Author: iambeastwood

The Beastwood Files: May 2026

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I survived my marathon, helped my son adhere hundreds of monster truck stickers to sheets of paper, took my mother to two doctor’s appointments, installed our window ACs, and wrote a few things here and there to boot. In other words, just another month here at Brian Eastwood Writes, LLC. (And I was named Employee of the Month AGAIN!)

Stuff I Wrote

Things I Did, Marathon Edition

  • Finish my 5th consecutive Vermont City Marathon (and 6th marathon since my won was born) within the two-minute time window of 3:24:31 to 3:26:31 (in this case, 3:26:23), which means I’m officially nothing if not consistent
  • Gather acceptable snacks to share with my son at the finish line, including slices of pizza, Nutri-Grain bars, and the all-important free underripe bananas that are the reason like 73% of marathon runners compete
  • Wear brand-new compression socks to recover from said marathon because I forgot to pack them and had to purchase a new pair the day before the race
  • Remember to pack everything else that mattered – including the cowbell than my son shook vigorously while in the hotel room but not (AFAIK) while outside cheering for runners

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • We completed / survived our first-ever Kid Race, which was a 1/2-mile loop in Burlington, Vermont’s lovely Waterfront Park. We also overcame our pre-race jitters, which were 100% attributable to the presence of mascots in unexpected proximity. We celebrated with pre-packaged trail mix and a sampling from a local ice cream truck.
  • We also experienced and enjoyed our first-ever roller coaster at a local fundraiser fair, though our favorite part very well may have been the fried dough. (Can’t argue with that.) We decided we didn’t like the teacups – and I learned I can’t handle the teacups as well as I used to – but did like the Ferris wheel (even if the waiting was the hardest part).
  • Yes, we heard the sonic boom from the meteorite that landed in the middle of Cape Cod Bay. No, we didn’t think anything of it at the time, especially as our neighbors are in the midst of a large renovation project and it hasn’t been uncommon to hear things get loudly dropped into a Dumpster.

Enjoy June and the beginning of summer. We’re gearing up for a pre-summer-vacation trip to Cape Cod , preschool graduation, and a trip to New Hampshire for the Fourth. We’re NOT going to New Hampshire in June because I told a story once about black files and now we’re convinced that’s when there are YUCKY BUGS in our neighbor to the north. I’m sure we’d have fun, as we talk about the YUCKY BUGS while laughing, but between Champy and the teacups, I’ve scarred my son enough for quite some time.

This Month in Digital Health News: Making AI Meaningful, Managing Climate Change Risk, and a Bunch of Other Stuff

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It’s time for This Month in Digital Health, where I highlight news articles that caught my attention and offer my take on why I think they matter. Along with the requisite stories about AI in healthcare, this month – fittingly when the Boston area is about to hit record high temperatures for this time of year – we’re looking into climate change and healthcare.

It’s all about meaningful AI utilization now. As half of healthcare organizations have now deployed generative AI, according to a McKinsey survey, attention has turned to tool integration and ROI. That means leaders are looking for meaningful transformation, not even more revenue cycle automation; that often comes down to using AI to solve readily identifiable problems. Meanwhile, because we just can’t have nice things, HHS wants to ditch requirements for transparency in AI tools, because reasons.

Add “climate change” to healthcare’s risk management agenda. First, the bad news: Hospitals in areas vulnerable to climate change haven’t done much to address climate-related health risks, in large part because of socioeconomic disparities. Next, the good news: Looking at climate change as a health equity issue and using existing long-term planning frameworks can help manage these risks. Plus, hospitals are reducing waste – no minimal matter, as the industry accounts for more than 8% of carbon emissions – and EMS and mobile clinics are buying hybrids.

Now, for a bunch of interesting odds and ends.

That’s all for now. Tune in next month when I’m sitting in front of the AC waiting for summer to end even though it hasn’t technically started yet. (One of my most unpopular opinions is that I strongly prefer the colder months of the year.)

