Auddia Inc. (NASDAQ: AUUD) has spotlighted Influence Healthcare, a healthtech company that leverages artificial intelligence and vertical integration to enable surgeons to lead value-based care in high-spend specialties. The announcement comes as Auddia prepares to file its Form S-4 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a key step in the merger process to form McCarthy Finney.
Influence Healthcare is the final subsidiary, alongside LT350 and Voyex, that will join Auddia upon closing of the previously signed definitive merger agreement. The company’s model is built on the premise that physicians deliver the most value and should therefore lead the healthcare system. It organizes surgeons into vertically integrated Value Based Enterprises (VBEs) that contract for bundled case-rate payments in spine, total joints, and other high-cost specialties. These VBEs are supported by advanced AI workflows that automate documentation, coding, episode validation, care-pathway coordination, staffing, supply chain, and logistics, allowing surgeons to focus on clinical care rather than administrative tasks.
Jeff Thramann, M.D., CEO of Auddia and Founder of Influence Healthcare, emphasized the importance of physician-led care. “Healthcare is about a physician and patient entering into a relationship to optimize delivery of the highest quality care. Only the physician has the knowledge, relationship with the patient, and clinical authority to make the many real-time decisions required to deliver the highest quality care at the lowest possible price,” he said. “Influence Healthcare is aimed at leveraging AI to minimize administrative noise so that physicians and all the other healthcare professionals with hands on patients are empowered to deliver the highest value care.”
The Influence Healthcare model is designed as a structural alternative to two dominant models: hospital employment, which often reduces physician autonomy and increases administrative overhead, and private-equity rollups, which prioritize financial engineering over clinical leadership. Instead, Influence Healthcare creates surgeon-led enterprises where surgeons retain governance authority, episode-based economics flow to clinicians, and facilities participate through aligned partnerships rather than ownership. AI reduces overhead, further supporting the model.
Post-merger, Influence Healthcare will leverage the shared AI services of McCarthy Finney to deploy agentic-AI workflows that automate clinical documentation, coding and billing preparation, episode-of-care validation, prior-authorization workflows, care-pathway adherence monitoring, and communication across the episode. These workflows are designed to eliminate administrative layers that have historically required multiple full-time administrative staff per surgeon and contributed to burnout, inefficiency, and rising costs.
Dr. Thramann noted, “AI should not replace physicians, it should replace the administrative friction that prevents physicians from practicing at the top of their license. Our platform gives surgeons the environment they need to deliver a more predictable, coordinated, efficient, and compassionate episode of care.”
The company’s initial focus is on spine and total joint surgery, with plans to expand to additional specialties and markets through physician-led VBEs. Influence Healthcare’s model is designed to deliver lower total cost of care through coordinated episodes, improved outcomes through surgeon-led pathway design, reduced administrative overhead through AI automation, predictable economics for payers and employers, and restored autonomy and economic participation for surgeons.
Auddia anticipates filing the S-4 later this week, which will contain important information about the merger. The merger contemplates a business combination between Auddia Inc. and Thramann Holdings, LLC. Upon completion, Auddia will change its name to McCarthy Finney and trade under the ticker MCFN. McCarthy Finney will be an AI holding company delivering AI and Web3 services to its four portfolio companies: LT350, Influence Healthcare, Voyex, and Auddia. For more information about Influence Healthcare, visit www.influencehealthcare.com.
