How It Ended: The Systematic Dismantling of CAIS

By mid-2021, CAIS was thriving: 100% client retention, 40+ healthcare systems rescued, and a pipeline poised for global expansion. But behind the scenes, Reid Conant and Nuance executives had already begun dismantling the company they built—erasing evidence, terminating employees, and funneling CAIS’s IP into Nuance’s failing services ahead of DeliverHealth’s acquisition. 

• May 20: Reid informs me he’s firing CAIS’s Product Manager (and mother of the college student coding CAIS’s tools).
• May 21: Reid tells remaining staff, “The future of the company depends on the next few months”—a hollow promise as he secretly negotiates his return to Nuance.

• June 2: In a team meeting, Reid announces he’s taking a full-time role at Nuance effective June 14. He instructs us to “not schedule anything after August 31”—the death knell for CAIS.
• June 14: Reid starts at Nuance, abandoning CAIS while still demanding control:
  “Send me meeting invites… I’ll only join if absolutely necessary.”
• June 17: Reid orders all client projects wrapped by August 31, rushing to delete CAIS’s footprint. When I warn of bandwidth issues:
  “This is getting too difficult… Clients aren’t sticking to timelines. We don’t have the bandwidth.”
  — My email to Nuance’s Chris Allen, June 24, 2021
  Nuance ignores the warning, prioritizing IP extraction over client care.

• August 23–31: Employees are terminated one by one. Reid:
  
  • Fires key trainers.
  • Forces CAIS’s project lead, to offboard clients mid-contract.
• Weekly Calls: Reid micromanages the shutdown, demanding all “findings and recommendations” be handed to Nuance by August 31.

1. Reid’s Conflict of Interest:

           His return to Nuance was no career move—it was the final phase of a plan to:

• Transfer CAIS’s IP to Nuance’s “Go-Live Services,” later sold to DeliverHealth.
• CAIS's intellectual property was transferred to Nuance's Dragon Medical One Essentials platform, which was later acquired by Microsoft. 
• Delete Evidence: By erasing CAIS’s operations, Reid hid the theft of methodologies like the Health Check and Accelerated ROI Training.

2. Nuance’s Complicity:

• Nuance RVP ignored staff warnings about unsustainable workloads, prioritizing IP capture over client needs.
• Brad Morrison (Nuance SVP) greenlit CAIS’s closure despite its profitability, ensuring no equity payouts to stakeholders like me.

3. The Human Toll:

• Employees: Talented CAIS staff were discarded after building CAIS’s success.
• Clients: Hospitals were left confused as Nuance absorbed CAIS’s work mid-project.

Reid’s emails during the shutdown reveal the facade:

“Let’s work together… to solidify your leadership role.”
— Reid Conant, June 24, 2019 (as he planned CAIS’s demise)

*“We need you full-time beginning 7/29. Agreed?”*
— Reid Conant, June 23, 2019 (pressuring me to abandon client ethics for CAIS)

The same urgency used to recruit me was weaponized to bury CAIS.

As CAIS neared its forced shutdown, clients like Northside Hospital were left stranded, unaware that the company solving their DMO/EHR issues was being dismantled. Emails from September 1–3, 2021, reveal Reid Conant’s brazen efforts to divert CAIS’s work to Nuance, even as Adem and his team were being terminated.

1. September 1, 2021:
   
   • (Northside Hospital) requests a follow-up meeting with CAIS’s trainer, but receives a bounce-back email.
   • Significance: Trainer's CAIS email account had already been deactivated, proving employees were cut off mid-project.

1. September 3, 2021 (Adem’s Last Day at CAIS):
   
   • Reid Conant emails Adem, demanding he schedule meetings with Northside for “add-on work”—despite knowing Adem’s employment ended that day.
   • Reid’s Directive:
     “Please CC me on your reply… include me on the invite once you set up the call.”
     — Reid Conant, September 3, 2021
   • Significance: Reid weaponized Adem’s final hours to:
     
     • Hijack client relationships: Redirect Northside’s requests to Nuance.
     • Erase CAIS’s role: Ensure no client traced solutions back to CAIS’s IP.

 Even on my last day, Reid used me to redirect work to Nuance and cover his tracks. CAIS’s clients never knew they were being handed to a thief.
— Adem Arslani 

The Brazen Theft: Nuance’s Final Insult 

In the days leading up to CAIS’s forced shutdown, Nuance executives made their final move: launching Dragon Medical One Essentials—a near-identical clone of CAIS’s Health Check program—while Adem and his team were being fired.

1. Dragon Medical One Essentials Announcement (August 24–September 3, 2021):

• Nuance advertised “no-cost training classes” mirroring CAIS’s Health Check structure, including:
  
  • Provider Power Hour: EHR navigation, custom voice commands, and workflow shortcuts—directly copied from CAIS’s methodologies.
  • NMC Lab: Centralized management of user settings and analytics, replicating CAIS’s proprietary deployment playbooks.
• Timing: Launched days before CAIS’s termination, ensuring clients would transition to Nuance’s “new” program as CAIS dissolved.

2. Client Alert:

• A CAIS client notified Adem: “Nuance’s new training looks exactly like your Health Check.”
• Significance: Proves Nuance brazenly rebranded CAIS’s IP, counting on Adem’s imminent termination to avoid backlash.

3. Reid’s Final Email (September 3, 2021):

• While Adem packed his desk, Reid demanded that he schedule Nuance’s “add-on work” for clients like Northside Hospital—using CAIS’s materials.