Softbank Vision Fund is a $100 billion technology-focused fund with an eagle eye on the tech that is poised to disrupt large markets, including healthcare. From hyperscaling to detailed advice on pitching, VP Sakshi Chhabra Mittal goes deep on what they’re looking for from startups, especially those that have closed their Series A and are looking for a B.
Filmed at the Frontiers Health Conference in Berlin, Germany, November 2018.
By ASEEM R. SHUKLA, MD
The impending closure of Hahnemann University Hospital is a local tragedy. Eliminating a 170-year old institution is certain to exaggerate the daily travails of the economically disadvantaged inner-city population that Hahnemann serves as a safety-net hospital. The closure is also a national tragedy. Hospitals are the towering, visible monuments of our healthcare system, and closings imply that something insidious ails that very system—that all is not well.
Hospitals are complex entities with varied financial drivers, and the solution is never simple. And the moment is too rich for politicians who see Hahnemann’s failure as the culmination of their dystopian predictions. Bernie Sanders, most prominently, stood on the hospital’s doorstep and pitched his deceptively simple solution—Medicare for All. Medicare for All, Sanders said, would ensure that every patient carries the same coverage, hospitals are paid a predictable rate, and voila, no hospitals need to close. Private insurance would disappear, and no one would be without coverage.
Even physicians have jumped on the Medicare for All bandwagon. Some doctors insist that once profit is removed as a motive for hospital bottom lines, and government bodies decide which hospitals can buy a surgical robot, build a new wing or offer proton beam treatment cancer treatment centers, then all hospitals will do better.
But these arguments miss a fundamental point: why pitch government insurance for all, like Medicare and Medicaid (a federal and state insurance plan to cover low income adult and children) as a remedy, when it is precisely government-run insurance that is killing Hahnemann and other hospitals in distress?
Continue reading…Today on THCB Spotlights, Matthew talks to Jacob Reider. Jacob is the CEO of Alliance for Better Health, one of New York State’s 25 Performing Provider Systems which work to reduce unnecessary or preventable acute care utilization for Medicaid members by improving the health of communities. Alliance for Better Health has a new approach to this—they’ve created an Independent Practice Association (IPA) called Healthy Alliance IPA to pull together community based organizations focused on improving health and addressing the social and behavioral aspects of health. Their approach helps the 29 organizations within the IPA negotiate funding and creates an infrastructure for integrating social determinants of health into health care. Watch the interview to find out how this is going to work in practice.
By DEVEN McGRAW and VINCE KURAITIS
This post is part of the series “The Health Data Goldilocks Dilemma: Privacy? Sharing? Both?”
Introduction
In our previous post, we described the “Wild West of Unprotected Health Data.” Will the cavalry arrive to protect the vast quantities of your personal health data that are broadly unprotected from sharing and use by third parties?
Congress is seriously considering legislation to better protect the privacy of consumers’ personal data, given the patchwork of existing privacy protections. For the most part, the bills, while they may cover some health data, are not focused just on health data – with one exception: the “Protecting Personal Health Data Act” (S.1842), introduced by Senators Klobuchar and Murkowski.
In this series, we committed to looking across all of the various privacy bills pending in Congress and identifying trends, commonalities, and differences in their approaches. But we think this bill, because of its exclusive health focus, deserves its own post. Concerns about health privacy outside of HIPAA are receiving increased attention in light of the push for interoperability, which makes this bill both timely and potentially worth of your attention.
HHS and ONC recently issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to Improve the Interoperability of Health Information. This proposed rule has received over 2,000 comments, many of which raised significant issues about how the rule potentially conflicts with patient and provider needs for data privacy and security.
For example, greater interoperability with patients means that even more medical and claims data will flow outside of HIPAA to the “Wild West.” The American Medical Association noted:
“If patients access their health data—some of which could contain family history and could be sensitive—through a smartphone, they must have a clear understanding of the potential uses of that data by app developers. Most patients will not be aware of who has access to their medical information, how and why they received it, and how it is being used (for example, an app may collect or use information for its own purposes, such as an insurer using health information to limit/exclude coverage for certain services, or may sell information to clients such as to an employer or a landlord). The downstream consequences of data being used in this way may ultimately erode a patient’s privacy and willingness to disclose information to his or her physician.”
Continue reading…By STEVEN MERAHN, MD
In 1807, in an effort to spite the British and French for shipping interference (and forced recruitment of American citizens into military service), the United States Congress passed an Embargo Act, effectively shutting down trade with these two countries. Britain and France quickly found other trading partners; the US, then limited in our capacity to sell products outside our borders, was left with a devastated economy and a gaping hole in our face. It took only weeks before Congress passed a loophole; they repealed the act within 15 months of its passing. It was a great lesson in unintended consequences.
Today, ignoring history, both Republicans and Democrats seem to spar continuously around healthcare: whether the message is about tearing down the Affordable Care Act or about some version of Medicare (For-All, For Whoever Wants It, For America, or For Better or Worse), both parties are terribly wrong.
