Too much fawning over Len Schaeffer?
By MATTHEW HOLT
There’s a lot of strum & dangst about the uptick in system utilization that has boosted hospital profits and hit Humana and United’s bottom line (But not so much Elevance’s). Kevin O’ Leary over at Health Tech Nerds brought this up today and I was reminded of this piece I wrote in 2006. And a big issue was, how much understanding and control do insurers have over the utilization in (and out of) their networks. So take a look at this piece and particularly, given the issues at the BUCAHs and at smaller players like Agilon, consider how much insurers actually know about spending...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 1, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Health insurers Len Schaeffer Medicare Advantage Oldies Utilization Source Type: blogs
Turquoise Health Raises $30M Series B Financing, Expanding Healthcare Pricing Platform Offerings
Price Transparency is the Foundation for Eliminating the Financial Complexity of Healthcare
Turquoise Health, an end-to-end healthcare pricing platform, today announced a $30M Series B investment led by Adams Street Partners, with participation from Yosemite, as well as existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and BoxGroup. Turquoise will use the funding to further support transparent pricing workflows across its customer base of over 160 healthcare organizations.
“Healthcare pricing remains frustratingly opaque for many industry stakeholders, including patients,” says Tom Bremner, Partner at Adams Street, who wi...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 31, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Adams Street Partners Andreessen Horowitz BoxGroup Chris Severn Health IT Funding Health IT Fundings Health IT Investment Matt Bettonville Niyum Gandhi The Mass General Brigham Health System Tom Brem Source Type: blogs
The Business Case for a Biosimilar Company to Bring a Copy of Levemir to Market
My readers may recall that in November 2023, I blogged that Novo Nordisk announced it plans to retire (stop making) its first " Lantus killer " known as Levemir (insulin detemir injection) in the U.S. in 2024 (catch my post at https://blog.sstrumello.com/2023/11/novo-nordisk-to-discontinue-levemir-in.html for more). At the time I learned of the announcement, I was on vacation in Amsterdam, so I just made a note of the development and blogged about it a few weeks later upon my return.Like other patients my age, I have endured the company ' s previous insulin " retirements " . Novo Nordisk ' s time-frame for withdr...
Source: Scott's Web Log - January 25, 2024 Category: Endocrinology Tags: 2024 Biosimilar Levemir Novo Nordisk PBM Source Type: blogs
Bonus Features – January 21, 2024 – Number of compromised patient records in cyberattacks rose 108% in 2023, USCDI v5 draft announced, plus 18 more stories
This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job.
News and Studies
ONC released the draft United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) v5, along with a Standards Bulletin to explain the proposed two new data classes (Observations and Orders) and 13 new data elements (...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 21, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Amy Kruse Avel eCare Biofourmis bitewell CAE Healthcare Christian León CLARA Analytics eClinical Solutions Equality Health Feel Therapeutics FOLX Health Fortified Health Security GigXR Healthc Source Type: blogs
Pharmaceutical profiteering
Another reason why we spend more on pharmaceuticals than the rest of the world ( " drugs " also means fentanyl and crank so I ' m trying to disambiguate here) is the profit motive. There are perverse incentives built into the system that encourage use of higher priced chemicals when cheaper ones would be as good or better for patients.There are some medications that people can ' t take at home. You have to go to a physician ' s office and have them infused. Medicare pays the physician a percentage of the cost of the drug, which means, obviously, that doctors make more money infusing a $10,000 drug than they would infusing ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 20, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Health IT – 2024 Health IT Predictions
As we kick off 2024, we wanted to start the new year with a series of 2024 Health IT predictions. We asked the Healthcare IT Today community to submit their predictions and we received a wide ranging set of responses that we grouped into a number of themes. In fact, we got so many that we had to narrow them down to just the best and most interesting. Check out our community’s predictions below and be sure to add your own thoughts and/or places you disagree with these predictions in the comments and on social media.
All of this year’s 2024 health IT predictions (updated as they’re shared):
John and ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 18, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: John Lynn Tags: Ambulatory C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System LTPAC 2024 Health IT Predictions Aasim Saeed Amenities Health Andrew Harding Ankit Gupta Anthony Hare Ash Wellness Availity Bicycle Health Source Type: blogs
AI-Enabled Start-Up Guidehealth Acquires 25-Year Industry Leading MSO and Value-Based Care Services Division
Technology Partnership between Guidehealth and Arcadia will Power the Newly Acquired Offering
Guidehealth, the AI-enabled digital healthcare platform that supports health systems and clinical networks in value-based care, announced today that it acquired an industry-acclaimed managed services organization (MSO) and Value-Based Care Service division from Arcadia, a healthcare technology company that provides a leading data platform to providers and payers. Guidehealth also entered into a technology agreement to leverage Arcadia’s powerful data analytics platform—which intelligently curates and analyzes a complex mesh of...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 16, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Arcadia Brian Croegert Dr. Mark Selna Dr. Sanjay Doddamani Guidehealth Health IT Acquisitions Healthcare M&A Michael Gleeson Michael Meucci Source Type: blogs
Weekly Roundup – January 13, 2024
Welcome to our Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup. Each week, we’ll be providing a look back at the articles we posted and why they’re important to the healthcare IT community. We hope this gives you a chance to catch up on anything you may have missed during the week.
