Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.

Healthcare Brew

Amanda Eisenberg

Healthcare Brew delivers the latest news and trends in healthcare.

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A female medical professional conducts a pelvic exam

HHS, CMS update informed consent guidance

The guidance comes as more than a dozen states have moved to ban non-consensual pelvic exams.

Maia Anderson

Positive arrows pointing upward above healthcare symbols

Health systems turn to internal VC arms to bring in additional revenue 

At least 23 health systems are operating venture capital arms. 

Will Peischel

Clinicians see increased understaffing and want protections, per survey

Almost half of respondents reported a higher patient ratio than the year prior.

A medical cross and circle denoting hospitals

Hospitals & Facilities

illustrated headshot of caroline catherman, healthcare brew reporter

Caroline Catherman

, medical supply shortages got so severe that nurses fashioned masks and gowns out of pool noodles and 

Many factors have been blamed: inadequate stockpiles, slow government action, equipment hoarding. But one that has been especially relevant—and is relevant again today as 

 tensions heat up—is US reliance on foreign personal protective equipment (PPE), supply chain experts told us.

The government invested more than $1 billion to bulk up domestic PPE manufacturing during that first pandemic year, but five years later, the companies that emerged from those efforts have mostly 

 on foreign manufacturers for PPE and other medical necessities. The American Hospital Association calculated in April the US imported over $75 billion in medical devices and supplies in 2024 alone.

 could send the country right back to March 2020.

“If we don’t change the trajectory we are in right now, we’re guaranteed to repeat the same thing,” Tinglong Dai, Bernard T. Ferrari professor of business at Johns Hopkins University, told Healthcare Brew.

Prior to Covid, PPE wasn’t a concern for Premier, a large healthcare group purchasing organization (GPO) that works with more than 4,350 hospitals and health systems. But hospitals needed 17x their usual supply of N-95 masks after they began admitting Covid patients, according to Premier’s April 2020 survey of nearly 1,600 hospitals.

“PPE was always a low variability, very transactional category for our hospital supply chain until Covid hit,” Kyle MacKinnon, senior director of operational excellence at Premier’s supply chain strategic operations, told Healthcare Brew.

 and price gouged PPE early in the pandemic. Supply and demand surged unpredictably and quickly as pockets of the world were exposed to the virus, MacKinnon said.

Another issue is GPOs like Premier didn’t—and still don’t—have data down to the stock-keeping unit on which locations and manufacturing plants products come from, Mark Hendrickson, Premier’s director of supply chain policy, told us.

He said Premier now asks suppliers for “very specific, very detailed data” on their product volume, reliability, and manufacturing locations. The company is lobbying for the US government to track this data better as well.

“We need more transparency on where products are coming from. We need more reporting from manufacturers to the FDA so they can understand where they can pull levers in an emergency,” he said.

Amid 2020’s uncertainty, the federal government invested more than $1 billion in subsidies to increase domestic PPE production. As a result, dozens of domestic startups emerged to manufacture masks, medical gowns, and gloves.

GPOs and hospitals relied on those startups amid increased demand, MacKinnon said. But today, he said, they have largely returned to pre-pandemic purchasing patterns.

“As an industry, we shifted back from that ‘just-in-case’ scenario planning and supply planning to ‘just-in-time’ where now you have to be cost-conscious and get back to a leaner, more profitable organization,” MacKinnon said.

 of US import data by the American Medical Manufacturers Association (AMMA)—a trade association that lobbies against US reliance on Chinese-made PPE—estimates the US uses about 110 billion to 120 billion nitrile gloves each year.

The fact is, China can offer cheaper PPE and a larger portfolio of product models compared to those US pandemic-era startups, Dai said. The US startups couldn’t compete.

“A lot of the companies that were standing up during Covid, as you go back to the beginning, disappeared because they were just undercut overnight,” AMMA Executive Director Eric Axel told us.

MacKinnon said Premier learned from the pandemic and is set up to be “more resilient” during the next one. The industry now has a “thorough playbook” with better data and technology to 

But this return to foreign reliance, Dai warned, may weaken the supply chain when the next emergency comes, whatever it is.

“We have basically moved back to the same—if not worse—dependence on foreign manufacturers for most of the PPE needs here in the US,” Dai said.

US manufacturers could lower costs and compete more effectively with foreign PPE manufacturers if they invested in newer, large-scale production technologies, according to Dai.

The problem? They need large orders with up-front payments to afford those upgrades.

Dai thinks the government could help here by filling its national PPE stockpile with 100% Made in USA PPE to bring “stable demand” to domestic manufacturing, along with other steps, like tax incentives. AMMA has lobbied for those changes, too.

