SAN FRANCISCO—The annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference is officially underway, bringing the healthcare and biopharma industries' biggest wheelers and dealers to San Francisco. For a look at some of the biggest trends to watch this week, check out our preview here.
Fierce Healthcare reporters are on the ground covering the biggest investor event of the year. Monday, we'll be covering non-profit health systems AdventHealth, Ascension, Intermountain Health, Cleveland Clinic, Mass General Brigham and Providence along with health tech companies Waystar, Teladoc Health, Oura and Judi Health. OpenEvidence, the AI-powered medical search engine, also presents today.
We'll also be sharing news and trends from our JPM meetings and interviews.
Keep up with news from biopharma thanks to the Fierce Pharma team in their daily tracker, too.
Follow along with all of our JPM coverage here
UPDATE Monday, 7:30 p.m. PT
System integration drives savings, quality gains, health system execs say
Savings, synergies and efficiencies stemming from integration were a repeated focal point in nonprofit system presentations, regardless of whether the gains stemmed from a recent merger or a tighter hold on existing units.
For the former, Advocate Health CEO Eugene Woods said the system has notched $1.5 billion in annual operating savings since merging three years ago into the nation’s third-largest nonprofit health system, with $38 billion in annual revenue. The savings came alongside the creation of 23,000 new jobs, meaning the $1.5 billion reflects growth and “is not because we reduced headcount.”
Chief Financial Officer Brad Clark, while running down the system’s 35% revenue growth since 2022 and expected 4% operating margin for 2025, noted “significant” savings among vendor contracts over the last three years and other best practices around throughput and labor optimization.
“The learnings that we’re able to port from area to area, market to market, have been really accretive to the organization,” he said.
Advocate Health has also been making gains on non-financial measures like hospital quality since its merger, Woods said. Whereas the system had five hospitals given “A” safety ratings by LeapFrog last spring, it’s now up to 24 and expects a higher count in the coming release.
“You’ve heard a lot of debate nationally … whether, when organizations get bigger, do they actually move the dial on quality?” he said. “We have a lot of proof points in that the regard.”
Mass General Brigham’s CEO, Anne Klibanski, M.D., outlined a different type of integration effort underway at the $22.8 billion academic nonprofit.
Announced about two years back and since dubbed “For Every Patient,” she said the effort to realign the teams across MGB’s various facilities under singular departments and leadership has so far saved over 1,800 lives (though Klibanski not specify how that count was reached). She also credited the integration for helping reduce observed-to-expected length of stay by 10% systemwide throughout 2025, decreased wait times for inpatient behavioral healthcare at EDs and medical/surgical units by 31% and increased monthly inpatient transfers by 8.8% year over year.
These efforts, Klibanski summarized, help the organization achieve stronger outcomes and open the door to greater success across its other efforts, such as clinical research.
“With integration comes scaled and thoughtful investments, and we are continuing to invest in our people, in our innovators and our new technologies that will enable us to do research more efficiently and more effectively,” she said.
UPDATE Monday, 12:40 p.m. PT
Waystar CEO Matt Hawkins presents data, AI strategy to investors
Revenue cycle management company Waystar presented its innovation strategy to investors on Monday at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. During the presentation, Waystar CEO Matt Hawkins touted the company’s proprietary data and use of AI as a key differentiator for it heading into 2026.
Hawkins said the company’s total addressable market (TAM) will grow from $20- to $25 billion by 2030 and that the introduction of AI-powered automation to the industry will eventually push the market to $55 billion.
Hawkins shared some early progress from its acquisition of Iodine Software in July 2025. He said the company is “tracking” on the integration plans between Iodine and Waystar.
Because Iodine processes one in three clinical hospital discharges, Waystar can now access troves of new data that it plans to use to train and refine AI models.
In 2025, Waystar processed more than 7.5 billion insurance transactions. Combined with Iodine’s data, the company has a proprietary dataset of clinical, financial and administrative data that Hawkins said is “undervalued” in the market.
Waystar will leverage the dataset to deliver new AI models and help create a fully autonomous revenue cycle in healthcare. It took steps in this direction on Monday with the announcement of new, agentic AI capabilities in its platform.
The company also aims to use its software to eradicate denials with integrated documentation and coding revenue protection, accelerate reimbursement and expedite prior authorizations. Hawkins stated multiple times that many prior authorization denials begin in the midpoint of the revenue cycle, due to manual entry or inefficient notations in structured notes.
By using over 150 AI-trained models to filter unstructured clinical notes, he hopes to help prevent missing documentation and get all Waystar financial claims approved. Currently, its first pass claim acceptance rate is nearly 99% across its platform, Hawkins said.
