Technology

New Medicaid Rules Threaten to Deepen the Rural Healthcare Crisis

Published

3 months ago

June 15, 2026

With 41.2% of rural hospitals already operating in the red and 417 facilities vulnerable to closure, new work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks risk pushing eligible patients off coverage for paperwork reasons rather than true ineligibility.

WASHINGTON, June 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — New Medicaid work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks risk creating an unintended rural healthcare access problem by pushing eligible patients off coverage for paperwork reasons rather than true ineligibility, AmeriTrust Solutions warns. That threat is landing at a time when rural providers are already under severe pressure: more than 40% of rural hospitals are operating at a loss, 417 are vulnerable to closure, and essential services such as obstetrics, chemotherapy, and general surgery are disappearing from rural communities.

The deeper risk is administrative churn. The Commonwealth Fund reports one in 10 Medicaid enrollees loses and regains coverage within 12 months, and approximately 70% of disenrollments since unwinding have been procedural. The same analysis warns that requiring adults in Medicaid expansion populations to renew eligibility every six months instead of annually would increase churn. For rural providers, that instability can quickly become a revenue problem: in the 10 states that have not adopted Medicaid expansion, 52.2% of rural hospitals are already operating in the red.

“When eligible patients lose Medicaid because the process gets harder, the consequence is not just administrative, it is financial and clinical,” said Peter Justen, Founder and CEO of AmeriTrust Solutions. “Rural hospitals feel that loss in delayed reimbursement, uncompensated care, and growing pressure on already fragile services. The better answer is to reduce the friction before coverage is lost and the damage moves downstream.”

Rural Systems Are Already at the Edge

For rural providers, Medicaid is part of an infrastructure that helps keep hospitals and other safety-net providers open. The pressure is especially acute for Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC), which are required to provide care regardless of insurance enrollment or ability to pay. That means every intake failure, missed renewal, or coverage lapse can quickly translate into uncompensated care for facilities already operating on thin margins. Chartis found that more than 200 rural hospitals have closed or converted since 2010, while service-line losses continue to spread across the country. Between 2011 and 2024, 331 rural hospitals stopped offering obstetric services, and between 2014 and 2024, 448 rural hospitals stopped offering chemotherapy. In many communities, the more immediate warning sign is the disappearance of essential services.

KFF reports that 41 states, including Washington, D.C., have adopted Medicaid expansion, while 10 states have not. Those non-expansion states overlap with some of the most financially exposed rural hospital markets in the country. In those areas, procedural disenrollments can quickly shift patients from reimbursed coverage into self-pay or charity care, even though provider still delivers the service.

Administrative Churn Is the Unintended Risk

Churn does not just interrupt insurance coverage. It disrupts access to preventive services, medications and continuous care for chronic illness while increasing hospitalizations and emergency room visits. It also creates measurable cost for states: disenrolling and reenrolling one person within a year is estimated to cost between $400 and $600. Researchers estimate that 12-month continuous eligibility for adults would reduce churn by 30%, resulting in 267,000 fewer uninsured adults each month and approximately $87 million in reduced state administrative costs.

AmeriTrust Solutions says the churn problem is often driven by specific operational bottlenecks rather than a single policy failure. Among the most common are low ex parte automation, lagging application-side automation, stale contact information that causes renewal notices to go to old addresses, late form returns, and manual document handling that requires scanning and worker rekeying.

The instability is already showing up in enrollment data. Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families reported that, as of October 2025, 36.4 million children were enrolled in Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), one million fewer than at the beginning of 2025. Over that period, 47 states plus the District of Columbia saw child enrollment declines.

At the provider level, that often shows up in simple but costly ways: “Patients arrive without active coverage even though they could have been enrolled on-site, presumptive eligibility opportunities are missed , or renewal lapses are only discovered after a billable encounter is denied”, said Justen. “Each of those failures can turn a reimbursable visit into a write-off.”

The Upstream Fix

AmeriTrust Solutions strengthens how Medicaid applications begin, using verified third-party data prefill and intake optimization to reduce administrative burden before applications enter existing systems, helping agencies receive cleaner, more complete submissions the first time and helping providers initiate coverage earlier. The process can reduce application complexity by roughly 90%, from more than 200 questions to approximately 20 to 25, supporting faster downstream decision-making.

“Too much of the system still responds after coverage is lost or after payment is delayed,” Justen said. “The better approach is to reduce the intake errors and documentation gaps that create that exposure in the first place. If you improve the application at intake, you improve everything downstream.”