Increasing any manufacturing—not just PPE manufacturing—would be helpful, Dai added, because other manufacturing operations can be converted into PPE assembly lines in emergencies.

July’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act includes provisions that help domestic medical manufacturers, like bringing back R&D tax credits, Axel said.

He added tariffs are another tool to “even the playing field” for domestic manufacturers.

Companies like Abbott Laboratories, Merck, and Roche 

 since early this year to invest more in US manufacturing, though they did not directly attribute their decisions to tariffs. On the flip side, some experts 

 Healthcare Brew tariffs could strain the supply chain.

But Axel argues the medical supply chain is already strained because it relies on foreign manufacturers, some of which have been flagged for creating allegedly unsafe supplies. (The 

 has identified safety issues in several brands of syringes from China, for instance.)

Axel also believes the US has seen—and will see again far before a global pandemic occurs—repercussions from its lack of diverse domestic manufacturers. He pointed to disruptions from 

“Covid is already a lesson from a different era,” he said.

A worker oversees the production of KN95 masks in Handan, North China's Hebei Province in 2022.

Despite Covid-19 pandemic efforts, the US still mostly imports PPE

While we love a throwback, the Covid-19 pandemic’s first year isn’t something we want to revisit.

Despite pandemic efforts, the US still mostly imports PPE

When you think of healthcare innovation, you may think of 

artificial intelligence (AI)-powered medical devices

 that can diagnose diseases quicker than a doctor or devices that can 

But if you ask Kyu Rhee, president and CEO of the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), the “most innovative part” of the healthcare system is one that’s already been around for 60 years: 

Established in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, CHCs provide primary healthcare services including chronic disease management, cancer screening, dentistry, behavioral health, and more to patients regardless of whether they can pay or are insured.

Today, CHCs treat nearly 1 in 10 people across the US. As head of NACHC, which represents the roughly 1,500 CHCs across the US, Rhee has big plans to expand that number to 1 in 3.

“I do believe when you look at the broader system, there’s no better model of primary care,” Rhee said. “Our model is very focused on those communities that need us the most, and in many ways, it’s defined by people who are low income or poor.”

Rhee took the helm of NACHC in July 2023 after a healthcare career spanning both public and private roles, including chief medical officer of CVS Health’s Aetna division and chief public health officer at the Health Resources and Services Administration, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services that focuses on providing care to vulnerable populations.

Rhee told Healthcare Brew he took the role as president and CEO of the nonprofit organization because he thinks, in addition to being the most innovative, CHCs are the best and “most resilient” part of the healthcare system.

Part of what makes them so is the fact that they “save lives and save money,” he said.

Though CHCs treat about 10% of the US population—that’s nearly 34.7 million people—they only cost about $55 billion, or 1% of all healthcare spend, according to NACHC. That’s because they’re efficient, affordable, and local, according to Rhee.

Plus, CHCs are required by law to be nonprofits and serve their communities, so they can’t be scooped up by giant for-profit corporations like Optum or CVS Health.

Another factor that keeps costs low, Rhee said, is that CHC boards are required to be made up of at least 51% patients, meaning the people they treat get a say in how the clinics are run.

However, it’s not easy to treat so many people while keeping costs down.

The two biggest challenges on Rhee’s mind at the moment are 

The NACHC says half the patients treated at CHCs are on Medicaid, which Rhee calls the “lifeblood” of the clinics. CHCs get roughly 42% of their revenue from the public payer, “so we need Medicaid to be protected in order to do the work that we do in saving lives and saving money in communities across this nation,” he said.

The Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which was signed into law on July 4, reduces federal Medicaid spending by an estimated $990 billion over 10 years, according to 

Louise McCarthy, president and CEO of the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County—which represents the more than 450 CHCs serving about 2 million people across the region—told Healthcare Brew the organization is bracing for “seismic shifts in the healthcare landscape in Los Angeles and beyond” because of the cuts to Medicaid.

“We’re looking at 3.4 million Californians falling out of coverage, and an estimated loss of $30 billion in federal funding for California,” McCarthy said. “If these folks don’t have coverage, how are we going to get them access to specialty care, to hospitals? We’re probably going to see a lot of hospital closures, and we won’t have places to send our patients.”

Staffing is also a big challenge, Rhee said, noting CHCs typically have a team of 10 providers to treat 1,000 high-need patients, who often live below poverty level.

McCarthy echoed that sentiment, saying it’s “really, really hard” as a nonprofit to “recruit and compete against larger, more resourced organizations.”

