Tech

Morning Brew Inc, Photos: Adobe Stock

The roster of AI scribes and AI receptionists now includes another robo coworker: AI scheduling systems.

Tech companies are developing and deploying systems they say give clinicians and administrative workers more information about how to staff hospitals and connect patients to appointments.

Instead of merely answering calls, as automated receptionists do, AI scheduling systems help manage hospital operations by analyzing various data sources. These include patient appointments and no-shows, how long certain workers have been on shifts, how their expertise matches up with patient needs, and what beds and surgical units are open. The software then uses these inputs to put together a staffing schedule.

Such services are part of a bigger push to bring more AI into hospital operations to improve efficiency, experts told us.

“A lot of the more manual-type processes that we have seen in the past are now getting turbocharged a bit with some of these AI capabilities that are coming into the market,” Rachael England, associate principal of digital technologies at healthcare consultancy Vizient, said.

Keep reading about AI scheduling systems here.—CM

      

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Payers

Getty Images

GLP-1 medications for weight loss are biting into large employers’ budgets, and in some cases coverage has become financially untenable, recent examples suggest.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan recently said that the company is spending more than $250 million annually on GLP-1s, representing 13% of its total healthcare spending. BofA has no plans to drop coverage, though, as Moynihan cited both short- and long-term benefits for the workforce and the bank, which anticipates spending less on healthcare for obesity-related conditions, such as cardiovascular events.

Starbucks, on the other hand, recently stopped covering GLP-1s for weight loss, Business Insider reported on Aug. 7. The coffee chain isn’t the only high-profile employer to do so—PwC told US staff they would no longer cover the medications for weight loss back in the spring, according to the Financial Times. Though neither company disclosed their GLP-1 spend, a recent survey indicates that the costs of this drug category are prompting some large employers to reconsider coverage. Nearly 8 in 10 employers surveyed by the Business Group on Health, whose members include large organizations, said GLP-1s were driving an increase in their company’s health costs, and 10% say they likely wouldn’t continue coverage in 2027.

Check out the rest of the story on HR Brew.—CV

      

Tech

Illustration: Brittany Holloway-Brown, Photos: Adobe Stock

Oracle Health, the second-largest electronic health record (EHR) vendor in the US, released on August 12 a new AI-powered patient portal it says will help reduce clinicians’ administrative burden.

The move comes as Oracle is gearing up to compete with Epic, which introduced its own EHR-integrated AI tools named Emmie, Art, and Penny last August. At the end of 2025, Epic had roughly twice the acute care market share by percentage of hospitals compared to Oracle, according to reporting from Becker’s Hospital Review.

Seema Verma, EVP and general manager of Oracle Health and Life Sciences, who also served as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the first Trump administration, said in a company statement the new patient portal is meant to “help patients understand, manage, and improve their health.”

Keep reading here.—MA

      

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vital signs

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: 114,000 annually. That’s how many lives one preprint study said would be saved if the US adopted single-payer universal healthcare. That’s in addition to saving $1+ billion in national health expenditures. (Yale School of Public Health)

Quote: “They took care of the whole me and put me on the right track. I’m progressing. It’s slow, but I’m OK.”—Cynthia Tompkins, a patient in California, on her experience with a geriatric emergency department (KFF Health News)

Read: Neena Nizar spent 10 weeks in an NIH hospital room this summer testing an experimental medication for Jansen’s disease, a rare genetic disorder that only affects 30 people around the world. (the New York Times)

Jobs

Real jobs, shared through real communities. CollabWORK brings opportunities directly to Healthcare Brew readers—no mass postings, no clutter, just roles worth seeing. Click here to view the full job board.

• Executive Director, Head of Clinical Operations Excellence at BeOne Medicines
• Senior Director, Global Head of Clinical Operations at Olympus Corporation of the Americas
• Chief Nursing Officer at Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital
• Chief Quality Officer at Tidelands Health
• Chief Executive Officer at Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Wesley Chapel

Friday Quiz

Amelia Kinsinger

The week’s biggest HCB stories, now in quiz form. Test yourself on the latest headlines in pharma, hospital operations, patient care, and more in a quick, competitive challenge built for healthcare professionals. Challenge your coworkers and see how your score stacks up!