About AmeriTrust Solutions
AmeriTrust Solutions is a Medicaid eligibility modernization company focused on improving enrollment accuracy at the point of intake. Built from lived experience navigating Medicaid bureaucracy and refined alongside rural hospitals and state eligibility operators, AmeriTrust Solutions integrates consent-based data verification into existing state systems without requiring full infrastructure replacement. By reducing documentation gaps and administrative friction, AmeriTrust Solutions helps protect public funds, stabilize hospital revenue cycles, and strengthen compliance defensibility under federal oversight. Visit https://ameritrustsolutions.com/.

Sources

Associated Press. (2026, April 28). Medicaid work requirement is about to kick in Nebraska. apnews.com/article/medicaid-work-requirements-nebraska-94555d7d5e739789c46b52f52f737f1bChartis Center for Rural Health. (2026, February 10). 2026 rural health state of the state. Chartis. chartis.com/insights/2026-rural-health-state-stateKFF. (2026, May 6). Status of state Medicaid expansion decisions. kff.org/medicaid/status-of-state-medicaid-expansion-decisions/Musumeci, M., Murphy, C., Leiser, E., Silverman, H., & Azimpoor, K. (2025, June 11). Reducing Medicaid churn: Policies to promote stable health coverage and access to care. The Commonwealth Fund. commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2025/jun/reducing-medicaid-churn-policies-promote-stable-health-coverageOsorio, A., Yafimenka, Y., Little, J., & Alker, J. (2026, February 26). New state-by-state Medicaid and CHIP tracker shows declining enrollment as H.R. 1 cuts loom. Center for Children and Families. ccf.georgetown.edu/2026/02/26/new-state-by-state-medicaid-and-chip-tracker-shows-declining-enrollment-as-h-r-1-cuts-loom/

Media Inquiries:
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SOURCE AmeriTrust Solutions

Technology

Mid-American Conference Selects uReport to Power Conference-Wide Storytelling

Published

15 minutes ago

September 10, 2026

CLEVELAND, Sept. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — DistrictWON and uReport today announced that the Mid-American Conference (MAC) has selected uReport as its conference office storytelling and content creation platform.

The MAC will utilize uReport to help its conference communications team efficiently create and publish a wide range of content highlighting the accomplishments, events, student-athletes, coaches, championships, and initiatives taking place across all 12 member institutions.

“With the recent rule changes by the NCAA including the 5 for 5 rule, the demand for timely, consistent, and engaging digital content is now more important than ever for all colleges and universities,” said Regan Fitzpatrick, President and Co-Founder of DistrictWON.

“Every athletic department has more great stories than it has the time or resources to tell. uReport is a powerful and innovative tool that gives SIDs a simple way to dramatically expand their storytelling, amplify their programs and athletes, and reach their communities—without adding more to an already overloaded staff.” – Jeremy Guy Associate Commissioner // Communications Mid-American Conference.

“We’re honored that the Mid-American Conference has chosen uReport to help amplify the incredible stories happening throughout one of the nation’s premier collegiate athletic conferences,” Fitzpatrick added. “Conference offices are being asked to create more content than ever before with limited staff and resources. uReport allows them to expand their content creation and storytelling capacity for all sports and athletes while maintaining the editorial quality and oversight their audiences expect.”

Unlike traditional AI content generators, uReport combines responsible AI with human oversight to streamline content creation while preserving editorial accuracy, institutional voice, and data privacy.

The platform is listed in the ISTE Learning Technology Directory and has earned the 1EdTech TrustedEd Apps Certification for Data Privacy, reinforcing its commitment to responsible AI and protecting institutional and student information.

Through the partnership, the MAC will be able to showcase more of the people, programs, milestones, and achievements that define the conference while providing fans, alumni, media, and member institutions with a richer and more consistent stream of content throughout the year.

“This partnership is ultimately about telling more stories,” Fitzpatrick added. “Every championship, student-athlete achievement, community initiative, and historic moment deserves to be shared. We’re excited to help the Mid-American Conference bring those stories to life.”

For more information, contact:

Dan McGrath
Director of Customer Success, DistrictWON
216-647-3857
dmcgrath@districtwon.com

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SOURCE DistrictWON; uReport

Technology

Cadwell Names Jeff Cohen Chief Executive Officer, Succeeding Patrick Jensen

Published

15 minutes ago

September 10, 2026

KENNEWICK, Wash., Sept. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Cadwell Industries, Inc., today announced that Patrick Jensen, Ph.D., will step down as chief executive officer, concluding a 10-year tenure in the role. Jeff Cohen, a seasoned medical technology executive, will succeed Jensen as Cadwell’s CEO, effective immediately. Jensen will remain with the company as a strategic advisor.