The Beastwood Files: April 2026

A panel on tough questions for healthcare marketers in 2026 at Swaay.Health LIVE
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I’ve been able to take a bit of a breather over the last few weeks. The work schedule has lightened up (on purpose), the need to fill out and sign forms for kindergarten in the fall has abated (for now), and I’ve entered taper time for my spring marathon (which is Memorial Day weekend in Burlington, Vermont). I even had time to spend a day at Swaay.Health LIVE, catching up with old friends, learning a thing or two about healthcare IT marketing, and looking important sitting on a tall stool while moderating a panel.

Things I Wrote

Stuff I Did

  • Leave the house during the work week to attend a conference, which was such a big deal that I felt like mentioning it twice
  • Finish my darn eBook, which was also such a big deal that it warrants a second mention
  • Finally take a deep breath and schedule body work for our car after I was in a minor but embarrassing fender-bender in the preschool parking lot this winter
  • Help my son keep his secret about the Mother’s Day present he was making at school and the card he made
  • Continue to adhere the new household rule: Don’t get so much cereal that it doesn’t fit in the cupboard, Brian

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • We fulfilled a months-long dream and went to Monster Jam the day before Mother’s Day. We admittedly had more fun at the pre-show pit party (when you get to look at the trucks and meet the drivers) than during the show (when it’s loud and there’s a decent chance the trucks may flip over). We decided we prefer looking at pictures of monster trucks doing tricks in books than seeing them in person – though we do like stadium snacks.
  • Luckily, our monster-truck themed birthday party the prior week was much more successful. I made multiple large cardboard ramps for toy trucks to run down, and my wife and son worked together on crafts and decorations. Special thanks to Costco, Chewy, and especially REI for supplying our home with large boxes – the latter with a long, thin ski box that was just the right size for a single truck. Also, no one got scared when the toy trucks flipped over.
  • One of our birthday presents was a Big Boy Bike with pedals and no training wheels. Our first ride was quite successful until we bumped into a bridge at a park. I then explained to my son that Daddy did the exact same thing when he was leaning to ride a bicycle, only he was in his 30s and it therefore hurt a lot more. (I didn’t show him the scar.)

I hope everyone had a happy Mother’s Day. Ours was rather relaxing, which was entirely the point. I think our son was old enough to understand that’s what it’s all about. We’ll see if Father’s Day proceeds the same way…

Predicting the Next 10 Years of Patient Engagement Tech: eBook is LIVE

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While I started covering patient engagement as part of my broader foray into healthcare technology in late 2009, my interest in the topic picked up a few years later. On a whim, I decided to turn an article I’d written for CIO.com into a workshop proposal for HIMSS 2015 – and on an even greater whim, they accepted it. I then managed to parlay that speaking appearance (along with a few clips) into landing a role as an analyst at Chilmark Research looking at patient engagement technology.

Last summer, I was feeling slightly nostalgic when the calendar approached 10 years since I’d taken that job. I was quickly feeling puzzled, though – not because of life choices, mind you, but because the state of patient engagement technology was in such disarray. I’d been (perhaps a little too) wide-eyed in 2015 and was downright jaded by 2025.

Naturally, I turned those feelings into an eBook: Predicting the Next 10 Years of Patient Engagement. As the title suggests, my aim was less to rehash the past and more to try to figure out what the industry could learn from the technology’s disjointed journey.

Lessons learned, but far too late

The biggest thing I realized was that patient engagement technology isn’t a market segment. It’s a guiding principle for how healthcare providers should interact with patients, inside and (especially) outside the care delivery system.

The reason I don’t consider it a market segment – not any more, at least – is because patient engagement is too damn complicated for a single technology tool (or even suite of tools) to suddenly swoop in and make everything better. The proverbial road is littered with the wrecks of thousands of vendors who promised to do that and failed, some more miserably than others.

Once I figured this out, it wasn’t too hard to see where things went wrong for those trying to innovate in the space. Incumbent options got better, or at least less worse. New vendors fell short, while others operating in tangential spaces succeeded quickly. Pesky problems like application validation and interoperability didn’t go away. Above all, enthusiasm on the part of providers and patients failed to reach the same heights as inspiring conference keynotes.

Eventually, the industry learned valuable lessons about ROI, friction, change management, and the difficulties of standardization. By then, though, it was too late, and everyone was talking about AI.

