Category: Uncategorized

988: A New Lifeline for Mental Health Emergencies

Nov 22, 2021

By BEN WHEATLEY

Miles Hall, a 23-year-old Black man experiencing a psychotic episode, was shot and killed by police after 911 received calls of a disturbance in his Walnut Creek, California neighborhood. His mother Taun Hall had taken steps to warn the local police that her son had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and that he might be prone to mental health crises. She believed she had done enough to ensure that, in the event of a crisis, her son would be treated with care. But when the crisis came, authorities viewed Miles’ behavior through the lens of public safety, not through the lens of mental health, and it cost him his life.

Healthcare Not a Part of the US Inflation Surge: Who Knew?

Nov 19, 2021

By JEFF GOLDSMITH

When I first appeared in The Health Care Blog fourteen long years ago, it was to decry the policy community’s obsessive search for bad news about the health system: https://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2007/10/03/the-perpetual-health-care-crisis-by-jeff-goldsmith/. So while we struggled with the COVID pandemic, we continued hearing regularly about pharmaceutical price gouging, anti-competitive hospital mergers, bad labor relations, and provider burnout. Thus, we can expect to hear nothing whatsoever about the failure of the health system to participate in the current outburst of inflation in the US economy.

The Washington think tank Altarum Institute tracks such things, and in its November 16 report https://altarum.org/sites/default/files/uploaded-publication-files/SHSS-Price-Brief_November_2021.pdf, we learn that healthcare prices rose by an annualized rate of just 2% in October 2021 compared to the Consumer Price Index’s 6.2% and the Producer Price Index’s 8.6%. Altarum commented that this was “surprising given that many of the same factors impacting economywide prices (labor shortages, supply chain issues, and increased demand for economywide services) would be expected to impact health care as well.”

Breaking Up is Good to Do

Nov 16, 2021

By KIM BELLARD

Last week General Electric announced it was breaking itself up. GE is an American icon, part of America’s industrial landscape for the last 129 years, but the 21^st century has not been kind to it. The breakup didn’t come as a complete surprise. Then later in the week Johnson and Johnson, another longtime American icon, also announced it would split itself up, and I thought, well, that’s interesting. When on the same day Toshiba said it was splitting itself up, I thought, hmm, I may have to write about this.

Healthcare is still in the consolidation phase, but there may be some lessons here for it.

For most of its existence, GE was an acquirer, gobbling up companies with the belief that its vaunted management structure could provide value no matter what the industry. This was most famously true in the Jack Welch days, but since those days it has been gradually shrinking itself, spinning off some of its more problematic divisions, like appliances, locomotives, and much of its once-huge financial services business. It will spin off its healthcare business in early 2023 and its renewable energy and power business in early 2024; its aviation business will keep the GE name.

“A healthcare investor wants to invest in healthcare,” CEO Larry Culp explained. “We know we are under-owned in each of those three sectors, in part because of our structure.”

What is the “Right” to Health Care Worth? It Depends

Nov 12, 2021

By MIKE MAGEE

In my course this Fall at the University of Hartford, titled “The Right to Health Care and the U.S. Constitution”, we have concentrated on the power of words, of precedents, and the range of interests with which health has been encumbered over several hundred years.

The topic has been an eye-opener on many levels. On the most basic level, it is already clear that the value of this “right” depends heavily on your definition of “health.”

We’ve highlighted three definitions worth sharing here.

Tech Can’t Fix the Problems in Healthcare

Nov 10, 2021

By KIM BELLARD

Shira Ovide, who writes the On Tech newsletter for The New York Times, had a thoughtful column last week: Tech Can’t Fix the Problem of Cars. It was, she said, inspired by Peter Norton’s Autonorama: The Illusionary Promise of High Tech Driving. The premise of both, in case the titles didn’t already give it away, is that throwing more tech into our cars is not going to address the underlying issues that cars pose.

It made me think of healthcare.

What’s been going on in the automotive world in the past decade has truly been amazing. Our cars have become mobile screens, with big dashboard touchscreen displays, Bluetooth, and streaming. Electric cars have gone from an expensive pipedream to an agreed-upon future, with Tesla valued at over a trillion dollars, despite never having sold a half-million cars annually before 2021.

If we don’t feel like driving, we can use our smartphones to call an Uber or Lyft. Or we can use the various autonomous features already available on many cars, with an expectation that fully self-driving vehicles are right around the corner. Soon, it seems, we’ll have non-polluting, self-driving vehicles on call: fewer deaths/injuries, less pollution, not as many vehicles sitting around idly most of the day. Utopia, right?