“Our mission is simple,” Hawkins said. “It's to simplify the revenue cycle, simplify the payment process using modern, powerful technology that will enable the providers whom we work with to spend more time caring for patients and, quite frankly, less time trying to figure out how they're going to get their organizations paid.” — Emma Beavins
UPDATE Monday, 12:20 p.m. PT
Intermountain CEO urges health systems to address political tension, policy upheaval with collaboration
More so than many of his colleagues, Intermountain Healthcare President and CEO Rob Allen was blunt about his and other provider organizations’ roles in facing down the major issues facing healthcare and broader society.
Though he and CFO Clay Ashdown certainly didn’t skimp on the financial or strategic components of their presentation to investors, Allen spoke of recent months as “a time of great divisiveness and challenge in our society." He called on other health system executives in the audience to address the issue head on by emphasizing to their communities and staff the common goal of effective healthcare delivery.
“In my organization, 69,000 caregivers, the political ideology, the divisive rhetoric, ranges the span from one end to the other end of the spectrum—as is the case I suspect with all of your organizations,” he said during his presentation. “But as I look at that, I actually get excited about our opportunity. Why? Because we are a place of healing. We are a place where we bring people together and rise above the rhetoric and the fray of the day for a really important purpose. … We have an opportunity, and as health systems we have to take the challenge … to rise above, lock arms in a common cause of good, and heal.”
In the spirit of collaboration, Allen’s presentation pointed to the work of Intermountain’s Mindshare Institute, unveiled last year by the system and its partners to work on developing new business models in care. The initiative last month launched AeroTerra Health, which is focused on improving nationwide medical transport and is expected “to save patients, payers and providers several hundred million dollars per year,” he said.
More directly, Allen said Intermountain has kept an open dialogue with healthcare officials at the Trump administration with a goal of steering industry disruption on topics like drug pricing and value-based care in a constructive direction.
“As you look at the world shaking, and it has been shaking, our desire has not [been] to stop the shaking—because we don’t know how to do that—but our desire has been to engage and help the pieces fall in good places so they can be foundational blocks to build on in the future,” he said.
“We’ve had the opportunity by engaging with CMS to be a part of seven different workstreams. … We’re excited to have a voice at the table to make sure those pieces land in the right place, because we know the current administration wants to change things and so we want to be part of the solution along the way. In addition, our health plan has been engaged in helping to review the Medicare Star Ratings for Medicare Advantage, and some new rules coming out are going to reflect some of those involvements of our teams.” —Dave Muoio
UPDATE Monday, 11:30 a.m. PT
Academic systems' JV tackles ambulatory expansion in Florida
Tampa General Hospital and Mass General Brigham unveiled a new joint venture that will bring a broader network of coordinated outpatient services to Florida’s East Coast.
The ambulatory venture will span areas like primary care, oncology and ambulatory surgery, but begins with a cobranded radiation oncology center slated to open before the end of the year in Palm Beach Gardens. The academic systems also plan to expand the 20-location Tampa General Physicians Network with new advanced training options and opportunities to collaborate on clinical research.
The pair have previously collaborated on a slew of projects focused on Florida’s west coast, Tampa General Hospital’s home turf.
UPDATE Monday, 10:30 a.m. PT
Providence CEO announces 'strong return-to-office policy'
About halfway through this morning's nonprofit health system presentations, Providence CEO Erik Wexler earned a sharp reaction from audience members when he delivered news that the organization's whole workforce will be returning to the office.
The decision was shared as the bookend of a presentation that largely highlighted Providence's multi-year, $2 billion financial turnaround, which executives credited to operating discipline and substantial reductions to the system's non-acute care portfolio (with hints of additional hospital transactions to come in 2026).
The "strong return-to-office policy," Wexler said, to several audible gasps among the audience, would help strengthen the organization's culture and development.
"We've worked really hard in 2025 to advance our culture, to embrace the people who work with us in our communities," he said during the presentation. "...There are 100,000-plus of our people that go to work every day, they endure that drive, they're there for the people that we serve, including each other. And we've got somewhere around 10,000 or 20,000 that we're leaving behind. We are now committed to not leaving them behind—young people that should be our future leaders that need mentorship or coaching, people that when they're together in the room can create more innovation and enjoy each other. So part of our cultural improvement will be how we bring ourselves together for the good of the people that we serve."
