João Bocas is known as “The Wearables Expert” and has been talking, writing and innovating in health tech for a while. Last month he had me on his video series. It was a fun interview in which I talked about Flipping the Stack, the Continuous Clinic, and the slow pace of change in health care! With João’s permission I am reproducing that interview here–Matthew Holt
THCB Gang Episode 94, Thursday June 2
Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday June 2 were regulars Grace Cordavano (@GraceCordovano); patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@mlmillenson); and policy expert consultant/author Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1). Gun control, hospital quality and much more all came up and were interlinked. Quite the conversation.
You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
Russ Johannesson, CEO, Glooko
Russ Johannesson has been CEO of Glooko since 2018. In that time the diabetes data platform has expanded internationally, made a couple of acquisitions, and added support for digital therapeutics and distributed clinical trials. He brought me up to date with the latest–Matthew Holt
THCB Gang Episode 93, Thursday May 26 1pm PT, 4pm ET
Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday May 26 were medical historian Mike Magee (@drmikemagee); Suntra Modern Recovery CEO JL Neptune (@JeanLucNeptune); and fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey). Plenty of conversation about guns as a public health crisis, and also much about data use, data reidentification and controversy there.
You can see the video below live (and later archived) & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
Virtual Care Regulatory Round-Up: Telehealth & Digital Care ‘State-of-Play’ by Nathaniel Lacktman
BY JESS DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
Just as HHS extends the Covid-19 public health emergency waivers until July, we kick-off a brand-new monthly interview series about the state-of-play for all things telehealth and digital care policy and reimbursement. Called the WTF Health Virtual Care Regulatory Round-up, we’re partnering with our friends at Wheel to feature health policy experts, lobbyists, health plan folks, and other virtual care experts and insiders who can keep us updated on the changing regulations and what they will mean to those health tech co’s whose businesses rely on virtual care.
Attorney-to-the-stars-of-telehealth, Nathaniel Lacktman, who chairs the Telemedicine & Digital Health Industry Team at Foley & Lardner and is a Board member of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA), kicks the series off for us with an update on those public health waivers and how he is coaching health tech businesses in preparing for the inevitable transition of care that will come when they come to an end.
What will happen to patients who live across state lines from their virtual care providers? What business decisions need to be made to avoid abandoning patients and maintaining continuity of care? Nate’s not bullish on a federal national license, but there are some cases where cross-state patient-provider relationships can continue to exist – they just might not work for everyone’s business model.
And, on the subject of telehealth business models, Nate gives us his take on where he thinks reimbursement will be headed, how policy around virtual prescribing will be impacted post-pandemic (particularly around controlled substances), and whether or not Medicare’s originating site requirement will be put back in place. We also get Nate’s perspective on which virtual care business models seem to be working best among health tech startups and what legal risk those more ‘reckless’ players might be creating for the rest of the field without even realizing it. Great education on virtual care and what’s happening in the space RIGHT NOW. Watch!
Special thanks to our series sponsor, Wheel – the health tech company powering the virtual care industry. Wheel provides companies with everything they need to launch and scale virtual care services — including the regulatory infrastructure to deliver high quality and compliant care. Learn more at wheel.com.
CVS Health’s Head of Enterprise Virtual Health Weighs-in: ‘What’s Next’ for Telehealth at CVS, Aetna
BY JESS DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
What are the BIG questions a BIG healthcare company like CVS Health is trying to answer when it comes to virtual care and creating the healthcare business model of the future? I’ve got Dr. Creagh Milford, CVS Health’s Head of Enterprise Virtual Health, who’s purview covers both CVS Pharmacy (9,000+ stores including 1,100 Minute Clinics) and Aetna, which provides health insurance to 39 million people.
Creagh’s big concern right now: how to weave together existing care models with virtual so 1) the consumer has a single front door and 2) the provider workforce – which includes everyone from pharmacists to primary care docs and beyond – is coordinated and working together. As you’ll hear, there’s a lot of thinking about “pivot points,” or where the patient and provider meet in the virtual-and-in-person ecosystem. The goal is to make those interactions easy and seamless – for both patient and provider alike – and we get into the strategic thinking, clinical operations, and tech underpinnings that are evolving to make those transitions possible.
