Weekly Health Tech Reads 6/28/2026

Cityblock is reportedly acquiring Homeward Health, gaining Homeward’s in-network Medicare Advantage contracts in Michigan with BCBS Michigan and Aetna. Homeward launched in early 2022 with $20 million in funding from General Catalyst, which is also an investor in Cityblock, and a narrative about how it was going to rethink rural care delivery. In August 2022, Homeward raised another $50 million at a $345 million valuation, as it gained early traction in Michigan, in what ultimately appears to serve as another tough reminder of how frothy that investment environment was. Homeward provides Cityblock with some interesting diversification opportunities to build upon in Medicare Advantage and rural care specifically.

UpDoc, a clinical AI startup, announced that its LLM received FDA clearance, along with $18 million in Seed funding. The WSJ Pro coverage of the clearance discussed UpDoc as a “concierge doctor,” although it appears the 510(k) clearance the company received is much more narrowly scoped to titrating insulin doses than what I’d think of as an AI doctor. Following the approval, the Cleveland Clinic will now initiate a 6 - 12 month pilot to see what the impact is on patient outcomes, which I thought was the point of an FDA approval. It raises lots of interesting questions about the right regulatory framework for AI in clinical care, and whether AI should be treated more like a medical device (as here) or more like a clinician practicing medicine. The regulatory approach being tested in Utah, which aligns to treating clinical AI much more like the practice of medicine, is one that conceptually makes much more sense to me.

Early analysis ACA rate filings for 2027 by Modern Healthcare indicates that payers are planning for another year of high premium rate increases, with a number of payers asking for 10%+ increases.

Elevance Health paid CMS $342 million as part of resolving the risk adjustment issues that led to CMS implementing sanctions that would have suspended new enrollments in Elevance MA plans later this year.

Alan, the French insurtech platform, raised ~$555 million, valuing the business at ~$6.3 billion. Prosus led the round. Alan’s CEO shared on LinkedIn that it generates ~$925 million in revenue, is growing at 53%+ annually, and is “profitable in France.” It seems worth noting that Alan is also live in Belgium, Spain, and Canada, which would seem to imply that the business is not actually profitable. We’ve seen the challenges that insuretech startups have had getting to scale profitability in the US over the last few years, so will be interesting to keep an eye on how Alan grows into it 6x revenue multiple.

Trase, an agentic operating system for regulated industries, raised $107 million in Seed funding. ARCH Venture Partners led the round. Trase’s press release highlights its work underway at Duke Health, where it has automated 5,000+ monthly faxes for the cardiology department, unlocking $285k in annual staff capacity for the department. Seems like a pretty logical AI deployment use case to me. Venture studio Red Cell Partners launched Trase with $10.5 million in pre-seed funding last fall.

Cadence, a remote patient monitoring platform, raised $100 million. Spark Capital led the round, along with an impressive list of other investors, including Thrive, General Catalyst, Coatue, B Capital, Memorial Hermann, and Duke Health. Cadence’s narrative in the press release is much broader than RPM, as it articulates a vision around an AI-powered remote care model for health systems like Duke. Cadence shared its ambition to scale up to 10 million patients, from its current state of 100,000 patients working with 20 health systems today. It’s a logical expansion for Cadence, given both the interest in AI care delivery models and the increasing scrutiny on fee-for-service RPM billing practices. Mario Aguilar’s coverage in Stat included a nice example of how this will be a meaningful shift for some of Cadence’s existing health system customers, highlighting how Rush will need to rethink billing while also running it through an AI compliance review process.

Hera, a care coordination platform for original Medicare beneficiaries, raised $27 million. Bain Capital Ventures led the round. Hera is providing care coordination services to over 1,000 seniors since it launched last year, with plans to expand into 25 states this year. It appears to be leveraging Chronic Care Management (CCM) codes to provide these services to original Medicare beneficiaries, leveraging 1099’d RNs and Social Workers to bill incident to providers. It’s one of a handful of plays we’ve seen recently in this market, and we’ll be keeping an eye on how this market unfolds over the coming years.

Upside, a platform addressing housing instability, raised $20 million. Aquiline led the round. Upside is live in 10 states focused on the Medicaid population, and has contracts with 20 payers. The engagement numbers are quite impressive: Upside reports connecting with 90% of eligible members, enrolling 85% of those it connects with, and stabilizing housing for 50% of all eligible members. While we generally talk about the headwinds facing the Medicaid market, it certainly appears that there are some pockets like this that are seeing momentum. Every time I think about payers addressing housing needs, I go back to this excellent Bloomberg article on UHG’s MyConnections program from back in 2019, which does a really nice job outlining both the societal opportunity at hand and the finances of these sorts of approaches.

I am quite curious about the concept of “lasering” in the stop loss market, which is the idea that carriers can essentially carve out high-risk individuals from a group policy by applying a significantly higher deductible to that one individual. It is being used to navigate high costs around oncology, specialty drugs, and complicated surgeries. Marsh and McLennan recently highlighted how it helped a 600-person company save ~$1 million by recommending a “laser” for a single employee who was potentially going to have a high cost procedure. Marsh did an analysis, determined they didn’t expect the procedure would happen in the next year, and negotiated the laser cost down to $700k versus $865k. I have lots of questions about the ripple effects of this if this approach continues to emerge.

Michael Stratton and the Health Data Atlas crew shared a good explainer on the growth in freestanding emergency departments, and the implications of their growth in a handful of states. Texas is the leading state here, apparently with roughly 25% of ED visits treated in freestanding EDs. It highlights how HCA, Atrium Health, and Nutex Health are some of the bigger players in this market. Regular HTN readers will recall that Nutex Health has been causing a stir in Idaho over its aggressive billing strategy centered around remaining out-of-network and leveraging the No Surprises Act.

Speaking of No Surprises Act shenanigans, Elevance shared data looking at the 25 most common planned surgical and endoscopic procedures in Elevance’s IDR data. The differences in payments between the IDR process and FFS Medicare is staggering, with a median payment 67.4x higher and the mean payment 144.8x higher. While I know both providers and payers feel strongly about their respective arguments around the NSA, these sorts of results continue to make zero sense to me.