By Amy Oliver – A rural hospital leader told me recently that she had finally upgraded her whole hospital’s internet from 200 Mbps to 1 Gbps, and she was genuinely excited about it, because in rural health, those are the wins. I think about that every time someone talks about rolling out AI, telehealth, and cybersecurity in rural communities like it’s a simple switch to flip.
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By Dan L. Dodson – This month’s Defense Desk, brought to you by Fortified Health Security, is a perfect blend for Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Learn what six years of hosting a monthly roundtable for healthcare cybersecurity leaders has taught Dan about the value of building the kind of room where that conversation is possible, and how you can build one yourself.
By Zunaid Khan – A payment can reach the bank while the billing system still shows an unpaid claim. For a small practice, that gap creates avoidable follow-up work and can lead to an incorrect patient statement. Electronic remittance advice and electronic funds transfer help reduce manual entry, but reliable posting still depends on enrollment, accurate matching and a clear process for exceptions.
By Alexander Vitenas – A payment collected months before surgery and a payment collected after a procedure can leave the same balance due. But they tell different stories. One may be a prepayment tied to a planned treatment before a final charge existed. The other may be payment against an established balance. Looking only at the final number can hide how it came to be.
By Beth Friedman – Health information (HI) professionals have been the recognized guardians of patient data accuracy since AHIMA’s founding in 1928. At this year’s AHIMA 2026 Conference in San Antonio, that timeless commitment to data quality and integrity echoed through every educational session and hallway conversation.
By Easton Hallock – Most behavioral health EHR demos follow the same script: a clean intake, a polished note, a claim that drops with one click. The workflows that decide whether a program gets paid rarely make it on screen, because they only appear when real patients move between levels of care, payers and clinicians.
By Karthikeya Rekulapalli – An AI agent can find where a missing message failed before an integration engineer picks up the phone. Diana called Jonathan from 3 West because the pharmacy was not receiving her unit’s supply scans. Jonathan, a data engineer on our integration team, started checking interfaces in the integration engine. 3 hour later, he still had no answer.
By Ivor Campbell – As the world stands on the brink of arguably the most significant technological revolution in human history, the advancement of agentic artificial intelligence that will place decision making systems with humanity destroying potential in the hands of robots, there is one important question we should all be asking.
The thought leaders in our community are good about sharing their thoughts on the issues of today. Here are the top read and shared guest posts of September that we think deserve sharing again.