Long-term, Creagh believes that healthcare consumers have “voted with their fingertips” and that virtual care is here to stay, but as part of a hybrid model in which questions about quality and cost are still being worked out. Will incentives ultimately realign to make virtual care more enticing across the healthcare system? What types of technology will be next to augment the hundreds of thousands of virtual visits a year coming out of Minute Clinic, or happening as part of an Aetna plan benefit? Here’s how one of the biggest healthcare companies in the country is driving virtual care forward. Watch now!
THCB Gang Episode 92, Thursday May 19 1pm PT, 4pm ET
Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday May 19 are delivery & platform expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis); policy expert consultant/author Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1); & back after a long absence dangerous radiologist Saurabh Jha (@roguerad). Some great conversation about digital health, Roe v Wade, rural care and a deep dive into Saurabh’s trip to Nepal to deliver radiology tech to Everest Base Camp!
You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
ATA’s CEO Ann Mond Johnson Takes on the “Telehealth Cliff”
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
The BIG takeaway from ATA’s Annual Meeting is best bottom-lined by ATA’s big boss, CEO Ann Mond Johnson, in this interview: “From an overall perspective, we just don’t want to go over that ‘telehealth cliff.’”
ATA, the re-branded American Telemedicine Association, has not only evolved along with virtual care through the pandemic, but has also been critical in redefining telehealth as modality for healthcare and re-framing access to it as a bipartisan issue that everyone in DC can get behind.
Ann talks through the high-level changes she’s witnessed for telehealth adoption over the past two years and gives us her predictions for what’s going to happen next – particularly when it comes to the business of virtual care, consumer demand, and, most importantly, regulations and reimbursement. Lots happening thanks to ATA’s new affiliated trade organization, ATA Action, which is lobbying to ensure that the waivers that enabled the acceleration of telehealth during the Covid-19 public health emergency become permanent. The time is NOW for health tech co’s to get involved! Tune in to find out how.
How About This Opportunity, Health Tech Investors? Promoting Contraception vs. Banning Abortion
By MIKE MAGEE
Dr. Linda Rosenstock has an M.D. and M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins, and was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar. She is currently Dean Emeritus and Professor of Health Policy and Management at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, but also spent years in government, and was on President Obama’s Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion and Integrative and Public Health.
In the wake of the release of Justice Alito’s memo trashing Roe v. Wade, she was asked to comment about the status of abortion in America. Here is what she said:
“The broader the access to proven family planning methods, the lower the unintended pregnancy rate and the lower the abortion rate. We can’t underestimate the role of educating and empowering women – and men – about these issues.”
These are not simply the opinions or insights of a single health expert. They are backed up by the following facts:
- Since 1981, abortion rates in U.S. women, age 15 to 44, have declined by nearly two thirds from 29.3 per 1000 to 11.4 per 1000.
2. Approximately half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended. Of those unintended, approximately 40% of the women chose to terminate the pregnancy by abortion – either procedural or chemically induced.
3. The decline in the number of abortions has coincided with increased access to long-acting reversible contraception, including IUD’s and contraceptive implants. These options are now safe, increasingly covered by insurers, and more accessible to at-risk populations.
4. The increasing inclusion of sex education in middle school and high school curricula has been accompanied by a decline in high school sexual activity by 17% between 2009 and 2019.
5. There were 629,898 abortions recorded by the CDC in 2019. For every 1000 live births that year, there were 195 other women who chose to terminate their pregnancies. Almost half of the 1st trimester abortions are now chemically induced through Plan B-type pills.
What is clear from these figures is that knowledge and access to contraception is the best way to decrease the number of abortions in America.
Continue reading…THCB Gang Episode 91, Thursday May 12
Following last week’s extraordinary special on cancer & navigation, this week’s #THCBGang on May 12 was a deep dive into digital health. Including data, education, business models and the knowledge gap; and of course quite a bit of discussion about the future of the data and digital health around abortion.
Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) were WTF Health host & Health IT girl Jessica DaMassa (@jessdamassa), privacy regulation expert Deven McGraw (@HealthPrivacy); & surgeon & startup guy Raj Aggarwal (@docaggarwal). Special guest this week is Olympic rower for 2 countries and all around dynamo Jennifer Goldsack, (@GoldsackJen), CEO at the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe).
You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