Assuming the social imperative for healthcare is to eliminate preventable morbidity and disability (and associated costs) and improve (or sustain) quality of health of all our citizens (in order to help as many of them as possible remain productive, contributing members of society), another approach to ‘universal care” would be to flip the figure/ground relationship for our current efforts: instead of developing better payment systems, let’s develop and commit to a universal clinical operating framework that ensures that every member of society has the same opportunity to optimize their health status.
“Centralizing” the methodology around a universal model for how we plan for care, and allocate resources to ensure care plan goal achievement, would be far more valuable to society than centralizing the sources of funds to pay for care, because then we’d know what we’re paying for.
Today on Health in 2 Point 00, we have another takeover edition! On Episode 92, Jess talks to Louise Schaper, CEO of the Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA) at HIC 2019. Louise’s key takeaway from the conference is that health tech in Australia is focused on humanity and improving outcomes for all people. Jess also asks Louise about the Australian Digital Health Agency’s MyHealthRecord, an online summary of individuals’ health information. It’s got a great participation rate with 90% of Australians opted in, but it’s not being utilized as much as it could be. Finally, Louise debunks some of the chatter around HealthEngine’s data scandal in which they were caught sharing health data with law firms. The thing is, the press has sold it as if they have full access to your medical data and has sold that, but that’s not the case.
By JOE FLOWER
Did you catch that headline a few weeks back?
An official of a health system in North Carolina sent an email to the entire board of the North Carolina State Health Plan calling them a bunch of “sorry SOBs” who would “burn in hell” after they “bankrupt every hospital in the state.”
Wow. He sounds rather upset. He sounds angry and afraid. He sounds surprised, gobsmacked, face-palming.
Bless his heart. I get it, I really do. Well, I get the fear and pain. Here’s what I don’t get: the surprise, the tone of, “This came out of nowhere! Why didn’t anyone tell us this was coming?”
Brother, we did. We have been. As loudly as we can. For years.
Two things to notice here:
By BRIAN KLEPPER, PhD
How will the drive to health care value affect health care’s structure? We tend to assume that the health care structure we’re become accustomed to is the one we’ll always have, but that’s probably far from the truth. If we pull levers that incentivize the right care at the right time, it’s likely that many of the problems we think we’re stuck with, like overtreatment and a lack of accountability, will disappear.
A large part of getting the right results is making sure that health care vendors have the right incentives. All forms of reimbursement carry incentives, so it’s important to align them, to choose payment structures that work for patients and purchasers as well as providers. Fee-for-service sends exactly the wrong message, because it encourages unnecessary utilization, paying for each component service independent of whether its necessary and independent of the outcomes. Compare US treatment patterns to those in other industrialized nations and you’ll find ours are generally bloated with procedures that have become part of practice not because they’re clinically necessary but simply because they’re billable.
By contrast, value-based arrangements are really about purchasers demanding that health care vendors deliver better health outcomes and/or lower cost than what they’ve experienced under fee-for-service reimbursement, and the payment structure often asks the vendor to put his money where his mouth is, at least where performance claims are concerned. In a market that’s still overwhelmingly dominated by fee-for-service arrangements, one way for a vendor to get noticed is to financially guarantee performance. Integrated Musculoskeletal Care, a musculoskeletal management firm based in Florida, guarantees a 25% reduction in musculoskeletal spend on the patients they touch. This typically translates to a 4%-5% reduction in total health plan spend, just by contracting with this vendor, a compelling offer in an environment that makes it hard for upstarts to get market traction.
Continue reading…By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
Anil Sethi had the health tech exit every startup dreams about: a buyout by Apple. Not content to ride that unicorn into the sunset, Anil’s back at it with his new startup Ciitizen, which is another take on better a patient health record. What’s different? Why come back? Tune in for more and this and Anil’s great advice for other health entrepreneurs.
By HILARY HATCH, PhD
The growing movement to include the patient voice in medicine through Motivational Interviewing, patient-reported outcomes, social determinants of health and shared decision-making
One day in 2011, as a part of my research on ways to improve patient-provider communication about health behaviors, I was shadowing Dr. G., a talented young internist with a cheerleader demeanor. He marched through 12 afternoon patient appointments with confidence and purpose. But when he saw the name of the last patient on his schedule, he turned pale, faced me and said, “I apologize for what you are about to see.”
I must have looked confused. He repeated, “I apologize for what you are about to see.”
We walked into the exam room. I’m not sure either one of us knew what to expect. The patient, a white, obese man, was seated, doubled over. He had a wad of paper towels jammed in his mouth. He threatened to pull out his own, presumably abscessed, tooth. He refused to see a dentist because he had no dental coverage, no money and no one to borrow money from. He said he would use pliers to pull his tooth, but stayed put, rocking in his seat. At the computer, the young doctor’s white-knuckled hand gripped his mouse. Click. Click. Click. He searched the patient’s chart aimlessly for help. Alerts kept popping up about the patient’s missing A1C results. It took two minutes, but it felt like 20.
Dr. G. left the room and came back a few minutes later. He gave the patient the name of a dentist who would see him at no cost. I suspected Dr. G. had called the dentist and said he would pay for the appointment out of his own pocket. The patient hugged Dr. G. He only wanted help, and Dr. G. wanted to help. The tension was resolved for the moment.
Continue reading…
THCB's Podcasts
Listen to them on Itunes or Spotify
