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The Strategist in Brief: August 28, 2025 · The Strategy Catalyst Dispatch

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  This is the strategist in brief.
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  For August 28th, 2025, president Trump revoked a Biden Era executive order on competition in healthcare and other industries signaling a shift towards more permissive antitrust policy.
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  At the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, the rollback could intensify the arms race for scale between payers and providers, but the window for action could be short if policy shifts again in 2028.
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  Private equity firms will also have more opportunities for practice roll-ups and specialty acquisitions, intensifying competition over healthcare assets.
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  Moving on to our next market scan, the past several weeks featured major announcements from EHR and AI vendors, epic and Veiled new AI powered tools for ambient listening, revenue cycle management, and patient facing agents.
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  Considering the company's scale and market share dominance.
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  These offerings could crowd out rival products and give health systems easy default options.
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  Oracle Health is launching a new AI powered electronic health record that allows clinicians to use voice commands.
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  The company is clearly playing catch up with Epic, but renewed competition in the EHR space could ultimately be a boon for health systems.
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  Finally, Highmark Health and Abridge are collaborating on a new AI powered prior authorization process that aims to capture needed information and speed up the approval process.
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  In another piece of news, UnitedHealth Group closed its acquisition of home health and hospice provider a Medicis.
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  After settling a Department of Justice antitrust Challenge, health systems might have fewer options for discharging patients from acute care if Optum reserves slots for its own patients.
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  Health systems with their own home care and hospice service lines might find themselves competing with Optum on pricing and staffing.
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  And now our final story, Cardinal Health entered into agreement to acquire urology MSO Solaris Health for$1.9 billion.
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  Suppliers like Cardinal McKesson and Kora are expanding into specialty care delivery channels.
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  In order to secure recurring higher margin revenue streams, that they can also leverage their existing competencies on the distribution side.
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  This strategy could complicate Cardinal's vendor relationships with health systems that now see themselves in competition for outpatient volumes in certain specialties.
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  That concludes this week's strategist.
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  In brief, be sure to check out the full version on the web@hmacademy.com.
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  Thanks for listening.