General Catalyst on Monday said it’s collaborating with WellSpan Health, marking the venture capital firm’s fourth digital innovation partnership with a health system. General Catalyst and York, Pennsylvania-based WellSpan Health will tackle challenges identified by the health system. Projects could involve designing care models that tie in behavioral health and social determinants of health, as well as simplifying patient experience […]
Seniors aged 60 and older who partake in long hours of sedentary behaviors have a higher risk of developing dementia. That’s according to a new study from University of Southern California and University of Arizona researchers. About 6.5 million people in the U.S., age 65 and older, are living with Alzheimer’s disease in 2022. This is a number that is […]
Marijuana use reached a record high in new polling, as for the first time more Americans said they smoke marijuana than reported smoking cigarettes in the last week. Sixteen percent of Americans in a new Gallup poll reported smoking marijuana, up from 12 percent last year and more than double the all-time low of 7 percent. Fewer Americans, at 11 […]
How is the patient journey impacted when individuals have an estimate of care costs before their visit? Providers are under increased pressure to publicly disclose the price of products and services they offer, in part driven by recent federal price transparency regulations. For example, the Hospital Price Transparency rule took effect on January 1, 2021, and is intended to make […]
Traditional care coordination is broken. Registered nurses (RNs), physician assistants (PAs), care managers, physicians, and healthcare administrative personnel are most likely nodding their heads in agreement right now. The current de facto methods for coordinating, verifying, and advancing steps in a patient’s clinical journey are manual, variable, and unscalable, creating a significant challenge for today’s healthcare providers. Let me explain […]
A microbiome alliance between Takeda Pharmaceutical and Finch Therapeutics is ending without either of the two partnered programs for inflammatory bowel disease reaching human testing. Finch said late last week that the Japanese pharma giant decided to terminate the alliance after a pipeline review. Rights to the two microbiome programs will be turned over to Somerville, Massachusetts-based Finch. The […]
Nearly half of Medicare beneficiaries, or 48%, are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans. As soon as next year, this number could cross the 50% threshold, a report published Thursday predicts. The Kaiser Family Foundation analysis also found that in 2022, MA enrollment accounted for $427 billion, or 55%, of all federal Medicare spending. The report used data from the Centers […]
In 2026, Medicare will negotiate prescription drug prices with manufacturers. It is a dramatic reversal of a stranglehold placed on Medicare back in 2003. And it may be one of the most impactful policy changes to the government program since its creation. But there is a catch…we have to wait. President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 into law […]
The White House is rushing ahead to roll out a new COVID-19 booster shot campaign in early September, but is facing an uphill battle to ensure it is successful. The vaccines being used in the campaign are the first ones that have been manufactured to specifically target the subvariants of omicron that are currently causing the most infections, and administration officials have indicated […]
The federal government is set to suspend its offer of free at-home COVID-19 tests by Friday, Sept. 2, without congressional authorization for an extension. The U.S. Postal Service’s page for ordering the tests states that orders will pause by next Friday “or sooner if supplies run out.” “Ordering through this program will be suspended on Friday, September 2 because Congress […]