Thursday, October 11, 2018
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Retail pharmacy giant CVS and Aetna, the nation's third largest health insurer, won merger approval from the Department of Justice Wednesday. The $69 billion deal allows CVS to extend its brick-and-mortar pharmacy and health clinic business into a channel for patient monitoring and extended delivery of primary care services. One condition of DOJ approval: Aetna must sell off its Medicare Part D prescription drug business.
(
Washington Post
)
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Same-day service and price transparency are powerful enticements for walk-in and urgent-care clinics, especially to younger adults. That’s why more of them choose convenience care rather than a regular primary care provider who supports whole-person health. Only 45 percent of 18-29 year olds have a primary care physician, compared to 26 percent of the overall adult population, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found. Greater electronic access, telemedicine alternatives and same-day availability are features primary care practices must add to increase access and attract an age cohort that doesn’t remember life without a cell phone.
(
Kaiser Health News
)
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Innovation & Transformation
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Patient matching is the first hurdle on the track to successfully exchanging health information among health providers. New research from Pew demonstrates that the ability to accurately link those records—even within a single organization—remains a rare capability. Failure to accurately link records results in overtesting and care delays. In some cases, patient safety is at risk. A handful of organizations have pioneered approaches to vastly improve the rate of records matching, but a standardized nationwide strategy, with coordination from EHR vendors and health care organizations, is a minimum requirement.
(
Healthcare Informatics
;
Pew Trust report
)
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Fiat Chrysler in Kokomo, Ind. learned that 40 percent of employees didn’t have a primary care doctor. So now it provides free primary care for most employees and their families at a clinic it owns near one of its factories. A majority of the National Business Group on Health’s large employer membership (10,000+ employees) reported they will have on-site or near-site health clinics by 2019—56 percent, up from 47 percent in 2016. Employers say it’s a smart investment because it attracts and retains employees, reduces time away from work, improves chronic condition management and reduces the number of costly ER visits.
(
Concord Monitor
)
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Patients know what it means for providers to listen to them and be empathetic—and they expect for them to fulfill their expectations when it comes to patient experience, new research finds. They don’t want providers to just talk about being patient-centered, either; they want them to actually
be
patient-centered when they interact with consumers. Among patients questioned in a Beryl Institute study, 73 percent said they would switch doctors after a poor patient experience, and 76 percent said they would tell others about it. Bottom line: Patients are active partners in care, not passive recipients, and they expect to be treated that way.
(
Forbes
)
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The Maryland Health Care Commission is raising awareness of sky-high surgical costs by printing them on t-shirts. Funded by a federal grant, the campaign website, WearTheCost.org, features black t-shirts with bold white lettering showing actual costs from hospitals across the state, e.g., “hip replacement $30,067." Previous campaigns to raise consumer awareness about wildly varying procedure costs haven’t met with much success; the Commission hopes this campaign makes a bold enough statement.
(
Kaiser Health News
)
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Biosimilar savings potential, illustrated
:
A new infographic from the Alliance of Community Health Plans spells out the cost benefits of biosimilars, or copycat versions of expensive biologic drugs. The FDA has approved 12 biosimilars for the U.S. market, but only three are readily available because of “anti-competitive business practices,” the infographic notes. Europeans have access to 36 biosimilars already, offering considerable cost savings and increasing access to patients. (
Alliance of Community Health Plans
)
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Supportive senior housing gets gold star
:
Compared to their counterparts in typical housing, elders living in housing with social support services were 32 percent less likely to have a hospital stay, and those who did land in the hospital spent a day less as an inpatient. Authors of the
Health Affairs
study suggest that by reducing hospital stays, investing in this type of housing for vulnerable older adults could lower overall health care costs.
(
Health Affairs
; subscription may be required)
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Did you eat fast food today
?
On any given day, 36 percent of adults—that’s more than a third—eat fast food. The younger you are, the more likely you’ve indulged in fast food today; 45 percent of adults ages 20 to 39 eat fast food meals on a given day, according to the National Center for Health Statistics survey.
(
USA Today
)
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The Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality now provides a dashboard for states to size up their health care quality and compare it against other states. The State Snapshots tool drills down to state-level performance data on more than 250 measures. AHRQ hopes state leaders will use the tool to more accurately identify weaknesses and plan for future improvement. (
AHRQ
)
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MarketVoices...quotes worth reading
“These trends are more evident among millennials, but not unique to them. I think people’s expectations have changed. Convenience [is prized] in almost every aspect of our lives."— Ateev Mehrotra, internist and associate professor, department of health care policy, Harvard Medical School, as quoted in a
Kaiser Health News
story.
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Editor
Sandy Mau
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