Wexler did not share news of the policy change in an organization-wide memo on 2026's workforce goals shared with employees last week. That letter pointed to more than $600 million in planned pay increases and other workforce development priorities—which the CEO indirectly acknowledged was "because of the difficult choices we made in 2025." That included multiple rounds of layoffs that, according to today's presentation, helped reduce Providence's total headcount by about 5,000 people as of its most recently closed quarter. —Dave Muoio
UPDATE Monday, 9:30 a.m. PT
AdventHealth outlines platform-fueled AI work, outpatient growth progress
AdventHealth set the tone Monday morning with a solid mix of what to expect from this year’s health system presentations: updates on platform adoption and consolidation, non-acute care expansions, an acknowledgement of long-term financial headwinds but an emphasis on improving margins and scale.
The system, which has over 108,000 employees across 57 managed or affiliated hospitals and more than 100 other locations, has spent “north of a billion dollars over the last five years in platforming the company,” CEO David Banks told attendees. That includes a foundation built on Epic and extends to the WorkDay HR platform that was launched companywide just two weeks ago (“and everyone got paid in the first pay cycle, we’re happy about that,” he added).
AdventHealth also now has 80 use cases running through its AI engine, which Banks said helps create more “friendly” interactions for patients and employees. Though the system is “obviously all developing some AI on our own, we are leading with leveraging off of our strategic partners as accelerators for our AI journey,” CFO Paul Rathbun said.
“The [AI rollout] I’m most excited about is our smartroom deployment,” Banks said. “In partnership with [hellocare.ai] we’re putting in all 13,000 of our inpatient rooms and ED rooms this new technology. It’s a $60 million systemwide investment. We think this will fundamentally change the experience that patients and their families have, and is a game-changer for our providers, [and] for consultants and ways to provide remote and tele-services in new and interesting ways.”
As for the financial highlights, the executives highlighted for potential investors 15.7% year-over-year revenue growth through the first 11 months of 2025 and $290 million in EBITDA growth (both excluding federal emergency funds). Operating income rose from nearly $2 billion to almost $2.5 billion. Within volumes, admissions rose 6%, surgeries by 8.8%, ED visits by 6.6% and ambulatory visits by 7.9%.
“As all of us did, we struggled a little bit during the pandemic and have now exceeded those stable operating margins over the last two years,” the CFO said. “That has been, obviously, the strong growth we’ve experienced, and our cost work has driven that. I am very pleased [with] where we’re at, because we are all facing a lot of regulatory and reimbursement uncertainty, and I’m glad we have a little bit of headroom as we manage through the coming time.”
Days cash on hand has consistently grown from 181 days in 2022 to 253 as of November, while total debt to capitalization has shrunk to 17.1%. AdventHealth is projecting $7.3 billion in strategic capital capacity from 2026 to 2030.
The executives made it clear that the improving performance and balance sheet “will be to further and fund the mission of AdventHealth” through increased growth, executives said.
Namely, that’s headlined by plans for AdventHealth to expand the primary health division it introduced to conference attendees two years ago, targeting 2.9 million patient visits by 2030. Banks added the system, though “late to the party,” has seen “very strong growth” within its ambulatory surgical business, thanks in part to partnerships.
AdventHealth is also still acquiring and building new hospitals, as well as expanding tertiary and quaternary facilities, in both its home region as well as in expansion states like Texas, executives noted. —Dave Muoio
UPDATE Monday, 7:30 a.m. PT
The conference's nonprofit track is kicking things off bright and early in a packed off-site meeting space. In opening remarks before the day's first presentation, the session's host touted this year's record number of more than 150 health systems in attendance. The comments also included quips regarding the week's pleasant weather forecast, a welcome contrast to the wet skies of some recent years as attendees travel from meeting to meeting. —Dave Muoio
UPDATE Monday, 7 a.m. PT
Waystar goes all-in on agentic AI for revenue cycle
Waystar, a healthcare payment software maker, launched agentic AI capabilities, saying it "represents the next evolution" of the company's platform.
A year ago, at JPM 2025, the company rolled out Waystar AltitudeAI, a comprehensive set of AI capabilities for providers, including a new generative AI innovation focused on appealing denied claims. This latest announcement builds on the company's AI ongoing investments in AI innovation.
Waystar's broader innovation roadmap includes additional agentic intelligence to expand automation across the revenue cycle, executives said in a press release. Waystar's ambition is to build an "autonomous" revenue cycle, powered by an "end-to-end agentic network that continuously acts within workflows, executes defined tasks and learns from outcomes with minimal intervention," according to the company.
The new agentic AI capabilities will help create a smarter revenue cycle operation speed up prior authorization to ensure more accurate reimbursement, according to the company, while also preventing denials through integrated documentation, coding and charge capture revenue protection. The agentic AI also will recommend corrections automatically based on historical denial insights to create clean, accurate and compliant claims and expedite recovery through AI-powered clinical appeals.