Change can happen, but it will take work

The crux of my patient engagement eBook is what I expect the next 10 or so years of patient engagement technology to look like. (I say 10 or so years because it’s been more than a decade since I started exploring the space with scrutiny. It’s also a handy excuse for taking way, way too long to finish this thing.)

I’d love to be able to say I feel super optimistic, but I’ve never been a very good liar. Yes, things will continue to get better, and the future will likely see innovations that we cannot imagine in 2026. I just don’t think the pace will match the degree of innovation we’ll see in the rest of healthcare technology, let alone all the consumer industries healthcare is smitten with emulating. There are a few reasons I feel this way.

  • Since 2015, nearly everyone who’s claimed to have solved the patient engagement problem has been wrong, and nearly everyone who’s been right has run out of money.
  • Numerous external forces are making care delivery even more difficult than it needs to be; this strains the ability to engage with patients in any modality, analog or digital.
  • The industry maintains its nagging tendency to gravitate toward seemingly easy solutions in lieu of attempting the lay the groundwork for meaningful progress.
  • With income inequality on the rise, it’s easy to foresee a system where the wealthy have concierge physicians and the uninsured turn to chatbots – a trend the Pew Research Center noted is already playing itself out. Increased use of technology largely detached from the care delivery system (for now at least) isn’t going to make the engagement experience any better; in fact, it may only lead to further frustration for everyone.

In simple terms, making progress will come down to avoiding the mistakes that have been repeated almost ad nauseum since 2015. I think the industry can do it. The question is whether folks are willing to do the hard work to make change happen.

Predicting the Next 10 Years of Patient Engagement is free to download until May 31. Give it a read and let me know what you think.

This Month (or So) in Digital Health: AI’s Growing Pains, Federal Health’s Shrinking Pains

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Welcome to This Month in Digital Health, where I summarize news articles that recently caught my attention and attempt to try to put the trends in broader context. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but one of the main themes this month is AI, which healthcare finally seems to be putting under the microscope. Also of note is how the Iran war will impact health systems and how federal health may be gutted yet again.

The honeymoon’s over for clinical AI. One study found clinicians save less than 30 minutes a day using AI scribes and don’t decrease their after-hours EHR use. Another one determined Epic’s algorithms don’t perform well in the real world, which matters because AI vendors struggle to compete with EHR incumbents even if their products work better. So, it comes as no surprise that healthcare’s struggling to calculate AI’s ROI and getting impatient when ROI is slow to arrive. On top of everything else, experts say AI oversight and governance need to catch up. Good times.

Consumers understand AI’s limitations. About one-third of American adults turn to AI with health-related questions. Don’t run around screaming that the robot doctors are taking over, though. Education and research make up more than half of healthcare AI queries, compared to 8% for care questions, and people readily admit they use AI because it’s convenient, not because it’s accurate. Seems like there’s most definitely some log-hanging fruit for all those consumer AI health tools (nearly diagramed by Rock Health).

Federal health funding? What federal health funding? The White House is proposing a 12% cut to HHS in 2027, though it’s worth noting Congress ignored a similar request last year. Even with funding restored, HHS is in disarray after massive job cuts (as are other federal agencies), as detailed in excellent long reads from Healthcare Dive. Also, 400-plus hospitals are at risk of closing due to Medicaid cuts that are projected to reach $1 trillion over the next decade.

Healthcare may feel the pinch of the Iran war. Disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz may not impact medical supply chains immediately, and the uncertainty of what may come means stocking up is a bad idea. Cybersecurity is a more immediate threat, as “cyber conflict increasingly mirrors geopolitical tensions,” one expert told Healthcare Brew.

Prior authorization: Now with slightly less time wasted! The insurance industry patted itself on the back by eliminating 11% of prior authorizations, according to an AHIP statement. Meanwhile, Health Affairs found 90% of prior authorizations are approved the first time, which essentially means the $30 cost per transaction is paying for a rubber stamp.

In other relatively interesting news:

Thanks for playing along. See you next time.