“I want to thank Patrick for his decade of leadership,” said John Cadwell Jr., chairman of the board and president of Cadwell. “He oversaw tremendous growth during his tenure while maintaining Cadwell’s motto of, ‘Helping you help others.’ Patrick approached us about scaling back to spend more time with his family about a year ago. I appreciate his commitment to helping us find a successor, ensuring a seamless handoff and continuing to be involved at Cadwell in an advisory capacity. We are equally excited to welcome Jeff to Cadwell and are confident his experience will build on everything Patrick helped us achieve.”

During his tenure, Jensen expanded Cadwell’s footprint as a leader in neurodiagnostics, guided by a deep commitment to the clinicians using Cadwell equipment and the patients they serve. He grew the company’s global market presence, led its entry into the epilepsy monitoring market and strengthened its innovation portfolio through strategic investments in Sleepmate® and Seer Medical. He also led the development and release of new solutions shaped by direct physician and technologist feedback, including the Cadwell Guardian® IONM system.

“I’m grateful to have worked with the Cadwell team and our amazing network of physicians and technicians for the past 10 years. We have made significant progress toward our mission of improving the lives of neurology patients around the world, and I am confident that Jeff is the right leader to guide Cadwell going forward. I look forward to remaining engaged as a strategic advisor at Cadwell to ensure a smooth transition and help continue our trajectory of growth and positive impact on the neurology community,” said Jensen.

Cohen brings more than 20 years of medical technology industry experience spanning global business strategy, research and development, product innovation and commercial sales. Much of that time was at Philips, where he rose from program manager to senior vice president and general manager of Philips Ultrasound, leading global teams that grew market share while expanding margins. He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an MBA from Boston College and an executive management certificate from MIT.

With Cohen now leading Cadwell, the company remains focused on its vision: to help more patients globally than any other neurodiagnostic solution provider.

“I look forward to building on the track record established by Patrick, the Cadwell team and the Cadwell family,” said Cohen. “It is an honor and privilege to lead Cadwell in the next phase of growth, carrying forward the company’s strong legacy of helping neurology patients in their time of need.”

About Cadwell

Cadwell is a global medical technology and services company dedicated to delivering innovative neurodiagnostic, neuromonitoring and sleep solutions to clinicians worldwide. Headquartered in Kennewick, Washington, the company provides exceptional support for every stage of the care delivery journey.

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SOURCE Cadwell Industries, Inc.

Technology

Centric Software Unveils Centric AI to Power Smarter Product Decisions at NRF 2026

Published

15 minutes ago

September 10, 2026

Centric AI connects product data and workflows from concept to commercialization to automate and accelerate the decisions that drive margin, speed and growth

CAMPBELL, Calif., Sept. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Centric Software® is pleased to announce that it is showcasing Centric AI, its new AI platform for product lifecycle decisions, at NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show Europe, taking place September 15–17, 2026 at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. Centric Software delivers innovative, integrated, end-to-end AI-powered enterprise solutions to take products from concept to commercialization. Fashion, luxury, footwear, outdoor, home, consumer electronics, food & beverage, cosmetics & personal care as well as multi-category retail teams can plan, design, develop, source, comply, buy, make, price, allocate, assort, sell and replenish products to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

Retailers and brands are moving AI from experimentation into day-to-day operations, with growing focus on measurable business impact. This shift is especially relevant across the product lifecycle, where decisions combine product data, market demand, sourcing constraints, cost, compliance requirements and commercial priorities. As companies manage more products, channels and regulatory requirements, teams have more information to evaluate but less time to act.

AI is only as useful as the context behind it. Centric AI brings a common AI platform to the product lifecycle, including Centric AI Companion, Centric AI MCP and specialized Centric AI Agents. Centric AI combines more than two decades of connected product data, workflows and industry expertise with conversational interactions, external connectivity, agentic workflows and packaged applications—turning that foundation into a competitive advantage at a moment when the market is flooded with generic AI promises and starved for AI that delivers real business value.

The business impact is measurable. Customers running Centric AI alongside Centric’s concept-to-commercialization solutions reclaim 90–98% of the time previously spent on manual work like data entry, approval routing, bill of materials creation and status tracking. That time saving is visible on the bottom line too with Centric customers reporting 2–5% improvements in gross margin and gains of up to 5% in sell-through from faster, better-informed pricing, assortment and inventory decisions.

