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AI: Patients Included

“Clinical transformation with AI is easier without patients.” When Dr. Grace Cordovano heard this statement on a panel of physicians convening to share perspectives on the future of AI in health care held in early March 2024, the board-certified patient advocate felt, in her words, “insulted on behalf of the patient communities I know that are working tirelessly to advance AI that works for them.” “The healthcare ecosystem and policy landscape must formally recognize patients as end-users and co-creators of AI,” Cordovano wrote to me in an e-mail exchange. “Patients, their care partners, caregivers, and advocates are already utilizing AI

 

A Health Consumer Bill of Rights: Assuring Affordability, Access, Autonomy, and Equity

Let’s put “health” back into the U.S. health care system. That’s the mantra coming out of this week’s annual Capitol Conference convened by the National Association of Benefits and Insurance Professionals (NABIP). (FYI you might know of NABIP by its former acronym, NAHU, the National Association of Health Underwriters).         NABIP, whose members represent professionals in the health insurance benefits industry, drafted and adopted a new American Healthcare Consumer Bill of Rights launched at the meeting. While the digital health stakeholder community is convening this week at VIVE in Los Angeles to share innovations in health tech, NABIP

 

Americans Come Together in Worries About Medical Bills, the Cost of Health Care, and Prescription Drug Costs

In the U.S., national news media, Federal statistics, dozens of business leaders  and the Federal Reserve Bank have been talking about an historically positive American economy on a macro level. But among individual residents of the U.S., there is still a negative feeling about the economy in a personal context, revealed in the Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll for February 2024.                I’ve selected three figures of data from the KFF’s Poll which make the point that in peoples’ negative feelings about the national economy, their personal feelings about medical costs rank high

 

From Evolution to Innovation, from Health Care to Health: How Health Plans With Collaborators Are Re-Defining the Industry

As a constant observer and advisor across the health/care ecosystem, for me the concept of a “health plan” in the U.S. is getting fuzzier by the day. Furthermore, health plan members now see themselves as medical bill payers, seeking value and consumer-level services for their health insurance premium investment. Weaving these ideas together is my mission in preparing a session to deliver at the upcoming AHIP 2024 conference in June, I’m thinking a lot about the evolving nature of health insurance, plans, and the organizations that provide them. To help me define first principles, I turned to the American father

 

Why Elevance Health is “Prescribing” Phones for Members

You’ve heard of food-as-medicine and exercise-as-medicine. Now we see the emergence of telecomms-as-medicine — or more specifically, a driver of health, access, and empowerment. Elevance Health, the health plan organization serving 117 million members, launched a program to channel mobile phones and data plans into the hands of some Medicaid plan enrollees, explained in the organization’s press release on the program. To implement this program and get connectivity into consumers’ hands and homes, Elevance Health is collaborating with several telecomms companies including Verizon, AT&T, Samsung, and T-Mobile. Funding is supported by the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program.        

 

The Trust-Innovation Gap – Welcome to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer

If it’s January, it’s Davos-time — that is the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum convening global experts and passionistas focused on big ideas and challenges facing us mere humans living on Planet Earth. Parallel with the WEF is the annual publication of the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer, now in its 24th year, focusing on global citizens’ concerns that unite people around the world. For the 2024 study, Edelman’s team fielded the survey in November 2023, collecting input from over 32,000 people living in 28 countries. About 1,150 interviews (plus or minus) were done in each nation which included

 

Access to Technology Is the New Pillar for Well-Being: CES & the UN Partner for Human Security for All

In kicking off #CES2024, CTA’s researchers noted the acceleration of global connectivity, with gaps in peoples’ ability to connect depending where they live: by region, the percent of people connected to the internet today are, according to CTA’s data, 92% in the U.S. 87% in the E.U. 76% in Latin America 73% in China 55% in Nigeria 46% in India. Such gaps in connectivity threaten peoples’ individual well-being, but also social and political stability that impacts the entire world’s security. And not to overlook, as well, the promise of AI to do good at scale at the enterprise-level, globally.  