The Beastwood Files: March(ish) 2026

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Coming to you on a Wednesday evening halfway through the month because I did the thing freelancers like to do where they take on too many assignments at a time – which, if it wasn’t bad enough, was made worse by the fact that I did this at the same time as 1) tax season and 2) try-to-figure-out-after-school-care-for-your-soon-to-be-kindergartner season. At least no one in the house was sick.

Stuff I Wrote

Things I Did

  • Celebrate Pi Day with some close friends, approximately one pie per person, and a rule that anyone in attendance was required to take home leftovers
  • Bake Chocolate Crinkle Cookies, a classic winter holiday staple, on the approximate Spring Equinox
  • Leave the shovel and rock salt on the front porch – because we all know the day they go in the basement is the day there’s a thoroughly unexpected snowstorm
  • Fail to take advantage of day-after-Easter candy sales (which frankly may have been for the better, as we still have Dark Chocolate Cadbury Mini Eggs, which are the better kind)

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • We revisited a past Pi Day tradition and made a Pie Shop from a gigantic Costco-sized box of paper towels, from which we dispensed dessert pies as well as pizza and seltzer (while supplies lasted). Why I neglected to take a picture of that and instead am tempting you with a poorly rotated, out-of-focus picture of cookies is something I’ll never be able to fully explain.
  • We made our first trip to the LEGO Discovery Center, and it went about as well as we could have hoped. If not for the next day’s visit from the Easter Bunny, we might even still be playing with the LEGO Delivery Van we got from the gift shop.
  • Speaking of the Easter Bunny … along with dutifully leaving some carrots for him to munch on, we pleaded with him to talk to his “friends” about not eating everything in our garden, please. This may come as a shock, but it didn’t work.
  • I made the mistake of telling my son that I occasionally spell my name wrong when I sign an email. Now, every once in a while, to crack himself up, he’ll just randomly blurt out, “Thanks, Brain!”

Happy spring. May the bunnies leave your garden alone. In addition, may your preferred baseball team remember how to hit the ball, which my team seems to have forgotten.

This Month in Digital Health: Beyond the Conversations With Well-Dressed People in Cushy Chairs

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Welcome to This Month in Digital Health, where I summarize articles that recently caught my eye to explain why I think they’re important. With ViVE and HIMSS behind us, I figured I’d shy away from all the product and partnership announcements that made headlines, which explains why this is a bit shorter than usual. There were still some compelling stories out there, from the usual AI and rural health challenges to ruminations about how seemingly competing health data exchange efforts will in fact complement each other.

AI: Everything everywhere all at once at the same time. A Health Affairs paper argued healthcare needs its AI bubble to burst, as organizations are chasing “innovation without substance.” It doesn’t help that large language models are susceptible to misinformation (just like people), health systems are still wrestling with human-in-the-loop approaches (focusing too much on individual outputs and not enough on scalable frameworks), and LLMs are impacting how people interact with search results (fewer clicks on reputable hospital websites, which of course isn’t a good thing). If nothing else, I suppose, robots can run the hospital cafeteria.

Rural health: Because healthcare loooooves to rush into things. KFF Health News is all over rural health transformation, where proposals range from investing most of the money (Wyoming) to using robots in maternity care (Alabama). Plus, apparently there’s some tension about plans that were drafted and approved, in no small part because states didn’t really have a lot of time to come up plans. That very well may have been the point – I’ve heard folks argue that CMS was looking to fund projects that were well past the planning stage – but the whole thing’s starting to look rather messy, if not ill-conceived.

CMS: TEFCA and the Health Tech Ecosystem are totally besties. It’s not the best look when you launch a data-sharing initiative and then have to come out and say it’s not competing with an existing data-sharing initiative with similar characteristics and motivations, as CMS and ASTP had to do regarding TEFCA and the Health Tech Ecosystem. Apparently, the ecosystem is an “accelerator,” and its work may (or may not) be folded into TEFCA at some point. Glad we cleared that all up.

ACCESS: With rates this low, who needs a doctor? The proposed annual rates for the ACCESS model (Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions) are, um, well, they’re not very high at all. A lot of folks are arguing that’s exactly the point, as the model’s meant to attract 1) entities that take a digital-first approach to chronic care and 2) patients that don’t necessarily need a lot of in-person care. I get it, but I’m not sure going out of your way to alienate physicians is really the best approach.

