healthy muse healthcare news.
Oak Street and Walmart Team Up.
This week, recently IPO’d Oak Street Health announced a partnership with Walmart to integrate its center model inside three Walmart supercenters in the Dallas-Fort Worth area later this year.
- OSH’s clinics operate under a value-based care arrangement and provide primary care services. This announcement comes at a time when Walmart is piloting its own health clinics in Georgia. Which makes me wonder…could Walmart purchase Oak Street Health if all goes swimmingly well?
The CVS grand strategy.
Check out Aetna’s latest insurance plan – Aetna Connected.
- Main features of the plan include no co-pay appointments at Minute Clinics / HealthHUBs and added benefits at CVS pharmacies like free prescription delivery. It’s all part of the grand vertically integrated strategy, right?
California’s big healthcare moves.
Keep an eye on California: a bill that would greatly expand the services that nurse practitioners are legally allowed to provide (aka, basically on-par with a primary care physician) is hitting Governor Newsom’s desk soon.
- Not to be outdone, the state is also considering producing its own generic drugs to address state shortages.
Coronavirus updates.
- Read former FDA head Scott Gottlieb’s informative Twitter thread on where we’re at headed into the fall/winter season in addition to the recently discovered benefits of steroids and blood thinners in hospitalized COVID treatments. I recommend you give him a follow if you’re at all interested in data-driven COVID insights.
- The U.S. has decided to stay away from a global effort to find a COVID-19 vaccine. The global effort would allow countries to access a ‘portfolio’ of available COVID vaccines for its citizens.
Vaccines and politics?
- The CDC made headlines by asking states to start preparing their vaccine sites by November 1st. That timeline implies that the CDC thinks a vaccine could be ready by October.
- Somewhat contradicting this timeline, a top adviser to Operation Warp Speed (the U.S. government’s program for COVID vaccine development) noted that an October vaccine would be extremely unlikely.
- Some officials expressed concern that the CDC might be trying to accelerate the vaccine timeline in order to fit political agendas prior to the November election
- To alleviate concerns of political agendas mixed in with the vaccine’s development, the top official of Operation Warp Speed committed to resigning from the program if he felt there was political interference.
- Adding on to this, biotech executives from all COVID vaccine frontrunners issued a joint statement calling for data-driven vaccine results and FDA independence. Long story short: officials and pharma are doing their best to address vaccine safety concerns.
Quick Hits
Biz Hits
- Read this awesome thread on the Teladoc/Livongo deal timeline and insights into the merger’s recent investor presentations. The thread gives great details into what parts of healthcare that Teladongo is targeting.
- Home healthcare highlights: spending on home health is down 21.6% under the new payment model PDGM. But Encompass Health is optimistic about the trajectory of home health & hospice, especially as more care transitions to the home in a post-COVID world.
- Could direct primary care lead private practices out of the financial hole?
Policy Hits
- HHS issued a new plan this week to improve access to rural healthcare. Read how the agency is planning to rely on telehealth to address coverage gaps.
- Highlights from CMS’ 2021 IPPS final rule include forced disclosure of median negotiated rates between providers and Medicare Advantage payers along with a 2.7% increase in payments to hospitals for 2021.
- Notable: A new CMS rule aims to reduce lag time between FDA approval and Medicare coverage of new devices
Other Hits
- NPR published a printable guide on how to care for older loved ones during the pandemic.
- Interestingly, debt rating agencies have held off from downgrading health system bond ratings despite a tumultuous 2020. Agencies are in a ‘wait and see’ mode as healthcare deals with the fallout from the pandemic-ridden first half of the year.
- Essentia Health wants Congress to approve its $1 billion ICU Readiness Fund Proposal, which would address ICU bed shortages at hospitals in 10 regions across the U.S.
- Eli Lilly doesn’t like the 340B program and is joining AstraZeneca in halting sales of drugs to contract pharmacies.
Thought-Provoking Editorials
- Can platforms help reduce wasteful healthcare spending? (Forbes)
- We can solve the coronavirus test mess now – if we want to (Atul Gawande – New Yorker). Bottom line – we need more testing, and faster.
- Check out Fortune’s healthcare 40 under 40 list for 2020.
Healthy Muse Top Picks
- Meet the woman who gave the world antiviral drugs. (National Geographic)
- Read this super insightful post from Health Affairs that dives into Medicaid’s origins and how certain pivotal moments in its history may have led to racial health disparities.
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