 

How Healthcare and Patients Can Benefit From a “Simplicity Premium”

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” Leonardo DaVinci wrote through his lens on innovation. Simplicity can be a transformational cornerstone of health/care innovation, we learn from Siegel+Gale’s report on the World’s Simplest Brands Tenth Edition (WSBX). Siegel+Gale found the most consumers are willing to pay more for simpler brand experiences and are more likely to recommend a brand for those simpler experiences, as well.             Across the 15,000 consumers the firm polled globally (across nine countries), five key factors underpin peoples’ experiences with the enchantingly “simple” companies: they are, Easy to understand Transparent and honest Caring for

 

The 2023 Health Economy – The Evolving Primary Care and Retail Health Convergence Through Trilliant Health’s Lens

In U.S. health care’s negative-sum game, stakeholders who survive and win that game will have to deliver value-for-money, we learn from Trilliant Health’s 2023 Trends Shaping the Health Economy Report.                 “Report” is one word for this nearly 150-page compendium of health care data that is an encyclopedic treasure trove for health service researchers, marketers, strategists, journalists, and those keen to explore questions about the current state of health care in America. As Sanjula Jain points out in the Report’s press release, the publication resembles another huge report many of us appreciated for

 

Slip Slidin’ Away: the Reputations of Pharma and Healthcare in the U.S. Decline in the Latest Gallup Poll

Oh, how quickly people forget…and slow to forgive. U.S. consumers’ positive views for healthcare, pharma and retail have significantly fallen in just one year, the latest annual Gallup poll of industry rankings in America found as of August 2023. This stat for the pharma industry was the lowest Gallup ever recorded for the sector since 2001.                     I can’t help hearing Paul Simon’s lyrics to Slip Slidin’ Away….”you know the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip slidin’ away” when it comes to health citizens’ perceptions of pharma and the healthcare

 

“Healthcare Isn’t Healthy:” the Global Challenge of Health Equity, and Calls-to-Action

Discrimination in health care is reported by more people in the U.S. than in Germany, Spain, or the U.K., we learn in the research reported in The Intersection of Health Equity in Communities & Business Strategy: A Call-to-Action, from Omnicomm PR Group (OPRG) and Atlantic Insights.                          The study was conducted among 6,000 people living in Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, fielding 1,500 interviews in each of the four countries in March 2023. The U.S. survey sample included 375 people identifying as Black, White, Hispanic, or

 

Personalizing Health Means Personalizing Health Insurance for Patient-Members – Learning from HealthEdge

As patients assume more financial skin in their personal healthcare, they take on the role of demanding consumer, or “impatient patients.” HealthEdge’s latest research into health consumers’ perspectives finds peoples’ satisfaction with their health insurance plans lacking, with members seeking easier access their personal health information, high levels of service, and rewards for healthy behaviors.           Health plans would also boost consumers’ satisfaction by channeling patients’ access to the kinds of medical providers that align with consumers’ preferences and personal values, and by personalizing information to steer people toward lower-cost care.          

 

Hims and Hers and Hearts – Cardiology Blurs Into DTC Retail Health

Statin therapy has been used for decades to lower cholesterol with the goal of reducing mortality and preventing cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks and strokes. Hims & Hers announced a new service offering for health consumers and clinicians concerned about heart health called Heart Health by Hims.               This is Hims & Hers’ first foray into cardiovascular health, working in collaboration with the American College of Cardiology (ACC). ACC clinical guidelines will inform the Hims’ provider platform for the program. “Prevention is the ideal mechanism to decrease cardiovascular events and ensure optimal heart

 

GNC Offers “Free Healthcare” — Telehealth, Generic Meds, and Loyalty in the Retail Health Ecosystem

The retail health landscape continues to grow, now with GNC Health offering a new program featuring telehealth and  “curated set” of 40+ generic prescription drugs commonly used in urgent care settings.             The services are available to members of GNC’s new-and-improved loyalty program, GNC PRO Access, which is priced at a fixed fee of $39.99 for one year’s membership. This is available to consumers 18 years of age and older. “As a trusted brand in the health and wellness space, we are thrilled to expand our efforts in helping our customers Live Well by offering

 

There’s a New “O” in Medicine-Town – Welcome OPill to the Front of the Counter

You may not be able to get that ear-worm jingle that goes “O O O Ozempic” out of your musical mind, but I’m happy to tell you there’s a new “O” in town: the Opill. Welcome to the first OTC contraceptive for sale in the USA.                     I wrote about Perrigo’s Opill here in Health Populi in May 2023 as a “signpost on the road to retail health.” It’s official: “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Opill®, a progestin-only daily oral contraceptive, for over-the-counter (OTC) use for all ages.

