deal will combine IKS Health’s care enablement capabilities with TruBridge’s revenue cycle management and electronic health records (EHRs) solutions for rural and community hospitals. </p>
<p>IKS Health Founder and Global CEO Sachin Gupta said in a statement the acquisition is expanding IKS’ “proven, clinician-first experience to the vital rural and community hospital market” while also supporting the organization’s “long-term vision of building a comprehensive care ecosystem for all types of healthcare organizations.”</p>
<p>“By pairing TruBridge’s essential system of record with our AI-driven system of action, we are moving beyond simply recording data to actively solving the complex operational challenges facing providers today,” Gupta said. “The combined entity will work toward ensuring community care teams have the same access to advanced technology and financial resilience, enabling them to deliver exceptional care close to home.” </p>
<p>The deal is expected to close during the third quarter of 2026 and is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory and shareholder approvals.</p>
<p>The combined organization is expected to support more than 2,000 healthcare organizations and more than 150,000 clinicians across the U.S., according to the announcement.</p>
<p>“I am excited for TruBridge and IKS Health to combine forces and expand the focus on strengthening rural and community healthcare,” said Chris Fowler, TruBridge president and CEO, in a statement. “IKS Health shares our passion to improve provider experiences and financial results, ultimately leading to healthier lives and positive patient outcomes. It’s rewarding to know that our employees will have more ways and opportunities to deliver exceptional value to our customers and their patients.”</p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
<p><strong>This information is taken from free public RSS feeds published by each organization for the purpose of public distribution. Readers are linked back to the article content on each organization's website. This email is an unaffiliated unofficial redistribution of this freely provided content from the publishers. </strong></p>
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