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Tenet’s $1.1 billion outpatient purchase, Encompass may spin off its home health segment, surprise billing solutions surprisingly hit Capitol Hill, Pfizer’s vaccine begins rollout, Moderna’s next up, and more.

Healthcare M&A is back in style.

There were quite a few major M&A announcements in healthcare this week:

Tenet: The hospital operator just majorly expanded its outpatient footprint after buying a majority stake in SurgCenter Development.

• Tenet will add 45 surgery centers and surgical hospitals to its USPI division and is focusing its capital on its outpatient segments. (Link)

Encompass: The post-acute provider is considering spinning off or selling its home health and hospice segment. (Link)

• Why? Home health & hospice valuations are pretty frothy right now. Encompass probably thinks it can unlock some easy shareholder value by spinning off the segment.
• It’s been done before – in 2019, the Ensign Group spun off the Pennant Group, which is now up over 200% since its public debut.

Other major M&A: Talkspace is considering a sale at its current $1 billion valuation.

• Meanwhile, AstraZeneca is acquiring Alexion Pharmaceuticals in a whopping $39 billion transaction, making the announcement one of the largest deals of the year. (Link)

A surprising deal on Surprise Bills.

From the top deck: Out of absolutely left field, lawmakers from both parties announced that a deal had been reached in figuring out how to deal with surprise medical bills.

While the bill is still in Congress, the bipartisan deal among key committees ends a stalemate on legislation that had been gridlocked for YEARS.

• Background: Congress has floated two surprise billing solutions in the past – called benchmarking and arbitration (I explain those proposals here). The latest agreed-upon proposal favors arbitration.
  • Details: Under the bill, patients would pay in-network rates for their emergency care. Providers and insurers would then take 30 days to negotiate the out-of-network payment. If they can’t decide on a payment, then a third-party arbiter would decide for them.
  • What this means for you: While you wouldn’t have to worry about receiving surprise medical bills, the policy COULD result in higher healthcare costs indirectly – in the form of higher premiums or deductibles.

Coronavirus updates.

Numbers Update: 7-day case trend: 211k. 7-day hospitalization trend: 107k. 7-day death trend: 2.4k (Data)

Vaccine Roll-Out: You probably don’t need your favorite healthcare newsletter to tell you at this point, but the FDA approved Pfizer’s vaccine for emergency use.

• A critical care nurse in NYC received Pfizer’s vaccine today – the first in the U.S. States are receiving the first batches and are likely to roll out the vaccines to healthcare workers and nursing home residents first.

HHS’ goal is to vaccinate 100 million folks by the end of the first quarter of 2021. That goal gets much harder when people are skeptical of the vaccine – according to recent polls, only about half of people in the U.S. want to take the vaccine.

• So how do we build trust? Influencer marketing. I’m only half kidding. But seriously. Have trusted officials take the vaccine (Obama, Bush, etc.). Let athletes lead the way in immunizations. Show people publicly that the vaccines are safe. Getting vaccinated should impart a civic duty akin to voting in the election.
  • Given good vaccine adoption, the U.S. could achieve herd immunity by summer 2021.

Moderna next up: the FDA will review Moderna’s vaccine for emergency use on December 17. This review might be even more impactful for Americans, as the US gov has purchase orders for 200 million doses.

• JnJ’s candidate isn’t too far off either – the single-dose vaccine will probably have data sometime in early January.

Quick Hits

Biz Hits

• Select Rehab recently became the nation’s largest post-acute therapy provider – and it’s not done growing.
• Amazon rolled out a data aggregation tool this week – called HealthLake – in a growing effort to make HIPAA-compliant data easier to work with. (Link)
• In the ‘smaller’ M&A category, healthcare software vendor PointClickCare is purchasing Collective Medical for $650 million. (Link)
• This is an interesting read about the dynamic, constantly changing home health industry. (Link)

Policy Hits

HHS had a busy week:

• The agency proposed interesting HIPAA changes. (Link)
• It issued $523 million to nursing homes that handled the pandemic well. (Link)
• It finalized a dispute resolution program for the recent 340b controversy. (Link)

The Supreme Court rejected PBMs’ bid to block state rate regulation. (Link)

A week after the FTC challenged a Philadelphia hospital merger between Jefferson Health and Einstein Healthcare Network, a judge shot it down, stating that the governing body hadn’t provided enough evidence the merger would result in a price increase. (Link)

Other Hits

• Midwest health giant Advocate Aurora is giving its frontline employees a collective $66 million bonus. (Link)
• According to the WHO, people are living longer, but chronic disease is killing more often for that reason. (Link)
• Achieving an equitable national health system for America. (Brookings)

Thought-Provoking Editorials

• Amazon’s new health band (aka, the Halo) is the most invasive tech we’ve ever tested (Washington Post)
• The ‘Right’ to health care in America. (THCB)
• It’s time to scare people about Covid. (KHN)
• The pandemic must be seen. (Wired)
• Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen. Big Booze wants to keep it that way. (Link)

Healthy Muse Top Picks

• The spooky, loosely regulated world of online therapy. (Link)
• 100 most influential people in healthcare, according to Modern Healthcare. (Link)

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