 

Location, Location, Location – Understanding Health Consumers’ Evolving Definition of Convenience

The definition of “convenience” in the eyes of patients, consumers, and caregivers is multi-faceted, with the concept of “location” shifting both physically and digitally. We learn this in new research from JLL, the global real estate services company. “Why is a real estate services company doing research into consumers’ views on health care?” you might ask. See my Hot Points below, discussing my views on the morphing of health care real estate from Pill Hill and inpatient hospitals to the home and closer-to-home sites.             In the 2023 Patient Consumer Survey report, the topline lesson

 

The State of Healthcare in America, State-By-State

If you live in Massachusetts, Hawaii, and New Hampshire, you win a kind of state lottery for public health and well-being, based on this year’s read of the 2023 Scorecard on State Health System Performance from The Commonwealth Fund.           Here’s a picture of the annual study’s top-line findings, a roster of the fifty U.S. states ranked by a mash-up of health system indicators. As Annie Burkey of FierceHealthcare succinctly summed it up, the “Commonwealth Fund gives healthcare in southeastern states failing grades across the board.” I’ll give you more details about the Top and Bottom

 

Retail Clinics’ Growing Role in Health Care and Prescription Drug Sales

“It seemed like an odd pairing: shampoo and a throat swab,” observes a new report on the growth of retail health from Definitive Healthcare. But retail clinics are no longer, as the paper explains, “an experiment of a few grocery stores….they’re becoming a major force in the U.S. healthcare system,” asserts the thesis of Retailers in healthcare: A catalyst for provider evolution.                 While the use of emergency departments fell by 1% in the past five years, the use of retail clinics expanded by 70%, Definitive Healthcare calculated. Most retail clinics are owned by

 

Health Systems Must Move “Beyond the Walls” to Support Consumers’ Well-Being

Hospitals’ and health systems’ core competencies have been serving patients “within the walls” of their organizations and institutions. As health systems continue to evolve value-based services while meeting patients’ consumer-oriented demands for convenience and personalization, digital transformation is required, enabling care “beyond-the-walls.” We learn more about this vision and how to map the journey to getting there in the report  Integrating digital health tools to help improve the whole consumer experience from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions and the Scottsdale Institute.             This report is based on detailed interviews with experts in 30 US health

 

Three More Signposts on the Road to Retail Health – Weight Loss Drugs, OTC Birth Control and Fashion-Meets-the-Flu

We continue to track to evolving, expanding landscape of retail health — which we see as the expanding ecosystem of health/care accessible to people-as-health consumers. This week, three intriguing examples are resonating with us: The ever-evolving weight-loss industry FDA favors OTC use for Perrigo’s Opill daily oral contraceptive birth control pill The convergence of fashion and health — specifically, how an over-the-counter medicine converges with clothing that helps us feel better.                   Let’s start with weight-loss, as several aspects of health/care come together in the consumer’s retail health sandbox. Dr. Eric Topol

 

Food Is Medicine, Especially When You Are Hungry – The American Heart Association‘s FIM Initiative

Food is a basic need, fundamental to our lives and well-being. And for millions of people around the world, and innumerable health citizens in the U.S., food security is part of daily life in 2023. Furthermore, as the U.S. Congress faces voting on the debt ceiling, the issue of SNAP benefits for nutritional assistance (aka “food stamps”) has been identified as a negotiating line-item by certain Federal budget-cut minded folks. That’s why the Food Is Medicine Initiative, launched collaboratively between the American Heart Association and The Rockefeller Foundation, is so timely and welcome.         “The vision for

 

Bayer at The Big Game LVII: the Heart Health Ecosystem is Ripe for Self-Care and DIY Health at Home

Joke if you must about Big Game cuisine being typically packed with calories and fat and carbs….and as such, not-so-great for health. For me, the ads are the attraction during The Big Game (along with the Philadelphia Eagles). In this year’s ad line-up, health will be featured in high-priced spots as it has for the past few years. Last year, I was intrigued by a female-focused 30-second spot from Hologic, educating viewers on cervical cancer, discussed here in Health Populi.         This year, my eyes are on Bayer Aspirin’s campaign “encouraging sports fans to keep their heart

 

The US Healthcare System Outspends and Underperforms While Most People Live Paycheck to Paycheck

The U.S. is an outlier in the world for high health care spending, as well as in low achievement for life expectancy at birth — 3 years less than that in peer OECD countries — discussed in U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2022: Accelerating Spending, Worsening Outcomes, the latest look into American health system performance in a global context from The Commonwealth Fund. Another study published in JAMA this week talks about the Organization and Performance of US Health Systems, calling out the fact that, “Small quality differentials combined with large price differentials suggests that health systems have

 

Dollar General & CHPA Collaborate to Bolster Health Consumers’ Literacy and Access for OTC Pain Meds and Self-Care

Health is “made” where we live, work, play, pray, learn….and shop. I spend a lot of time these days in the growing health/care ecosystem where retail health is broadening to address social determinants and drivers of health – namely food, transportation, broadband access, education, environment, and financial wellness – all opportunities for self-care and health engagement. For many years, I have followed the activities of CHPA, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, and have participated in some of their conferences. Their recent announcement of a collaboration with Dollar General speaks to the growing role of self-care for all people.    