Though he’s only led NACHC for a short time, Rhee already scored a major win in March 2024 when CHCs received the first increase in federal funding in nearly 10 years, bringing the total to $4.4 billion annually.

Rhee said he considers this one of his biggest accomplishments during his tenure at the nonprofit.

“The fact that we’ve been nonpartisan and gotten bipartisan support is part of what I’m very proud of in my first couple years at NACHC,” he said.

Looking ahead, in order to meet NACHC’s goal of treating 1 in 3 people by 2045, “we need funding, we need workforce…we need to protect Medicaid,” Rhee said.

“We need to demonstrate that we’re a core part of making America healthy.”

National Association of Community Health Centers’s Kyu Rhee on the future of community health centers

These clinics rely heavily on Medicaid funding, which was slashed in the One Big Beautiful Bill. 

Kyu Rhee on the future of community health centers

Nicole Ortiz

Ever since he was a kid, Ryan Gibney, UCI Health’s associate medical director at its Orange, California, facility and an emergency medicine physician, knew he wanted to be a doctor.

But before that happened, he worked in the service industry for many years—and performed in a band—while he studied at med school. Once he took the plunge, he had a “meteoric rise” from residency to leadership, which includes serving as the incoming medical director of the health system’s new Irvine site, scheduled to open later this year.

Healthcare Brew spoke with Gibney about his career and what he’s hoping to accomplish in his new role.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How did you go from working in the hospitality industry to the hospital industry, and what did it teach you?

I moved out to California, where my mom had moved in the interim, and I ended up starting back in the service industry at a bar and restaurant in the area. It wasn’t until 2007 when I got married that I decided that looking longevity-wise and raising a family and that kind of career didn’t really kind of go hand in hand. And I did a very thorough self-inventory and said that I’m going to go back to college.

We actively look for people that have service experience. It teaches you a lot about people, a lot about anticipating needs, multitasking, and the behaviors that exist in emergency medicine. And I think if you want to be a reductionist about medicine in general, it is a service industry.

What was one of the most unexpected parts of transitioning into the medical field?

I found it to be so similar to working at a bar that it was almost off-putting.

I will say that this meteoric rise to admin and leadership is something I didn’t expect this fast. I’ve been in a full-fledged attending career—this is now my fifth year—and I’m already in charge of opening a new emergency room and hiring staff, and I’m involved in leadership strategy for the entire hospital. That’s a lot of very quick learning, but I think a lot of it comes from that route in the service industry and my life experience, being in my 40s and starting my career here instead of my 20s. I think that the ability to speak and interact with people and anticipate needs and see in a different way has lent itself to building this skill set quickly.

Can you tell me about your new role at the UCI Health – Irvine hospital and how it might change compared to what you’re currently working on?

From a clinical lens, the work is going to be similar. I mean, emergency room is emergency room.

You know, in the service industry you do the soft opening, the friends and family, and all the policy procedures. That’s what we’re doing right now. It’s really all about the strategy of prepping as best as we possibly can, so on day one, when we open, we are really representing what we can do here at UCI.

Within the larger hospital world, what do you think needs to change the most?

 and that have challenges to access have led to this critical national problem of patients carrying out all their care in the emergency department—even their inpatient care—and it forces our work further and further out of the physical spaces that are designated as emergency medicine to where you’re doing stuff in the waiting room. Nationally, this is a problem. Locally, this is a problem. There’s a lot of downward pressure to do all these things that are just almost not possible in the primary care space.

The medical director of UCI Health, Ryan Gibney, a man in a necktie and lab coat

From hospitality to hospitals, UCI Health's Ryan Gibney talks career moves and industry pain points

The emergency medicine physician will be UCI Health’s medical director at its new facility opening later this year.

From hospitality to hospitals, Ryan Gibney talks career moves and industry pain points

Cassie McGrath

First we had smartphones, then smartwatches. Now, we’re entering the age of smart hospitals.

Nvidia-backed health tech Artisight announced in July it had secured an additional $40 million on top of its previous $51.3 million in funding to accelerate the adoption of its AI-based smart hospital platform across the country.

Founded in 2015, Artisight’s platform puts its Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU)-powered devices into patient rooms to monitor care, prevent safety issues, and enable remote collaboration across facilities.

CEO and co-founder Andrew Gostine told us the company plans to expand to about 1,000 more hospitals in the next 18 months. It’s currently in use at 417 hospitals, he said, including facilities in York, Pennsylvania-based WellSpan and Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine health systems.

