September, 2014

More evidence private practice is going away - unless you can afford it.

If concerns about funding, FDA, and reimbursement did not cause you sleepless nights, what dream medical device would you design? The editors of MD+DI invite you to participate in the 2014 Dare-to-Dream Medtech Design Contest.

CVS Caremark and Walgreens have significantly increased their clinical affiliation activity in recent years, in attempts to grow market share as retail-based healthcare providers. CVS has entered into a total of 41 partnerships, doubling the number of affiliations of their rival, Walgreens, which has 20.

While managing the health of a population is a noble cause and logically should fall under the purview of a health system (at least according to the federal government), there is little, if any, evidence that the current obsession with taking global risk for the management of the health of a population will end any better than it did in the 90s. Here are 10 reasons why capitated risk is still not likely to take hold anytime soon:

Now with five acute-care hospital campuses, dozens of outpatient centers throughout San Diego County, and more than 13,500 employees and 2,600 affiliated physicians, Scripps is ranked as one of the top 15 integrated health systems in the country by Truven Health Analytics. The system has made Fortune's "100 Best Hospitals to Work For" list for six consecutive years. Scripps CEO Chris Now Van Gorder is sharing the story of building this IDN in a riveting new book, "The Front-Line Leader: Building a High-Performance Organization From the Ground Up."

I've heard estimates as high as 75% of all Healthcare costs get spent on patients in the last 30 days of their lives. So the push to have them die before those dollars get spent seems like a cost control method. Insurers certainly like the idea and have rushed to offer counseling on your end-of-life choices. Was Sarah right after all?

The contradiction of selling tobacco was becoming a growing obstacle to playing a bigger role in health care delivery," Merlo says.

Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies should prepare themselves to meet the risk sharing demands from the increasing number of ACOs in the coming years, according to new research from HRA – Healthcare Research & Analytics. In the company’s most recent study, Accountable Care Organizations: Partnering for the Future, ACOs are increasingly looking for risk sharing to become part of standard contracting agreements with manufacturers in the near future.

According to input from 100 accountable care organizations, 8% of Medicare ACOs and 4% of Commercial ACOs already have active risk-sharing programs with manufacturers. The risk-sharing models vary across ACOs, but the message is clear that the organizations expect manufacturers to have a stake in patient outcomes.

“We need you to come to the table and say – ‘we want to partner with you and the providers to share risk’,” says Edward D. Shanshala, CEO at Ammonoosuc Community Health Services, a key opinion leader (KOL) interviewed as part of the study.

Another sign private practice might become a thing of the past? You judge.

Looks like J&J is following Siemen's Healthcare IT in exiting. Is ACA driving this? Johnson & Johnson is reportedly looking to sell its medical device unit Cordis for as much as $2 billion as part of its continuing effort to unload poorly performing assets.