 

Omnichannel, Hybrid Health Care Is Happening – Let’s Bake It with Access and Equity

In just the past few months, we’ve seen the launch of Amazon Care, Instacart adding medical deliveries, and The Villages senior community welcoming virtual care to their homes. Welcome to the growing ecosystem of hybrid health care, anywhere and everywhere. In my latest post on the Medecision portal, I discuss the phenomenon and examples of early models, focusing in on Evernorth, a Cigna company.                 As we add new so-called “digital front doors” to health care delivery, we should be mindful to design in access and equity and avoid further fragmentation of an already-fragmented

 

Dr. Santa Intends to Deliver Consumer Health-Tech for the 2022 Holidays

Even as consumers’ confess a tighter spending economy for 2022 holiday shopping, peoples’ intent to buy wearable tech for health and fitness and other wellness devices appear on gifting lists in the U.S., according to the 29th Annual Consumer Technology Holiday Purchase Patterns report from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).             In general, technology will be a top-selling category for 2022 holiday gift-giving, somewhat tempered by inflation and the increased cost of living that challenge household budgets in the fourth quarter of 2022. Tech spending will be down about 6% in 2022 according to CTA’s

 

How Will Consumers’ Declining Trust in Technology Impact Health Tech?

Americans’ trust in technology as “plummeted” in the past decade, according to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer’s focused look on trust and technology. How might this play into U.S. health citizens’ trust in digital health technology?             To answer that, let’s start with the macro-view on trust in tech. Richard Edelman convened a virtual meeting launch for the Trust Barometer’s tech perspectives yesterday, looking broadly at the global study findings. For these trust-tech insights, Edelman surveyed 15,000 citizens between August 31 and September 12, 2022, residing in 12 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany,

 

Telehealth-As-Healthcare Is a Mainstream Expectation Among Consumers, J.D. Power Finds

Telehealth has increased access to mental health services, I’ve highlighted this Mental Illness Awareness Week here in Health Populi. But telehealth has also emerged as a preferred channel for routine health care services, we learn from J.D. Power’s 2022 Telehealth Satisfaction Study.           Among people who had used virtual care in the past year, telehealth-as-healthcare is now part of mainstream Americans’ expectations as a normal part of their medical care. That’s because 9 in 10 users of telehealth in the U.S. would use virtual care to receive medical services in the future, J.D. Power found in

 

Health, Politics, Inflation and Women: Health Engagement at the Voting Booth

Two in three Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision (aka the Dobbs case), the latest Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll found. While inflation tops voters’ priorities, abortion access resonates for key voting blocs. KFF conducted this survey among 1,847 U.S. adults 18 and over between July 7 and 17, 2022.             KFF published the study findings this week on August 2, a day of political primaries and ballot considerations in several U.S. states. Consider Kansas: a majority of Kansans voted on Tuesday to protect abortion rights

 

Your State as a Determinant of Health: Sharecare’s 2021 Community Well-Being Index

People whose sense of well-being shifted positively in the past two years are finding greater personal purpose and financial health, we see in Sharecare’s Community Well-Being Index – 2021 State Rankings Report.                   Sharecare has been annually tracking well-being across the 50 U.S. states since 2008. When the study launched, Well-Being Index evaluated five domains: physical, social, community, purpose, and financial. In 2020, Sharecare began a collaboration with the Boston University School of Public Health to expand the Index, including drivers of health such as, Healthcare access (like physician supply per 1,000

 

More Americans Trust Small Biz and the Military than the Medical System, Gallup Finds

The most trusted institutions in the U.S. are small business and the military, the only two sectors in which a majority of Americans have confidence. Americans’ trust in institutions hit new historic lows in 2022, Gallup found in its latest poll of U.S. sentiment across all major sectors.                 Today, more Americans have faith in the police than in the medical system, according to a Gallup poll finding that Confidence in U.S. Institutions Down; Average at New Low. published this week of Independence Day 2022. Confidence runs from a higher of 68% for