In other news:

See you next month, when there will be 95% fewer healthcare IT articles featuring photos of well-dressed people sitting in comfy chairs and holding microphones.

The Beastwood Files: February(ish) 2026

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The person in charge of maintaining my work schedule (me) gave me too many longform assignments in late February and early March, while the person in charge of maintaining my running schedule (also me) insisted I remain on track for my marathon on Memorial Day weekend, so (in what is beginning to be a recurring pattern) this post is appearing during the second week of the month.

Stuff I Wrote

Things I Did

  • Succeeded in getting my mother’s taxes done at the Senior Center in town (thanks, AARP volunteers!)
  • Went out of my way to participate in a social event (the annual party for the running club I recently joined)
  • Made Snow Mountain in the front yard amid two significant storms with “help” from my young assistant
  • Introduced my son to the concept of false spring during a 75-degree day in early March

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • A recent obsession with couch-cushion forts evolved into destroying said forts. It was determined that the dinosaurs living in the neighborhood should be made aware of the demolition schedule and potential for loud noises. “Be a news reporter,” my son said to me, not realizing just how prepared I would be for the moment. (Lest you think I’m a trombone player in my spare time, I’ve probably worn that fedora a half dozen times since buying it on our honeymoon in 2019 after failing to pack a hat for part of our trip.)
  • We all went cross country skiing for the first time (at Great Brook in Carlisle). My son took off on us as soon as he was strapped into his skis – which was great, except that neither of us were quite ready to chase him. (Not a bad problem to have, mind you.) We only went once this winter, but I’m pretty sure we’ll want to go again.
  • We spent quite a bit of time watching the Olympics, in part because it was 15 degrees out the first weekend of the Games. Our favorite sports were biathlon, bobsled, and ski mountaineering. I did not subject my family to watching the 50-kilometer cross country ski races in their entirety. We also really, really got into the ads.

Happy early Pi Day, which is one of the most important days of the year in the Beastwood household (because of pie, not math).

This Month (and Last Month, Too) in Digital Health: It’s Been a Long Time, So Here Are Some Long Reads

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Welcome to This Month in Digital Health, which looks at trends that got my attention and attempts to unpack why I think they’re important. We’re actually looking at almost two months’ worth of stuff here, as life caught up with me in January. As a result, there’s less focus on hard news – besides, you already read about all those AI releases – and more on analysis and commentary that looked interesting to me.

Will Oracle have to sell the EHR formerly known as Cerner? Oracle has committed $500-plus billion to AI data centers – enough that the company may need to lay off 30,000 people and sell off Cerner, which it bought for more than $28 billion less than 4 years ago. One report suggested Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are probably the only companies with enough cash to buy Cerner – and even then, would they want it? (Or will Epic decide now’s as good a time as any to make its very first acquisition?)

Prior authorization is better, but still not the best. As of Jan. 1, the timeline for prior authorization responses is half as long as it used to be. But providers say 72 hours for urgent care decisions is still too long – I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but I think they have a point – and add that “delays and hassles” persist. Payers have pledged to step up real-time decisions, but providers argue promises don’t equal actions.

Providers, payers are also at odds over bill disputes. The independent dispute resolution process kicked off years ago in response to the No Surprises Act. Payers accuse providers of attempting to inflate reimbursements, while providers argue the nuance of regulation favors insurers. Meanwhile, both wait for regulatory clarity, especially on what people can actually dispute.

Medicaid is in trouble. You already know that. The nation’s largest publicly operated health plan is L.A. Care, which serves 2.2 million Medicaid beneficiaries in Los Angeles County. The plan projects 30% of enrollees dropping off the rolls by 2028 – and straining the insurer’s finances – thanks to One Big Beautiful Act cuts. Process automation and other efficiency improvements can only do so much, I’m afraid.

A Medicare Advantage shell game in Arcadia. In parts of Oregon, Optum removed a bunch of doctors from Humana’s Medicare Advantage network just in time for open enrollment. Guess who was the only other MA insurer in those areas? If you guessed UnitedHealthcare – owned by the same company – then you win, um, well, no one really wins anything here. Not even the insurance giant, which expects revenue to decline in 2026 as it makes less money off Medicare Advantage.