Waystar's AI technology leverages proprietary data from more than 7.5 billion annual transactions and one in three
The company claims that its AltitudeAI, which includes generative AI capabilities targeting denial prevention and recovery, has helped its clients prevent $15.5 billion
"Waystar AltitudeAI prevented billions of dollars in denials last year," Matt Hawkins, Waystar CEO said in a statement. "With that momentum, agentic AI built on an unparalleled proprietary dataset accelerates our vision for the industry's first autonomous revenue cycle platform and advances our mission to simplify healthcare payments for providers and their patients."
Hawkins will present Waystar's innovation strategy to investors today at 11:15 a.m. PT. —Heather Landi
Tempus inks partnerships with health systems for precision oncology
Tempus, an AI and precision medicine company, inked a multi-year strategic collaboration with NYU Langone Health to push forward advanced molecular profiling and data-driven insights for cancer patients.
The collaboration will support NYU Langone Health’s Center for Molecular Oncology at the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center, a comprehensive, pan-cancer initiative.
The research seeks to enhance genomic diagnostics to improve patient outcomes, inform future clinical practice, and accelerate the development and validation of novel assays and algorithmic diagnostics, the organizations said.
As part of this work, the two organizations are launching a prospective observational study titled, “Serial Molecular Profiling and Monitoring of Human Cancer,” in which patients enrolled in the study will be sequenced throughout their treatment journey in an effort to collect the longitudinal data critical to this research. The collaboration, which evolved independently from Tempus’ relationship as a trusted provider of NGS testing services, also includes a series of subsequent studies focused on assay validation, biomarker discovery, biological modeling, real-world data analysis, and the development of AI-powered predictive algorithms.
“This strategic collaboration will further our ability to analyze cutting-edge serial molecular profiling technology in the routine care of patients at the Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health,” said Shridar Ganesan, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Center for Molecular Oncology at Perlmutter Cancer Center. “This approach will enable us to better understand the biology of individual cancers, inform our ability to implement and develop targeted therapies, and assess response and emerging resistance.”
Also on Monday at JPM, Tempus unveiled a partnership with Northwestern Medicine to expand access to genomic testing for the health system's cancer patients. The goal is to provide nearly every patient across cancer types, including patients with early-stage cancer diagnoses, access to genomic testing.
“The collaboration with Tempus will substantially augment our existing precision oncology capabilities. Northwestern Medicine will now offer next-generation sequencing to patients with earlier-stage cancers,” said Howard Chrisman, M.D., President and CEO of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare. “The data generated from this approach will allow us to rapidly adopt novel treatments and facilitate the design of innovative clinical trials aimed at developing personalized cancer treatments.”
As part of the collaboration, Tempus will offer NM access to its genomic testing including solid tissue, DNA and RNA profiling, liquid biopsy and minimal residual disease (MRD).
Northwestern Medicine provides comprehensive cancer care, including state-of-the-art therapies and clinical trials. The health system is home to The Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.
Tempus executives are presenting at JPM today at 1:30 p.m. PT and the company also announced preliminary, unaudited results for the fourth quarter and full year 2025 with revenue for the year coming in at $1.27 billion, representing about 83% growth year-over-year. —Heather Landi
UPDATE Monday, 10:30 p.m. PT
Judi Health banking on incumbents under pressure
When Judi Health, then Capital Rx, was founded in 2017, there was limited appetite in the industry for firms looking to shake up the status quo.
Over time, political and social pressure on the pharmacy benefit management space’s so-called “Big Three” has opened the door for up-and-comers like Judi to really chip away at their gains, CEO A.J. Loiacono said Monday at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.
Loiacono said the first five years of the company’s life marked “the era of market indifference.” But he expects the momentum behind companies like Judi to continue over the next several years.
“I remember very clearly, I was pitching a national TPA on our pharmacy benefit services, and the person came from a large healthcare company at their prior job, and they looked at me and they said, ‘Is that all you have, moral outrage?’”
“I said, ‘For now, yes,’” he said, “but we didn't give up.”
The company rebranded under the Judi name in September, a brand that aims to more fully represent the breadth of its platform. It’s also in the process of making the branding switch from Capital Rx to Judi Rx for its PBM unit, Loiacono said.
The goal is to build an enterprise health platform that tracks a claim across all stages of processing, and to do so across multiple types of benefits, including pharmacy and medical as well as ancillary products like dental and vision.
Making this work is designed to ultimately create a more personalized and simplified care journey for the member, Loiacono said.
“A unified back end unlocks a seamless and personalized front end,” per a marketing video shown at the session. — Paige Minemyer