Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess might be a little wary of my colonoscopy story, but it reveals just how well insurance companies communicate. In this episode, Jess and I cover GoodRx filing an S1 to go public, Trellus Health raising $5 million in seed funding for its platform for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and other chronic conditions, Klara Health raising $15 million for patient engagement, and Castor raising $12 million for its clinical trial platform. —Matthew Holt
Above the Fold
Announcing The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge
By FARZAD MOSTASHARI
In Partnership with the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, Resolve to Save Lives, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Maryland, Catalyst @ Health 2.0 is excited to announce the launch of The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge. The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge is looking for novel analytic approaches that use COVID-19 Symptom Survey data to enable earlier detection and improved situational awareness of the outbreak by public health and the public.
How the Challenge Works:
In Phase I, innovators submit a white paper (“digital poster”) summarizing the approach, methods, analysis, findings, relevant figures and graphs of their analytic approach using Symptom Survey public data (see challenge submission criteria for more). Judges will evaluate the entries based on Validity, Scientific Rigor, Impact, and User Experience and award five semi-finalists $5,000 each. Semi-finalists will present their analytic approaches to a judging panel and three semi-finalists will be selected to advance to Phase II. The semi-finalists will develop a prototype (simulation or visualization) using their analytic approach and present their prototype at a virtual unveiling event. Judges will select a grand prize winner and the runner up (2nd place). The grand prize winner will be awarded $50,000 and the runner up will be awarded $25,000.The winning analytic design will be featured on the Facebook Data For Good website and the winning team will have the opportunity to participate in a discussion forum with representatives from public health agencies.
Phase I applications for the challenge are due Tuesday, September 29th, 2020 11:59:59 PM ET.
Learn more about the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge HERE.
Challenge participants will leverage aggregated data from the COVID-19 symptom surveys conducted by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland, in partnership with Facebook Data for Good. Approaches can integrate publicly available anonymized datasets to validate and extend predictive utility of symptom data and should assess the impact of the integration of symptom data on identifying inflection points in state, local, or regional COVID outbreaks as well guiding individual and policy decision-making.
These are the largest and most detailed surveys ever conducted during a public health emergency, with over 25M responses recorded to date, across 200+ countries and territories and 55+ languages. Challenge partners look forward to seeing participant’s proposed approaches leveraging this data, as well as welcome feedback on the data’s usefulness in modeling efforts.
Indu Subaiya, co-founder of Catalyst @ Health 2.0 (“Catalyst”) met with Farzad Mostashari, Challenge Chair, to discuss the launch of the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge. Indu and Farzad walked through the movement around open data as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the challenge goals, partners, evaluation criteria, and prizes.
Why Health Systems Employ Doctors: Money and Control
By KEN TERRY
(This is the third in a series of excerpts from Terry’s new book, Physician-Led Healthcare Reform: a New Approach to Medicare for All, published by the American Association for Physician Leadership.)
The American Medical Association (AMA) last year announced that, for the first time, more physicians were employed than were independent. While many of these doctors were employed by private practices, the AMA said, about 35% of them worked directly for a hospital or for a hospital-owned practice.25
This estimate was lower than that of other surveys. According to research conducted by the Physicians Advocacy Institute (PAI) and Avalere Health, a consulting firm, 44% of physicians were employed by hospitals in January 2018, compared to 25% in July 2012. More than half of U.S. physicians now work for or contract with fewer than 700 healthcare systems across the country, according to a new study in Health Affairs.
Many of the physicians employed by hospitals and health systems formerly were in private practice. They sold their practices to hospitals because of increasing overhead, dwindling reimbursement, and the rising administrative burdens of ownership, according to Jackson Healthcare, a physician recruiting firm.
The many negative factors affecting primary care also have impelled a growing number of primary care physicians to seek employment in recent years. In 2018, 47% of general internists, 57% of family physicians and 56% of pediatricians were employed. There is evidence that this trend may be exacerbating the primary care shortage because employed doctors see fewer patients per day, on average, than do those in private practice.
Continue reading…Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 147 | The Most Confusing Episode So Far
With 3 consecutive days of $100M in funding, here is the most confusing (or rather the most confused we have been) Episode 147 of Health in 2 Point 00. Jess asks me about Verily partnering with Swiss Re to get into the stop-loss insurance game, Prescryptive Health raising a $26M Series A for their maybe GoodRx-like or PBM platform, Sonde Health acquiring NeuroLex for its vocal biomarkers platform, Aetion reopening their Series B and raising another $19M to the $36M they have already raised, and Otsuka after investing millions of dollars in Proteus, deciding to buy the rest of it with $15M, but we don’t know why any of these deals happened –Matthew Holt
COVID-19 is Bringing Data Privacy into the Spotlight – This is How Healthcare Companies Should Respond
By DAN LINTON
Privacy concerns across the country continue to increase, and consumers expect their healthcare information to be private. Headline-making data sales, skepticism of Silicon Valley privacy practices, and COVID-19 contact tracing concerns compounded with a general lack of consumer awareness have continued to generate an ongoing storm ofnegative press and political scrutiny.