 

Consumers Intend to Invest in Technology — With Budget and Value in Mind

Consumers continued to invest in and use several technologies that supported self-care at home in 2021, with plans to purchase connected health devices, sports and fitness equipment in the next year.                 But these purchases will be made with greater attention to budget and value consumer mindsets firmly focused on (and stressed by) inflation. The 24th Annual Technology Ownership & Market Potential Study from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) tells us that Americans in 2022 will have to manage challenging economic headwinds, shopping for technology is preparing people for their new normal —

 

Healthcare access, racial disparities, guns and climate – U.S. doctors are worried about some big social issues

Doctors heads and hearts are jammed with concerns beyond curing patients’ medical conditions: U.S. physicians are worried about big social issues, according to a Medscape survey report, Physicians’ Views on Today’s Divisive Social Issues 2022.               Topping physicians’ list of their top-five most important social issues, far above all others ranked healthcare access. Underneath that top-line statistic, it’s important to note that: 52% of doctors are “very concerned” about healthcare access, 28% are “concerned,” and 13% are “somewhat concerned.” Medscape underscores that in 2020, 31 million U.S. residents had no health insurance coverage, and

 

What If Costco Designed the Prescription Drugs Sales Model?

The good news about prescription drugs, in the context of medical spending in the U.S., is that 9 in 10 medicines prescribed are generics. They comprise only 3% of all U.S. healthcare spending.           But there’s bad news about prescription drugs in the context of medical spending in America. U.S. Consumers Overpay for Generic Drugs, a new paper from the Leonard Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics asserts, with recommendations to address the intermediaries who benefit from the way Americans currently pay for medicines. Generics are “an American success story,” the authors call out, bringing

 

How Trust and Geopolitics Will Impact Health and Business – Edelman 2022 Trust Barometer at the World Economic Forum in Davos

When we think about the state of Trust in in mid-2022, there is some good news: Trust is rising (at least in democratic countries, while falling in autocratic ones). The bad news: the gap in Trust has dramatically widened between higher-income people compared with those earning lower-incomes, globally.             And that gap is “tinder” that can be quickly sparked into a socio-political fire in countries around the world, Richard Edelman cautioned today when introducing the latest look at the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, focusing on geopolitics and business. We have never seen numbers like this

 

The Demand for Self-Care At-Home Will Grow Post-Pandemic – Insights from IRI

The coronavirus pandemic has re-shaped consumers across many life- and work-flows. When it comes to peoples’ relationship to consumer packaged goods (CPG), the public health crisis has indeed impacted consumers’ purchasing behaviors and definition of “value,” based on IRI’s latest analysis of CPG shifts in 2022 and 2023.           IRI has been tracking COVID-19’s impact on CPG and retail since the emergence of the coronavirus. In this Health Populi post, I’ll discuss the research group’s assessment of CPG shifts of consumer packaged goods through my lens on health/care, everywhere — especially, in this case, the home.

 

Telehealth Update from the AMA – Setting the Context for ATA 2022 [Spoiler Alert: Doctors Want to Keep Using Telehealth]

Four in five U.S. physicians were using telehealth to care for patients at the end of 2021.             Among those doctors who were not providing telehealth by late 2021, just over one half never did so during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the 2021 Telehealth Survey Report from the AMA. This report provides insightful  context for the upcoming annual ATA Conference for 2022, being held in-person in Boston kicking off May 1st. The meeting will be a strategically important, as the title of the conference asks: “What Now? Creating An Opportunity in a Time of

 

How Business Can Bolster Determinants of Health: The Marmot Review for Industry

“Until now, focus on….the social determinants of health has been for government and civil society. The private sector has not been involved in the discussion or, worse, has been seen as part of the problem. It is time this changed,” asserts the report, The Business of Health Equity: The Marmot Review for Industry, sponsored by Legal & General in collaboration with University College London (UCL) Institute of Health Equity, led by Sir Michael Marmot.               Sir Michael has been researching and writing about social determinants of health and health equity for decades, culminating publications

 

Primary Care in the U.S. – Still a Weak Backbone for the Health of Health Citizens

Compared with health citizens living in other wealthy countries, people living in the U.S. are still among the least likely to have a regular doctor or place to go for care. Thus, millions of Americans continue to lack access to primary care compared with peers in other nations, according to a report from The Commonwealth Fund. The Commonwealth Fund has tracked primary care access for many years, and over time has found the United States to lack the kind of primary care “backbone” that many wealthy nations have — whose health citizens also enjoy much better health outcomes that relate