“The near-term value of Centric AI is clear: take repetitive operational work off teams’ plates and give people back time,” says Vincent Picou, Chief AI Officer at Centric Software. “The greater opportunity is ahead—AI agents that evaluate more alternatives and weigh competing constraints in seconds, so every recommendation is already tested against the trade-offs that matter. Human expertise doesn’t disappear. It moves to judgment calls and the exceptions only people can resolve.”

Centric AI delivers value on both fronts. It saves time on task by automating the operational work inside the product lifecycle—less manual entry, fewer handoffs, fewer approvals and meetings. It also accelerates time to decision by connecting data and surfacing insights across functions, so teams act on the next-best decision instead of waiting to assemble one.

AI is not new to Centric. It’s already embedded across Centric PLM™, Centric Visual Boards™, Centric Planning & Pricing™, Centric Market Intelligence™ and Centric PXM™. Centric AI unifies and extends that foundation, reaching product teams in four ways:

Ask Centric AI Companion: teams can surface product and commercial information instantly and trigger actions in natural language, right inside the tools they already use.

Connect safely with Centric MCP: extend the value of external AI systems while keeping product data, permissions and business context under control.

Act with Centric AI Agents: hand off entire tasks end to end. Agents such as the BOM & Tech Pack Agent can turn a rough sketch or supplier document into a complete, multi-line bill of materials in minutes, automatically matching the closest style and building out fabric, trim and packaging details.

Solve high-value challenges with Centric AI Apps: purpose-built experiences like Centric AI Studio™ apply generative AI to product ideation, design and visual content creation to accelerate product development decisions and time to market.

At NRF Europe, Hall 4, Booth P-040, Centric Software will demonstrate how Centric AI connects intelligence across workflows to streamline everyday work and accelerate the product and commercial decisions that shape the bottom line.

“Our strategy is simple: invest in AI where it delivers measurable gains in margin, speed and growth,” says Fabrice Canonge, CEO of Centric Software. “As AI moves from experimentation into the heart of business operations, Centric AI builds on decades of product data, workflows and industry expertise to turn AI into a competitive advantage and drive lasting value for our customers.”

Discover why connected decisions will define the next generation of retail at the Exhibitor Big Ideas session, Tuesday, September 15 at 14:45, featuring Vincent Picou, Chief AI Officer at Centric Software.

ADD TO YOUR AGENDA

See how Centric AI transforms product data into smart decisions from concept to commercialization. Visit Centric Software at Hall 4, Booth P-040 for a live demo.

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Centric Software® (www.centricsoftware.com)

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software provides an innovative and AI-enabled product concept-to-commercialization platform for retailers, brands and manufacturers of all sizes. As experts in fashion, luxury, footwear, outdoor, home, food & beverage, cosmetics & personal care, consumer electronics as well as multi-category retail, Centric Software delivers best-of-breed solutions to plan, design, develop, source, comply, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products.

Centric PLM™, the leading PLM solution for fashion, outdoor, footwear and private label, optimizes product execution from ideation to development, sourcing and manufacture, realizing up to 50% improvement in productivity and a 60% decrease in time to market. Centric Planning & Pricing™, a cloud-native solution powered by Centric AI that unifies planning, pricing and inventory optimization, enabling retailers and brands to increase sell-through, improve margins and optimize inventory efficiency from pre-season through in-season execution. Centric Market Intelligence™ is an AI-driven platform delivering insights into consumer trends, competitor offers and pricing to boost competitively and get closer to the consumer, driving up to a 12% increase in average initial price point. Centric Visual Boards™ pivot actionable data in a visual-first orientation to ensure robust, consumer-right assortments and product offers, dramatically decreasing assortment development cycle time. Centric PXM™, AI-powered product experience management (PXM), encompasses PIM, DAM, content syndication and digital shelf analytics (DSA) to optimize the product commercialization lifecycle resulting in a transformed brand experience. Increase sales channels, boost sell through and drive margins.

Centric Software’s market-driven solutions have the highest user adoption rate, customer satisfaction rate and fastest time to value in the industry. Centric Software has received multiple industry awards and recognition, appearing regularly in world-leading analyst reports and research.

Centric Software is a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes (Euronext Paris: FR0014003TT8, DSY.PA), the world leader in 3D design software, 3D digital mock-up and PLM solutions. 

Centric Software is a registered trademark of Centric Software, Inc. in the US and other countries. Centric PLM ™, Centric Planning & Pricing ™, Centric Market Intelligence ™, Centric Visual Boards ™, Centric PXM ™, Centric PIM™, Centric DAM™, Centric Shoppingfeed® and Centric DSA™ (including Centric Digital Shelf Analytics™) are trademarks of Centric Software, Inc. All third-party trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners.

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SOURCE Centric Software