SAN FRANCISCO—Trump administration healthcare leaders are making a big splash at this year's J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.
During an event Monday evening, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, M.D., was a featured speaker and he brought other key CMS leaders along with him, including Chris Klomp, director of Medicare and Deputy Administrator of CMS, Dan Brillman, director of Medicaid and CHIP and Deputy Administrator at CMS, Amy Gleason, Acting Administrator, U.S. DOGE Service and Stephanie Carlton, Deputy Administrator and Chief of Staff. Watch for more coverage of that discussion.
Oz also is slated to speak during a keynote panel today as part of the JPM conference, along with Carlton, Klomp and Gleason.
And there is a closed-door roundtable event featuring CMS officials later Tuesday afternoon, Fierce Healthcare has learned.
Also on tap today, non-profit health systems CommonSpirit Health, WellSpan Health and Hackensack Meridian Health will share updates with investors along with health tech companies Progyny, Phreesia and GoodRx and private companies Cityblock Health, Abridge and Verily.
We'll also be sharing news and trends from our JPM meetings and interviews. For a look at some of the biggest trends to watch this week, check out our preview here. You can also catch up on yesterday's headlines with our Day 1 story.
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.
UPDATED: 9:45 a.m. PT
Hackensack Meridian Health highlights ambulatory construction, partnerships
Hackensack Meridian Health made clear Tuesday that it is among the ranks of nonprofit health systems ramping up their non-hospital footprint.
The $10 billion organization runs over 500 locations beyond its 18 hospitals, and has been working hard to boost that count. Since 2021, it's pursued half a million square feet of collective expansions to its ambulatory services, with 15 centers opened recently, five more opening in 2026 and seven more in active planning.
"That's what healthcare consumers want—they want this community care, and they can really get it in very appropriate settings," CEO Robert Garrett told attendees. "So that'll continue to be a focus. But we have really invested significant capital, and it really this has helped us to expand our reach and our market share."
The effort includes "nontraditional partnerships" to expand access, the executive continued. An arrangement with One Medical, for instance, will open 20 brick-and-mortar primary care centers in Hackensack Meridian Health's home state of New Jersey, two of which are already running and two more are expected later this year. There's also a virtual primary care partnership with K Health that provides access to affiliated physicians 24/7.
Other collaborations highlighted in the presentation go beyond direct care delivery. Garrett noted "a great partnership" with Uber on transportation services, Clear for patient navigation and Google on an AI platform for various focus areas like patient experience and clinician burnout.
All that's not to say the hospitals are being neglected. About $2.3 billion has gone into the organization's academic medical centers, including a new tower at the flagship Hackensack University Medical Center, while community hospitals have seen new emergency departments and other service line developments, the CEO said. — Dave Muoio
UPDATED: 8:45 a.m. PT
CommonSpirit teases divestures, outlines AI strategy
New divestiture announcements and lasting AI adoption are in the cards for CommonSpirit Health, CEO Lassiter Wright told attendees Tuesday morning.
In a presentation that covered the $40 billion Catholic system’s ongoing turnaround plan and, more extensively, its ongoing AI initiatives, the executive pointed to strategic opportunities where CommonSpirit can collaborate with other organizations or strengthen its existing market presence.
However, “we are making some decisions to transition parts of our portfolio to other providers who we believe can do that community better than we can,” he said. “So those decisions we made, we made about a half dozen of those (since our merger). We'll be announcing a couple [more] in the next quarter. And then we're also looking very aggressively at, how do we augment our portfolio, particularly around ambulatory care, and particularly around communities that need us more intently than we have today.”
The portfolio realignment is concurrent with efforts to strengthen CommonSpirit’s operating margins to a level the room’s bond investors “would be very comfortable with” by 2028, he said.
The slides on finance and strategy came alongside word on CommonSpirit's current AI posture—242 deployed AI tools, $100 million in generated annual value and an institute focused on upskilling workers to stem the tide of job reductions. — Dave Muoio
UPDATED: 11:15 a.m. PT
Baxter launches Dynamo smart beds in U.S.
Baxter International unveiled the U.S. launch of its Dynamo Series of smart stretcher at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on Tuesday morning.
The company said that the Dynamo line is designed to make it easier for care teams to focus on patient care by easing the physical and mental burden they face on the job.
For example, the beds are designed to minimize the need for patient bed transfers through a variety of positioning options. The integrated stirrups allow for a range of procedures to be completed on the same bed, including pelvic and obstetric exams, according to the announcement.
The beds also offer multiple electric-powered options for positioning the head, knee and body, Baxter said. Wireless connectivity allows teams to share key data to the electronic medical record and enables remote patient monitoring.
The Dynamo stretchers are also built to prevent patient falls and improve their comfort and safety, according to the announcement.
“The stretcher is a vital bridge between care teams and patients,” said James Teaff, president of Care & Connectivity Solutions at Baxter, in the announcement. “We designed the Dynamo Series to strengthen these connections by addressing some of the toughest challenges care teams face, including reducing the need for patient transfers and simplifying patient positioning across a range of procedures.” — Paige Minemyer
UPDATED: 2:35 p.m. PT
Teladoc previews 2026 strategy: adding more value to visits
Teladoc CEO Chuck Divita presented to investors in San Francisco on Monday, largely hitting the same points as on the company's quarterly investor calls. The company's focus over the last year has been expanding its integrated care business, moving into the insurance market with BetterHelp and growing each of those segments internationally.