CareCentrix CEO on Walgreens Taking Majority Stake, How Post-Acute Care Will Fair in Retail Health

Nov 10, 2021

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

The same day Walgreens announced its $5.2B investment in VillageMD to snag a majority stake in the growing primary care clinic, it ALSO revealed it had made a $300M investment in CareCentrix that scored 55% of that company and another opportunity to expand its reach beyond the pharmacy – this time into the home.

CareCentrix’s CEO John Driscoll takes us behind the deal, which lands Walgreens into the world of post-acute care (home nursing, hospital discharge recovery, home infusion, palliative care, etc.) which he describes as the “long-form sexy-cool” segment of the healthcare market that’s not only worth $75B annually now, but that’s also set for massive growth over the next 20 years.

Walgreens is clearly seeing the opportunity John’s seeing, particularly when it comes to positioning its pharmacies as “local health distribution and support centers” – hubs that leverage both the trust patients have in their pharmacists and the frequency with which they visit a Walgreens store compared to a doctor’s office or hospital. In the Walgreens Health strategy, what’s the vision for how CareCentrix and VillageMD will ultimately work together to take care of these regular Walgreens customers? Will post-acute care fair as well as primary care when it comes to a retail distribution channel? And, of course, we HAVE to go behind the scenes on the deal itself and ask John what we were all wondering: Why didn’t Walgreens just acquire both VillageMD and CareCentrix outright??

Behind the Mask

Nov 9, 2021

By HANS DUVEFELT

Today I saw a patient I have known for years. He suddenly pulled his mask down and said, “I’d like to know what you think I should do about this”.

On his nose was an 8 mm (1/3”) brownish-red flat spot with a crack or scrape through it.

“How long have you had it?”, I asked.

“Oh, a while now” he answered. That is about the least helpful time measurement I know of. I asked him to pin it down a bit more precisely. He settled for about a year. I prescribed a cream and made a two week follow-up appointment for either cryo or a biopsy. It’s probably just an excoriated, premalignant, actinic keratosis.

Woman’s Health Startup Pollie Wins Bayer G4A’s Attention With Female-Focused Chronic Condition Play

Nov 5, 2021

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Forget being pigeon-holed as a “femtech” company! VERY early-stage women’s health startup, Pollie, is taking an integrated care approach to complex chronic conditions that either just affect women, OR impact women differently or disproportionally than men. Think not only about conditions caused by hormone imbalances like PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) or endometriosis, but also auto-immune disorders and digestive disorders that present differently or more frequently in women.

Co-Founder and CEO, Jane Sagui, drops by to talk us through the platform Pollie is building (and I mean, building-as-we-speak) which will ultimately teach women how to manage their chronic conditions via a highly-personalized program that includes all possible treatment management solutions, from pharmaceuticals to lifestyle-based treatments like diet and exercise. The company is currently piloting a version of their solution with a cohort of PCOS patients, but, has grand plans to expand their multi-modality pill-plus approach into other categories of women’s health that are NOT reproductive system related. Their biz has already caught the eye – and some investment dollars – from Bayer, as the company is one of four that’s been selected for this year’s Growth Track within G4A’s Digital Health Partnerships Program.

Jane gives us the details behind Pollie: their business, the pilot, the round they’re currently raising, and the types of partners they’re seeking as they evolve their offering. What’s also exciting? An early-stage bet from a big pharma co like Bayer that signals a future for women’s health care that may (finally) be about MORE than just reproductive health.

THCB Gang Episode 71, Nov 4

Nov 4, 2021

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on THCBGang Thursday were fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey); cardiologist & provocateur Anish Koka (@anish_koka); patient activist, author & entrepreneur Robin Farmanfarmaian (@Robinff3); and THCB regular writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard).

We got into the “what are parents thinking about schools and what happens to politics as a result”, and then into the children’s COVID-19 vaccine, then how remote patient and now remote therapeutics monitoring, and ending with where we thought AI was going! Quite the conversation!

You can see the video below but if you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

#Healthin2Point00, Episode 240|Tebra, Notable, Wellinks, Aktiia, and Enlace Health

Nov 4, 2021

Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess and I talk briefly about Frontiers Health – frontiers.health – a digital health company with a deep therapeutics focus. Kareo and Patient Pop merge to form Tebra and get $65 million dollars from a PE firm. A notable raise from Notable, $100 million in a Series B brings to total up to $119 million. Wellinks gets $25 million in a Series C in the COPD space. Constant Blood Pressure monitoring company Aktiia gets $17.5 million, bringing their total up to $28 million. Aver Inc. rebrands, becoming Enlace Health, and raises 58 million dollars bringing their total up to $111 million. Investment efforts in Enlace were led by Cox Inc., and the relationship between Cox and Enlace seems very tight. -Matthew Holt

–Matthew Holt