Effective October 1, 2026, ICD-10-PCS code XEZU3HC establishes the first dedicated national inpatient coding category for real-time ultrasound navigation with continuous needle tracking

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Sept. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — RIVANNA®, developer of AI-enabled clinical decision-support solutions, today announced that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has established ICD-10-PCS code XEZU3HC, effective for inpatient discharges beginning October 1, 2026. The code identifies computer-aided intraprocedural navigation in the spinal canal using ultrasound imaging with continuous needle tracking via a percutaneous approach during neuraxial anesthesia.

Before XEZU3HC, use of diagnostic ultrasound navigation during neuraxial anesthesia was not separately reportable in inpatient hospital coding. Facilities could report the underlying neuraxial anesthesia under existing codes, but the navigation itself left no trace in the record. The new code changes what that record can show: a standardized way to identify coded use and track adoption, and, when linked with clinical and operational data, a basis for evaluating outcomes.

Unintended dural puncture occurs in 0.5% to 1.5% of labor epidural placements (Van de Velde 2008; Choi 2003), and the United States has no dedicated mandatory national reporting system for it. The consequences are not always brief: in a prospective multicenter cohort study that enrolled 90 patients with accidental dural puncture and 180 matched controls, 58% of those who experienced accidental dural puncture still had persistent headache at 18 months, compared with 17% of controls (Niraj 2021).

Accuro® 3S brings ultrasound guidance into the placement itself. It is the first FDA-cleared, AI-enabled, real-time ultrasound guidance system purpose-built for neuraxial anesthesia. The system combines automated anatomical guidance through SpineNav-AI™, midline needle access through the patented Dual-Array™ probe’s central aperture, and real-time needle-tip tracking through SafeTrack™. CMS recognized the technology as procedurally distinct. Beginning October 1, XEZU3HC makes this form of guidance identifiable in inpatient data.

“Accuro 3S was developed to bring real-time guidance to neuraxial procedures,” said Will Mauldin, PhD, Co-founder and CEO of RIVANNA. “With XEZU3HC, that procedural shift will no longer be invisible in inpatient data. The code does not prove benefit; it gives hospitals a standardized way to identify use and, when linked with clinical data, evaluate outcomes.” 

CMS placed XEZU3HC in Section X, New Technology, under the newly created XEZ table. The code applies to a procedural category, not to a specific company or product, and does not by itself establish separate payment. What it establishes is identification: a standardized data structure that can support evaluation of the clinical and economic impact of computer-aided neuraxial guidance across institutions.

“Neuraxial procedures are still performed largely by feel, and the complications that follow have been difficult to see in national data,” said Delphine Le Roux, PhD, PMP, Senior Director, Market Access and Strategic Partnerships at RIVANNA. “That was the case we brought to CMS: real-time guidance changes the procedure enough that it needs its own identifier. Coding, evidence, and reimbursement follow a sequence, and this is the first step. Real-world data can then help evaluate the clinical and economic value of navigation and inform future payment discussions.” 

Beginning in the fourth quarter of 2026, RIVANNA plans to include XEZU3HC, where assigned by participating facilities, in its outcomes framework alongside procedural and workflow data.

About Accuro 3S

Accuro 3S is a portable, cart-based, point-of-care diagnostic ultrasound system featuring the patented Dual-Array probe, automated anatomical guidance through SpineNav-AI, and real-time needle-tip tracking through SafeTrack. Two transducer arrays flank a central aperture through which the needle can be introduced and advanced along the spinal midline within the ultrasound imaging plane. SpineNav-AI automatically identifies lumbar spinal landmarks and midline and measures depth to the epidural space in real time. When used with a compatible tracked needle, SafeTrack displays needle-tip location and trajectory relative to the ultrasound image in real time.

Accuro 3S extends the clinical foundation established by the flagship Accuro platform. In a randomized trial of 80 obese parturients undergoing elective cesarean delivery with combined spinal-epidural anesthesia, first-insertion success was 72.5% with Accuro and 40.0% with palpation (p=0.003; Ni 2021). The published evidence pertains to the flagship Accuro platform; Accuro 3S-specific outcomes will be tracked through RIVANNA’s outcomes framework.

About RIVANNA

RIVANNA is a medical technology company developing clinical decision-support solutions powered by proprietary clinical datasets, AI models, and purpose-built imaging hardware. The company’s platform is designed to automate complex anatomical analysis at the point of care, support faster and more confident clinical decisions, reduce variability, and expand access to advanced capabilities. Its initial applications address interventional guidance and trauma triage, beginning with neuraxial procedures and musculoskeletal injury assessment. RIVANNA has established an FDA-cleared product portfolio and maintains a worldwide intellectual-property portfolio of more than 100 issued and pending patents. RIVANNA is headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia, and operates an FDA-registered, ISO 13485:2016-certified manufacturing facility.

RIVANNA, Accuro, and the Rivanna Medical family of marks are registered and unregistered trademarks of Rivanna Medical, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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For enterprise shippers, AI agents take over the repetitive tasks — emails, phone calls, manual data entry — with 100% resolution guaranteed by Loadsmart’s in-house freight experts.

CHICAGO, Sept. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Loadsmart AI launches a set of AI agents that execute freight work end to end inside the systems enterprise shippers already run. The agents come backed by the company’s own freight operators, who close out any task the agents don’t resolve.

Loadsmart AI is built to start small. A shipper picks one repetitive, high-volume workflow, sets the rules and guardrails the agents run under, and Loadsmart builds an agent against the systems the team already uses, with no migration, no new platform to adopt, and nothing that touches the freight decisions the team owns.

