healthy muse healthcare news.
- This week in healthcare: Bright Health’s S-1, Haven 2.0, Ro makes a play into women’s health, CommonSpirit calls off its hospital merger, Clover’s rough quarter, an AI app for skin conditions, healthcare faxes forever, and more.
Coming soon: Bright Health
Managed care player Bright Health filed its S-1 this week, chock full of interesting information and commentary related to their business. Bright could potentially raise up to $1 billion in its IPO with a valuation between $10 to $20 billion
About Bright: The insurance platform serves just over 600,000 members across 14 states mostly in the individual insurance market, but more recently started to dabble in Medicare Advantage. Structure-wise, think of Bright Health as a mini UnitedHealthcare (yes, a $20 billion company is considered mini to UHG) in the sense that Bright separates its provider platform (AKA, Optum) from its insurance business.
- Alignment: Compared to a Clover or maybe even an Oscar, Bright is focused on vertical alignment in the markets it serves – identifying quality providers, acquiring providers in markets, etc. with the goal of delivering higher quality care to its participants.
- Tech Stack: Of course, Bright has its own health tech platform to build on – called NeueHealth, the segment provides a platform for primary care physicians to transition to value-based contracts. AKA, the hottest buzzword in healthcare right now, am I right?
- Thoughts: Compared to other recent managed care entrants into the public markets (Clover, Oscar, Alignment, Agilon, etc.) Bright seems to have its strategy together and is building its product well from the ground up in markets. I’ll be very curious to see how the public market perceives differences between Bright and other recent entrants. Personally, Bright’s business model is compelling and this is a company I’ll be following closely.
Resources:
- Here’s a link to Bright’s S-1 to read for yourself. (Link)
- Here’s a very thorough deep dive into key points in Bright’s S-1 from Kevin O’leary. (Link)
Coronavirus updates.
Cases: Continue to plummet. The U.S. seven day average is 25k – down from last week’s report of 33k – as of this writing. (Link).
Vaccines: are trending at 1.8 million per day, up from last week’s 7-day average of 1.65 million. (Link). Fully vaccinated = 39% of Americans (+2%). At least one dose administered = 49% of Americans (+2%)
Quick Hits
Biz Hits
M&A: This is a fantastic deep dive into the M&A environment across a multitude of healthcare sectors, highlighting key trends and changes to valuations in the ‘new normal’ of 2021. (Link)
Digital Health: A few big digital health stories you should know about. Here’s what happened:
- Ro acquired Modern Fertility and wrote a Medium post about it. The acquisition is an interesting foray into women’s health. (Link)
- Behavioral health platform Lyra Health is raising money like wildfire. The firm has doubled its valuation in the first 6 months of the year. Why go public when people just throw money at you? (Link)
- Babylon, a virtual care platform, purchased ****what appears to be an IPA called Meritage Medical Network out in California. The network contained about 700 physicians. (Link)
Prior Auth: Anthem and Epic announced a data sharing partnership to ease the burdens associated with prior authorizations. (Link)
Dealbreaker: Following nurse and provider complaints, CommonSpirit and Essentia are calling off their 14 hospital deal. It’s a somewhat interesting development and makes me wonder whether antitrust concerns were at play as well. If I recall correctly, a key consideration into antitrust concerns is related to the potential impact on salaries like nurses. (Link)
Haven 2.0: JP Morgan announced its plan to launch Morgan Health, the new firm will attempt to build on Haven’s ashes. Interestingly, the startup is receiving $250 million to invest in promising partnerships, which almost sounds like a venture capital firm? (Link)
Clover: Is having a rough go at it in the public markets after reporting a shaky quarter with no seemingly real direction. (Link)
Policy Hits
Telehealth: About a fourth of Medicare beneficiaries used some form of telehealth last year, confirming the accelerated trend of telehealth as a healthcare delivery platform. (Link)
340B: After HHS issued an order to certain drugmakers to repay providers for 340B violations, Eli Lilly is fighting back. Honestly, the whole 340B program probably needs a revamp one of these days, as it’s a lesser known, but still contentious, issue in healthcare. (Link) (About the 340B Program)
Freestanding ERs: Here’s a new one – the state of Colorado is planning to pay hospitals to shut down and / or convert their freestanding emergency rooms into another type of facility. Oftentimes, freestanding ERs are mistaken for urgent cares and lead to higher costs of care. (Link)
Other Hits
Cool story: Google’s newly released app helps identify common skin conditions. Users can upload three images along with answering some questions and the AI provides a list of possible matches for whatever the skin condition could be. Neat. (Link)
Colonoscopy: Experts are now recommending colorectal cancer screenings starting at age 45. Good news for endoscopy centers. (Link)
Thought-Provoking Editorials
Insurance: Are employer sponsored health plans on their way out? Here’s an interesting perspective on how 2020 shook up the employer landscape enough for this article to be written. (Link)
Healthy Muse Top Picks
Faxes: Here’s a great read from substack guild aficionado Brendan Keeler about legacy standards in healthcare, the fax machine, and why things move so slowly in our world. (Link)
Machine Learning: An interesting deep dive into the world of the FDA and how medically based machine learning devices are being regulated by the governing body. (Link)
Direct Contracting: We’ve heard a lot about the new direct contracting model (capitation, value based arrangements) coming out from CMS and the parties involved are very bullish on the program. This article breaks down the Direct Contracting program and what to expect with its implementation. (Link)
Thanks for reading.
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