New York bucks the patient data access trend. Various states have been extending protections for personal health information, what with HIPAA being 30 years old and all. Legislation in New York would have done the same – but Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed the bill at the end of last year, citing a broad scope coupled with stringent frameworks “which may discourage innovation.” Critics said the veto is a win for Big Tech; others described the bill as onerous.  

Seniors are quitting weight-loss drugs in droves. Roughly half of Americans over 65 who were prescribed GLP-1s stopped taking them within a year. There are plenty of possible reasons, from bad side effects to muscle loss (a particular concern for older patients) to loss of insurance coverage. Weight-loss pills could help, particularly for patients who don’t like injections, but daily doses present their own challenges.

Inpatient surgery won’t be a cash cow much longer. CMS is signaling it aims to phase out the list of inpatient-only surgical procedures, meaning more will move to outpatient facilities. That could save money for patients (and payers) but cut revenue for hospitals already strapped for cash. One option for bucking the trend: Optimize operating room capacity, largely through standardized processes.

Is it time for digital therapeutics to shine? In December, the FDA launched TEMPO, a pilot program for digital therapeutics tied to chronic condition management. The program could breathe some life into a struggling market segment; participating medical professionals can prescribe therapeutics before they’ve received FDA clearance, and real-world data from users would in turn inform clearance decisions.

For PCPs, fewer patients doesn’t mean less EHR time. Providers that make a concerted effort to reduce visit volume don’t spend equally less time plonking about in their EHRs. Researchers found PCPs who cut visit volume by nearly one-third only spent 21% less time in the EHR – and dreaded “pajama time” actually increased. There’s a straightforward explanation: After reducing visit volume, the patients that PCPs had left were in fact more complex.

Enjoy the rest of February, everyone.

The Beastwood Files: January(ish) 2026

A makeshift computer my son made using a box from a Costco delivery.
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The beginning of the year was, um, well, it was something, wasn’t it? I found it hard to be productive at times between the state of our nation, the pile of snow outside, the hole that has opened up in my schedule now that a retainer agreement is up, and the post-nasal drip that comes every winter but is still a heck of a lot better than the flu or COVID. (And this is despite my “assistant” building himself a “computer” to “do work” – complete with a “power source” he has the good sense to “unplug” when he’s all done, likely making the IT help desk veterans in my audience swoon.)

Stuff I Wrote

Things I Did

  • Succeeded in only having one coffee per day – and only occasionally hurting the tum-tum with too much black tea in the afternoon
  • Rediscovered salad kits as a good option for Busy Parents on the Go or Otherwise Unable to Locate Vegetables in the Refrigerator They Aren’t Already Sick of Eating
  • Failed miserably to put out a newsletter – though let’s be honest, 90% of it would have been the AI stories you already read
  • Learn what is a fatberg thanks to a children’s book about urban infrastructure
  • Read a book about Groundhog Day roughly eight times in the span of a week

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • During last month’s snow day – certainly justified, as we got close to two feet of snow – I found myself uttering the phrase, “If you want to interrupt Mommy’s meeting, she said it’s OK, but you need to put pants on.”
  • Also during said snow day, during my third trip outside to shovel, my son decided that we should have one big pile of snow next to our front walkway instead of two smaller piles. As a result, I dutifully spent an hour moving shovels full of snow approximately two feet to make Snow Mountain, which my son ascended and descended many times before it got too dark to keep playing.
  • We have discovered the Winters Olympics. Our favorite events so far are ski jump, ski and snowboard cross (with multiple simultaneous competitors), and biathlon (especially odd because we’ve never bene on skis and have never seen a rifle). We’ve also regaled our son with tales of how hard it was to watch Back In Our Day, when you were beholden to whatever NBC was willing to show you. This further reinforces my son’s proclamation at his self-determined conclusion of soccer (that is, not even halfway through the season): “I like watching sports more than playing sports.”

Happy rest of February. In case you’re wondering, People Who Prefer Summer: Yes, even though it’s very cold, I still prefer this to 85 degrees and humid, because in this weather I can bend over and tie my shoes without breaking into a sweat.