With COVID-19 continuing to rampage throughout the country, there is a need for the contact tracing and other technology applications to assess public health. At the same time, changing HHS rules are giving Americans more access and control over their own health data. Both availability and the promise of positive impact of data on people’s lives has never been greater.
Despite the critical need and incredible potential, there is still a great deal of confusion, lack of awareness and heightened concern among consumers. Studies show that the vast majority of Americans think the potential risks of data collection outweighs the potential benefits.
Clamping down on data privacy stifles innovation, and moving forward as we’ve been doing presents a potential privacy minefield. So, what should the healthcare industry do about it?
Continue reading…THCB Gang Episode 23 8/27
Episode 23 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, August 27th! Watch it below!
Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) was joined by some of our regulars: health futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve), WTF Health Host Jessica DaMassa (@jessdamassa), health care consultant Daniel O’Neill (@dp_oneill). The conversation revolved around how providers should reshape some of their practices amid the pandemic, what the large Teladoc-Livongo merger brings to the marketplace, and how there are still lots of potential ways start-ups can fit their models into care practices in the industry.
If you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels — Zoya Khan
Meaningful U’s
By HANS DUVEFELT
Meaningful Use was a vision for EMRs that in many ways turned out to be a joke. Consider my list of Meaningful U’s for medical providers instead.
When electronic medical records became mandatory, Federal monies were showered over the companies that make them by way of inexperienced, ill-prepared practices rushing to pick their system before the looming deadline for the subsidies.
The Fed tried to impose some minimum standards for what EMRs should be able to do and for what practices needed to use them for.
The collection of requirements was called Meaningful Use, and by many of us nicknamed “Meaningless Use”. Well-meaning bureaucrats with little understanding of medical practice wildly overestimated what software vendors, many of them startups, could deliver to such a well established sector as healthcare.
For example, the Fed thought these startups could produce or incorporate high quality patient information that we could generate via the EMR, when we have all built our own repositories over many years of practice from Harvard, the Mayo Clinic and the like or purchased expensive subscriptions like Uptodate for. As I have described before, I would print the hokey EMR handouts for the Meaningful Use credit and throw them in the trash and give my patients the real stuff from Uptodate, for example.
I’d like to introduce an alternative set of standards, borrowing the hackneyed phrase, with a twist. MEANINGFUL U’S for medical providers:
Continue reading…Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 146 | Can We Call it Digital Health Anymore?
Can we call this digital health anymore? What do we call it? On Episode 146 of Health in 2 Point 00, Jessica DaMassa asks me about Amwell filing for their S1, Lyra Health getting $110M to develop their mental health platform, PatientPop raising $50M to improve SEO for doctors and patients (they also brought Johnathan Bush on their board!), Brightline closing $20M for their behavioral health platform for kids, and Science 37 getting $40M for their site-less clinical trials — Matthew Holt
The Bayer Deal: One Drop’s CEO on New $98M & How Data Science Will Fix Chronic Condition Care
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
One Drop just landed a $98.7M deal with Bayer — and we got the details from CEO Jeff Dachis. The timing of this deal is nothing short of impeccable: less than a year after the life sciences giant led One Drop’s Series B with a $40M investment, and amidst a veritable funding frenzy aimed at growing digital health companies focused on chronic condition management. So, how is One Drop planning to use this investment (part Series C/part development fees) to expand their data science platform known for diabetes and hypertension into some of Bayer’s biggest areas of focus — cardiology, oncology, and women’s health? And how does this even-closer relationship with such a consumer health brand help One Drop further evolve the retail side of its go-to-market strategy? Don’t forget — One Drop is sold direct-to-consumer via CVS, Walmart, and Amazon in addition to the more traditional routes via employers and payers. It’s a full breakdown of the deal and a walk through the key points of differentiation Jeff sees as integral to shaping One Drop’s move for greater global market share.
Slow Walking to Value Based Care: Why Fee for Service Still Rules
By KEN TERRY
(This is the second in a series of excerpts from Terry’s new book, Physician-Led Healthcare Reform: a New Approach to Medicare for All, published by the American Association for Physician Leadership.)
In January 2015, then Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced lofty goals for the government’s value-based payment program. By the end of 2016, she said, 85% of all payments in the traditional Medicare program would be tied to quality or value, and 90% would be value-based by the end of 2018.
The government planned to tie 30% of Medicare payments to alternative payment models by 2017, according to Burwell, and hoped to reach the 50% mark by 2018. In March 2016, HHS said it had reached the 30% goal a year ahead of schedule, mainly because of the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP).
More recent data on the value-based-care movement comes from the Health Care Payment & Learning Action Network (LAN), a public-private partnership launched in 2015 by the Department of Health and Human Services. The LAN reported in October 2018 that public and private payers covering 226 million lives, or 77% of insured Americans, had tied 34% of their payments to value-based care. According to the organization, only 23% of total payments had been value-based in 2016.A deeper analysis of the LAN data, however, shows that the vast majority of value-based payments—both in Medicare and in the larger healthcare system—were still limited to pay for performance, upside-only shared savings, and care management fees paid to patient-centered medical homes.
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