However, in a fireside chat with J.P. Morgan's Lisa Gill, Divita offered unique insights into his business decisions since taking the reins of the company in June 2024. He called 2026 an execution year for the business.
Divita discussed some of Teladoc’s new offerings for 2026, which include additional service lines and specialist consultations for its urgent care business, 24/7 Care.
It is also adding new connected devices, continuous glucose monitor integrations, in-home lab tests coupled with virtual visits, and AI enabled models to identify trends and trigger an additional intervention
“I'm excited about these new offerings for 2026,” Divita said. “We entered 2025 [with a similar] product portfolio we had before. So these are several new moves that I think at least give us an opportunity to talk to clients and in new ways, in terms of how we can add value.”
Teladoc now serves 102 million Americans, about a third of the U.S. population, according to its Q3 2025 earnings, and its membership grew ten percent from 2024 to 2025. Divita said going forward, while he sees potential for membership to grow, the membership growth matters less than the continued use and value of its services to customers.
He also offered investors some brief comments on the financial impacts of taking BetterHelp into the insurance market. While gross margin may be lower than the direct-to-consumer model, the CEO expects more customers to sign up and complete more visits when insurance coverage is an option.
The mental health solution is currently covered by insurance in 12 states and D.C., and Divita expects measurable gains each quarter in its push towards a nationwide covered offering.
Chronic care has become a strategic part of Teladoc’s business, and it offers several programs for cardiometabolic conditions. Divita said Teladoc’s business position in the highly competitive market of digital health solutions for chronic care comes from its ability to understand a patient’s comorbidities and address them.
Teladoc’s use of AI is also aiding it to collect more insights from patients and surface them at the point of care.
The company continues to search for a chief financial officer to replace Mala Murthy, who left the company in November. — Emma Beavins
UPDATED: 2:49 p.m. PT
SSM Health on track for profitable 2025
Though the results aren’t final, SSM Health’s operations are on track for a profitable 2025 due in no small part to the work of its revenue cycle team, Chief Financial Officer Kevin Smith said during a session.
The $12 billion organization had logged a narrow -0.6% operating loss in 2024, but also that year was forced to write down $115 million in claims denials and had a final denial rate of 6.5% percent on net patient service revenue.
In 2025, however, the system was “able to cut that in half” and expects the 0.6% operating margin it reported after nine months to cross the finish line into the black. It also would have “been close to break even” if that $115 million of denials had been normalized the year before, Smith noted, underscoring the importance of ensuring revenue cycle resiliency.
“When we talked about resiliency, we ensure that we communicated across the entire organization a culture of stability,” he said. “And what I mean by this [is] taking a look at every single avenue relative to our clinical infrastructure as well as our administrative infrastructure to develop a culture of change management, so people understood exactly how to accomplish that.” — Dave Muoio
UPDATED: 8:00 a.m.
Women's health is a smart bet for investors
There's an ongoing perception that women's health is a niche category and a nascent opportunity for investors.
But a new analysis rewrites the book on women's health investment and makes the case that it's a substantial, established segment of healthcare with a long track record of value creation.
Women's health, which spans gynecologic health to fertility and maternal health to oncology, has produced more than $100 billion in exits--acquisitions and IPOs--in the past 25 years, according to a new research from AOA Dx, a women’s health diagnostics company.
The research, unveiled at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on Tuesday, looks at 276 exits from 2000 to 2025 with 27 billion-dollar mega deals, and nearly half of all exits happened in the past five years.
Twenty-three women’s health companies have achieved $1B+ "unicorn" status, nearly half since 2020, Ten of the 23 $1 billion+ exits occurred between 2022–2024, signaling a step-change in exit velocity, the report said. Select 2025 transactions expand the total to 27 and reinforce the trajectory
Women’s health exits have been led by gynecologic health at $29.6 billion and oncology at $24 billion.
"The data reveal a sector that is proven, accelerating, and strategically important, with exit activity and exit value growth concentrated in recent years and sustained demand from strategic acquirers proving long-term commitment to the category," Anna Jeter, co-founder of AOA Dx and lead author, wrote in the report.
Historic successes in diagnostics, biopharma, and devices prove the value of women' health, while expanding activity in menopause, chronic disease, immunology, and oncology signal a broad and accelerating opportunity, the report authors wrote.
The report defines women’s health as conditions that are unique to women, manifest differently due to sex-based biology, or disproportionately affect women. The researchers evaluated the category through the lens of exits, transactions in which a company is acquired (M&A) or goes public (IPO), exit value scale, and capital efficiency — rather than funding momentum, consumer adoption, or public awareness.
Many women's health companies have been miscategorized or mislabeled in investor databases, which skews the tally of exits in the category, according to the report.
"Many significant women’s health exits that predate these classifications are still recorded under broader verticals
such as diagnostics, medical devices, or healthcare services, rather than identified as women’s health transactions," the report author wrote.
In more recent datasets, companies are often categorized primarily by technology type, such as diagnostic, therapeutic or device) or clinical area, such as oncology or cardiology, rather than by whether their products are purpose-built to address women’s health needs.
"This limits the ability to see women’s health as a cohesive category and leads to an underestimation of its historical scale and exit activity," the report author wrote. — Heather Landi