Terri Couts, EVP and chief digital officer at New York and Pennsylvania provider the Guthrie Clinic, was originally drawn to

Artisight to cut down on patient falls. Adverse events in US hospitals cost $17 billion each year, and falls are the largest category of reported adverse events, according to 

Before Artisight, the health system’s staff would identify which patients were high risk and then send workers to sit in the room with them, Couts said. Now, Artisight’s device is placed in patient rooms and uses a camera to alert clinicians if an at-risk patient gets out of bed.

Guthrie has reduced falls with injury by 40% YoY after implementing Artisight at the beginning of 2021, Couts said, and has saved money by reallocating staff to other tasks—an average of $6,480 per day for every 16 patients at higher risk of falling.

“The ROI is around the [staff]. Those hands that used to be in the room can now be doing other care-related activity,” she said.

Beyond falls, Gostine said the camera can monitor and see if a patient needs to be rotated in bed, whether patients have accidentally removed endotracheal tubes, and if staff washed their hands before entering the room.

The device has a communication element as well, which allows clinicians to video call patient rooms to give a care update or conduct remote nursing. For patients, it connects to their TVs to show them which clinicians are caring for them and offers translation services.

With this range of uses, Couts said Artisight’s platform has helped with staff retention. Guthrie has a lot of new grad nurses in specialty care, and Artisight’s technology supports staff by connecting them with other clinicians so they can ask questions in real time.

This retention has helped the system save $7 million on traveling nurses, Couts said, and has cut additional spending on sign-on bonuses.

But having a camera in a hospital room is certainly new for many patients and staff.

“Our staff was a little more concerned about privacy than the patients were,” Couts said.

Gostine confirmed the cameras don’t record anything. Because the system is connected to Nvidia’s GPU, it can process information in real time without having to store it on a cloud and risk exposing patient information to potential 

The system also enhances staff safety, he said. For one, Artisight is connected to a clinician’s badge and has a button they can hit to alert security in 

 It also detects a code word the clinician can say when they need help.

Violence in hospitals costs an estimated $18.3 billion in 2023, the 

 reported. The association also reported that 16,990 hospital workers experienced nonfatal injuries or illness related to workplace violence, and an additional 8,740 hospital staffers had work activity affected or changed jobs due to workplace violence in 2022.

“A remote observer alerted nursing staff that a patient entered with a weapon,” Gostine said, noting one example of when the system caught a safety issue.

With this latest investment, Artisight is implementing a video language model that no longer requires someone to watch the camera feed. Using AI, the camera can take notes on what’s happening in a patient’s room.

“Instead of paying humans to watch the camera, we essentially pay algorithms,” Gostine said.

Health care illustration concept shows a doctor showing the medical results to the patient woman on the blue background.

Artisight acquires $40 million investment to build AI into smart hospital platform 

The system is already in use at 417 hospitals, the company’s CEO told us. 

Getting clear pricing information from hospitals has 

 in healthcare. Executive orders from both the Biden and 

 have tried—but so far failed—to get providers to share how much different types of care costs.

 these orders, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. And while some fines have been 

, the cost of care is still unclear. Fines can currently run between $300 and $5,500 per day.

A new bipartisan bill that was introduced in July by Sens. Roger Marshall and John Hickenlooper aims to address these challenges and provide clear pricing information once and for all.

The problem exists because hospitals negotiate prices independently and in private, and therefore have varying costs for different procedures compared to other hospitals—and sometimes even 

“You could have your hip replaced at a surgical outpatient center for $10,000–$15,000, but some medical centers would charge $50,000,” Marshall, who is also a medical doctor, told Healthcare Brew. “The consumer needs to know that.”

 If passed, the law would require providers—including hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, imaging centers, and clinical labs—to publicly report their negotiated insurance rates and cash prices.

In support of another price transparency bill last year, the PIRG, a nonprofit, reported that additional price transparency could save 

 in healthcare costs, as a lot of healthcare spending is due to administrative waste, overcharging, and fraud.

The new bill says providers would also have to give patients an itemized bill that clearly outlines the cost of each service if multiple were provided, reiterating that estimates are not sufficient. Executives from both the hospital and patient’s health plan would also be required to sign an acknowledgment of the “accuracy and completeness” of the prices shared.

In a July 21 letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the American Hospital Association’s SVP of Public Policy Analysis and Development Ashley Thompson wrote that “hospitals and health systems are dedicated to improving price transparency” and plan to work with the Trump administration to meet those goals.

“We urge CMS to focus future efforts to reform price transparency on streamlining policies to remove complexity and administrative burden,” she added.

Marshall also hopes the law will help CMS have “more teeth” to enforce these rules. He supports the idea of preventing hospitals that don’t turn over data from participating in Medicare and Medicaid.