“Transportation teams have been asked to adopt technology the same way for twenty years: buy the platform, migrate the data, retrain the team, hope it sticks,” said Felipe Capella, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Loadsmart. “We don’t think AI arrives that way. It arrives one task at a time, inside the systems you already run, doing work you can watch it do. We’re not selling a tool for your team to manage. We’re selling the outcome, resolved and under full monitoring.”

The agents take the tasks. The team keeps the freight.

Loadsmart AI agents take a task and complete it: collecting and filing a document, pulling status from a carrier, rebooking a dock appointment, retendering a failed load, updating a record in the TMS. Roughly 80 percent of what the agents touch is resolved without a person stepping in, and that share rises as the agents learn how a specific customer operates.

The remaining share never comes back to the shipper. Loadsmart’s freight experts work the exception itself – the one task the agent couldn’t close – and see it through to resolution. They work inside the task, not the account. Every decision about the freight stays with the shipper’s team.

“A workflow that’s 80 percent automated still lands the other 20 percent on somebody’s desk. That isn’t removing work, it’s moving it,” said Ron Ben Yosef, Chief Technology Officer of Loadsmart. “So our freight experts work the exception, not the account. They finish the task the agent couldn’t finish, and nothing beyond it. The shipper’s team never stops running its own freight; it just stops doing the same thing five hundred times a month.”

The agents available at launch cover document collection and filing, tracking and status updates, tender failures and retendering, proactive load audits, claims processing, and scheduling and rescheduling. Each runs under rules and guardrails the customer defines, and connects to existing systems over API, EDI, MCP, or whatever the shipper already has in place.

If it doesn’t resolve, you don’t pay for it

A shipper can describe any repetitive, high-volume workflow its team runs by hand, and Loadsmart will build an agent for it against their existing stack. Loadsmart AI is available now, starting with a free Proof of Concept on a single workflow. If the agent doesn’t do the work, the shipper doesn’t pay for it. The average Proof of Concept implementation is 60 days.

“The agent list isn’t a roadmap we’re asking customers to wait on, it’s an open set,” said Paul Rehmet, Vice President of Product Management at Loadsmart. “Because we’ve spent a decade building against shippers’ actual systems and running freight through them ourselves, a new agent for a workflow we’ve never seen before is a matter of weeks, not a product cycle. Tell us which task your team repeats the most, and we’ll build the agent for it.”

More detail on each agent is at loadsmart.com/ai.

About Loadsmart

Loadsmart offers one connected logistics platform spanning the complete freight lifecycle — Opendock for dock, yard, and gate scheduling; ShipperGuide for transportation management; and Loadsmart AI for agent-led execution — alongside the company’s transportation operations. That combination makes Loadsmart the only company in freight that sells both the AI and the operators who stand behind it. Learn more at loadsmart.com.

Felipe Capella, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Loadsmart, (felipe@loadsmart.com)

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XpertDox brings AI medical coding to Kai Shin Clinic’s addiction medicine, mental health, and primary care services across Minnesota, with a focus on accuracy, explainability, and compliance.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Sept. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — XpertDox, an AI medical coding software solutions provider, has partnered with Kai Shin Clinic, a Minnesota-based outpatient provider specializing in addiction medicine, mental health, psychiatry, and primary care. The partnership brings XpertDox’s autonomous medical coding solution into Kai Shin’s operations, with a shared focus on coding accuracy, explainability, and compliance.

About Kai Shin Clinic

Founded in 2016 by Dr. Alana Sasaki, Kai Shin Clinic delivers integrated, whole-person care for individuals with co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders. Across multiple Minnesota locations, the clinic provides medication-assisted treatment, intensive outpatient programs, psychiatry, primary care, and in-house lab services.

AI-Powered Medical Coding for Behavioral Health

XpertCoding is XpertDox’s flagship AI-powered autonomous medical coding engine. It combines Symbolic AI, Neural Networks, and Ensemble Machine Learning with payor-specific guidelines to support accurate, consistent, and compliant medical coding. It helps reduce administrative burden, improve documentation quality, and support HCC/RAF capture for value-based care, relevant for behavioral health and primary care organizations serving risk-adjusted populations.

“Our patients come to us for whole-person care, and accurate, transparent coding is part of delivering that responsibly,” said Alana Sasaki, MD, Founder and CEO of Kai Shin Clinic. “XpertCoding lets our team stay focused on care while keeping documentation quality and compliance at the center.”

XpertCoding Business Intelligence Platform

XpertCoding is accompanied by its Business Intelligence platform, giving coding teams and executive leadership clear visibility on risk adjustment, quality metrics, and coding accuracy. The BI platform also features CXO analytics and validation portals to evaluate coded claims for review and benchmarking. Every coding decision can be traced back to the provider’s documentation, giving billing and compliance teams a clear, auditable record.

“We are proud to partner with Kai Shin Clinic and to support their mission of delivering accessible, whole-person care across Minnesota,” said Sameer Ather, CEO and Co-Founder of XpertDox. “Our goal with any provider is the same. We want autonomous medical coding to bring efficiency to the revenue cycle without asking anyone to give up transparency or control.”

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, XpertDox provides AI-powered autonomous medical coding software and revenue cycle analytics. Its flagship product, XpertCoding, also offers medical coding AI with HCC/RAF risk adjustment support and quality metrics reporting for value-based care. XpertDox serves FQHCs, behavioral health, women’s care, primary care, orthopedic, pediatric care, dental, urgent care, multispecialty groups, health systems, and RCM organizations, with a focus on coding accuracy, regulatory compliance, and reduced administrative burden.

Visit www.xpertdox.com or contact marketing@xpertdox.com for more information.

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SOURCE XpertDox