2024 Health IT Predictions: AI Regulations and Ethics. This week, we published several more posts in our series on 2024 Health IT Predictions. We received a lot of interesting thoughts on the ethics of AI, including validating AI models, a tighter regulatory environment for AI tools, and managing the fast pace of innovation. Read more…
2024 Health ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 13, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: Healthcare IT Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup Source Type: blogs
Why HHS ’ Cybersecurity Concept Paper Falls Short for Healthcare
The following is a guest article by Chris Bowen, Founder and CISO at ClearDATA
The recent Cybersecurity concept paper from HHS, while a gesture towards progress, falls critically short of what’s imperative in today’s climate. In an era where the HHS itself notes a 93% increase in large healthcare data breaches from 2018 to 2022, as well as a 278% increase in those that involve ransomware, suggesting “voluntary cybersecurity goals” is akin to applying a band-aid on a hemorrhage. It’s time for HHS to mandate and enforce rigorous, prescriptive cybersecurity standards.
First and foremost, if you’re ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 12, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Ambulatory C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System LTPAC Security and Privacy Chris Bowen ClearDATA Cybersecurity Cybersecurity Standards Healthcare Cybersecurity Healthcare Security HHS HIPA Source Type: blogs
Consider Bypassing Your Health Insurance to Afford Certain Type 1 Diabetes-Related Medicines and Supplies
Since it ' s January (a new year), and about half of all Americans with employer-sponsored healthcare insurance plans have some deductibles to satisfy before their healthcare insurance really kicks-in to cover much of anything and deductibles reset on January 1, I thought perhaps this might be a good time to write about my own experience with high-deductible insurance plans and some intelligent work-arounds which I ' ve discovered to deal with those. Who knows? You might (as I did) find you actually like using a particular brand or variety of insulin which is not " preferred " by your insurance ' s PBM, or maybe you f...
Source: Scott's Web Log - January 11, 2024 Category: Endocrinology Tags: type 1 diabetes 2024 bypass insurance manufacturer coupons PBM ' PBMs unbranded insulin Source Type: blogs
Here ’s What to Expect from IoMT Cybersecurity in 2024
The following is a guest article by Shankar Somasundaram, CEO at Asimily
Healthcare delivery organizations (HDOs) continue to be up against a fast-moving landscape trying to keep up with and mitigate cybersecurity threats to medical technology. But even setting aside the immense challenge of safeguarding Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices from increasingly sophisticated and frequent attacks, HDOs must also adapt to shifting cyber insurance practices and compliance mandates. All of these challenges are compounded by the budget and staff constraints facing most HDOs. To stay safe in 2024, understanding the current sta...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 8, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Security and Privacy Asimily Cyber Insurers Cybersecurity Data Breaches HDOs Healthcare Cybersecurity Healthcare Cybersecurity Insurance Healthcare Deliver Source Type: blogs
Value Based Care – 2024 Health IT Predictions
As we kick off 2024, we wanted to start the new year with a series of 2024 Health IT predictions. We asked the Healthcare IT Today community to submit their predictions and we received a wide ranging set of responses that we grouped into a number of themes. In fact, we got so many that we had to narrow them down to just the best and most interesting. Check out our community’s predictions below and be sure to add your own thoughts and/or places you disagree with these predictions in the comments and on social media.
All of this year’s 2024 health IT predictions (updated as they’re shared):
John and ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 5, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: John Lynn Tags: Administration Ambulatory C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Regulations Revenue Cycle Management 2024 Health IT Predictions 9amHealth Andreessen Horowitz Anthony Hudson Anton Kittleberger Source Type: blogs
Econoclasm Chapter Two, continued: The Death Spiral
It ' s been a few days since the last post in this series, so I ' ll remind you that last time, we posed the question, " What would happen if insurers were simply required to cover people for pre-existing conditions? " Problem solved, right? No. Problem made worse. Imagine what would happen. All of a
sudden a whole lot of people with serious chronic diseases, who couldn ’t get
health insurance before, will buy it now. They’re expensive to cover, so the
premiums will go up for everybody. At that point some number of people who
don’t need it quite as badly will drop their coverage, leaving only sicker
people in th...
Source: Stayin' Alive - January 5, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
PursueCare Completes Series B Fundraising Round and Acquires Digital Therapeutics Developed by Pear Therapeutics, Inc.
The Fundraising and Acquisition of Digital Therapeutics for SUD Strengthens PursueCare’s Ability to Provide Care for Individuals with Addiction
PursueCare, a digital addiction treatment provider, today announced the completion of a Series B fundraising round totaling $20 million. The Series B round was led by T.Rx Capital and Yamaha Motor Ventures, with participation from Seyen Capital and OCA Ventures. The proceeds from the financing will support PursueCare’s ongoing collaborative care initiatives with health systems across 11 states, as well as expansion into value-based care with Medicaid managed care and other heal...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 5, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Corey McCann Health IT Acquisitions Healthcare M&A Nicholas Mercadante OCA Ventures Pear Therapeutics PursueCare reSET reSET-O Seyen Capital T.Rx Capital Yamaha Motor Ventures Source Type: blogs
How Healthcare Can Manage Compliance with Fine-Grained Protection
The following is a guest article by Marlena Herrera, Director at Protegrity
Healthcare organizations are becoming more lucrative targets for hackers, as their data is rich with extremely sensitive information and is often susceptible to vulnerabilities. In the same step, the number of regulations governing the sector has grown in complexity, which stems from movements including the HIPAA Right of Access Initiative and fallout from the reversal of federally protected abortion access. Combining this with the increasing number of digital-first health applications and services on the market, protecting data at every touchpoint...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 2, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Analytics/Big Data Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Security and Privacy Data Protection Fine-Grained Data Protection Healthcare Compliance HIPAA Marlena Herrera Protegrity RBAC Role-Based Access Control Source Type: blogs