“I just don’t know how else to make hospitals do it,” Marshall said, adding he thinks there’s “absolutely” enough Senate support for the bill to move forward this fall.

The law would also give insurers offering employer-sponsored plans the right to access their claims data so they can clearly see the cost of care and design plans accordingly. 

Right now, insurers cannot clearly see how much care costs since providers do not share it. Under the law, they would have access to financial information about subsidiaries and subcontractors, like 

Mark Newman, co-founder and CEO of health technology company Nomi Health, said he supports the bill from an employer perspective.

“When employers can see where their dollars go, they can eliminate waste, negotiate better rates, and close care gaps before they turn into expensive claims,” he said in an emailed statement.

A 2D animation of a hospital with a bunch of pharma pills and dollar bill signs coming out of the top of it

Senate bill seeks to secure hospital price transparency 

Getting clear cost information from providers has long been a challenge. 

Welcome back to Signed and Scrubbed, a monthly roundup of hospital deals, developments, and bankruptcies.

This month, there were at least seven deals and closures on July 1 alone. But don’t fret, there was more news from the rest of the month as well.

We compiled noteworthy provider transactions from July. Here’s what you need to know.

Providence, Rhode Island-based physician group Anchor Medical Associates permanently closed all three of its locations on July 1, leaving a 

On July 1, St. Louis-based health system Ascension subsidiary Ascension Seton acquired 

 of Texas-based Cedar Park Regional Medical Center, a 126-bed facility, for $436 million.

. Alhambra, California-based Astrana Health acquired Los Angeles’s Prospect Health System, which includes the 177-bed Foothill Regional Medical Center, for $708 million on July 1.

Baystate Health, which has 900 beds across five hospitals, is allegedly considering acquiring 182-bed Mercy Medical Center, which would bring together the two biggest hospitals in Springfield, Massachusetts, 

Beacon Health System finalized its acquisition of Ascension Southwest Michigan on July 1, adding four hospitals to the South Bend, Indiana-based system. The hospitals include 422-bed acute care hospital Beacon Kalamazoo, 25-bed Beacon Allegan, 25-bed Beacon Dowagiac, and 43-bed Beacon Plainwell. The deal also includes 35 outpatient clinics and an ambulatory surgery center.

Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative (CVHC).

 Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin-based Chippewa Valley Health Cooperative bought the former St. Joseph’s Hospital from Hospital Sisters Health System on July 1. Now called the Chippewa Valley Cooperative Hospital, the facility will serve patients while CVHC builds a new hospital in Lake Hallie, which is set to open in the beginning of 2028.

On July 8, Hugh Chatham Health, which includes an 81-bed facility and is based in Elkin, North Carolina, announced a merger with Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist. Under the partnership, Atrium pledged a $100 million investment in Hugh Chatham Health, which has 25 locations and 70 providers.

Rockford, Illinois-based system Mercyhealth announced a “temporary suspension” of services at its main 195-bed hospital Javon Bea Hospital-Rockton on July 1.

 Bedford, New Hampshire-based SolutionHealth filed a “disaffiliation agreement” to return to two independent systems. In 2018, Manchester-based Elliot Health System and Nashua-based Southern New Hampshire Health had signed an affiliation agreement to become one health system, but 

 July 16 they’re looking to separate again.

 Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based St. Luke’s University Health Network finalized the acquisition of its 16th hospital on July 1: the 207-bed Grand View Health in Sellersville, Pennsylvania.

 Marlton, New Jersey-based Virtua Health and Wilmington, Delaware-based ChristianaCare signed a letter of intent on July 16 to co-found a “regional not-for-profit health system” across New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The plan would include 600 care sites and 30,000 employees.

Hospital building split in half collaged with briefcase and $100 bill. Credit: Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Adobe Stock.

Signed and Scrubbed: July 2025 hospital M&A

July 1 alone saw seven deals and closures. 

US News and World Report has released its 

 of the best hospitals for 2025–2026 in the country, breaking down the top providers in different regions and specialities.

There’s also an honor roll list highlighting the top 20 hospitals in the country out of 4,400+ evaluated facilities, and US News ranked the top hospitals in 15 specialties.

Hackensack University Medical Center at Hackensack Meridian Health, Hackensack, New Jersey

Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian, Philadelphia

New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell

Northwestern Medicine-Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago

Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital, Palo Alto, California

UCSF Health-UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston

Cardiology, heart, and vascular surgery: 

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Bascom Palmer Eye Institute-University of Miami Hospital and Clinics

Nurses or scientist women walking with syringe in their pocket and carrying five golden stars.