 

Medical Distancing Is Bad For Your Health

“Social distancing is great. Medical distancing? Not so much,” I observe in Medical Distancing in America: A Lingering Pandemic Side Effect., my essay published this week in Medecision’s Liberate Health blog. Since we learned to spell “coronavirus,” we also learned the meaning and risk-managing importance of physical distance early in the COVID-19 pandemic. But medical distancing became a corollary life-flow of the physical version, and for our collective health and well-being, it hasn’t been good for our health in ways beyond keeping our exposure to the virus at bay. For health care providers — physicians, hospitals, ambulatory clinics, diagnostic centers —

 

Doximity Study Finds Telehealth Is Health for Every Day Care

There’s more evidence that doctors and patients, both, want to use telehealth after the COVID-19 pandemic fades. Doximity’s second report on telemedicine explores both physicians’ and patients’ views on virtual care, finding most doctors and health consumers on the same page of virtual care adoption. For the physicians’ profile, Doximity examined 180,000 doctors’ who billed Medicare for telemedicine claims between January 2020 and June 2021. Telemedicine use did not vary much across physician age groups. Doctors in specialties that manage chronic illnesses were more likely to use telehealth: endocrinology (think: diabetes), gastroenterology, rheumatology, urology, nephrology, cardiology, ENT, neurology, allergy, and

 

Nutella, Wine, and COVID Tests at the Convenience Store – A Weekend Observation From Brussels

Health/care is everywhere….even at the convenience store. Yesterday afternoon, as I was picking up a bottle of milk for this morning’s coffee, I rushed to the local Carrefour Express in my neighborhood in St. Gilles, Brussels, Belgium. Sidebar: Carrefour Express is not your prototypical U.S.-styled C-store — you can find some fine Prosciutto di San Daniele in the cold case, some tasty Camembert cheese, very good wine, and just-picked tomatoes there. Still, it’s a C-store in that the brick-and-mortar model is a smaller footprint than a full grocery store, and convenient in that it’s a block from my apartment. Imagine

 

Designing Digital Health for Public Health Preparedness and Equity: the Consumer Tech Association Doubles Down

A coalition of health care providers, health plans, technology innovators, NGOs, and medical societies has come together as the Public Health Tech Initiative (PHTI), endorsed by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) with the goal of advancing the use of trustworthy digital health to proactively meet the challenge of future public health emergencies….like pandemics. At the same time, CTA has published a paper on Advancing Health Equity Through Technology which complements and reinforces the PHTI announcement and objective. The paper that details the PHTI program, Using Heath Technology to Response to Public Health Emergencies, identifies the two focus areas: Digital health

 

Support for Drug Price Negotiation Brings Partisans Together in the U.S.

Most U.S. adults across political parties favor allowing the Federal government authority to negotiate for drug prices — even after hearing the arguments against the health policy. Drug price negotiation, say by the Medicare program, is a unifying public policy in the current era of political schisms in America, based on the findings in a special Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Health Tracking Poll conducted in late September-early October 2021. Overall, 4 in 5 Americans favor allowing the Federal government negotiating power for prescription drug prices, shown in the first chart from the KFF report. By party, nearly all Democrats agree

 

Consider Mental Health Equity on World Mental Health Day

COVID-19 exacted a toll on health citizens’ mental health, worsening a public health challenge that was already acute before the pandemic. It’s World Mental Health Day, an event marked by global and local stakeholders across the mental health ecosystem. On the global front, the World Health Organization (WHO) describes the universal phenomenon and burden of mental health on the Earth’s people… Nearly 1 billion people have a mental disorder Depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide, impacting about 5% of the world’s population People with severe mental disorders like schizophrenia tend to die as much as 20 years earlier

 

New Primary Care, Retail and Tech Entrants Motivating Hospitals to Grow Consumer Chops

Rising costs, generational shifts, digital transformation, and fast-growing investments in new health care models and technologies are forcing change in the legacy health care, noted in the State of Consumerism in Healthcare 2021: Regaining Momentum, from Kaufman, Hall & Associates. As the title of Kaufman Hall’s sixth annual report suggests, health care consumers are evolving — even if the traditional healthcare system hasn’t uniformly responded in lock step with more demanding patients. Kaufman Hall analyzed 100 health care organizations in this year’s consumerism survey to assess their readiness to embrace consumer-centric strategies, understand how the industry prioritizes these approaches, evaluate

 

Health Disparities in America: JAMA Talks Structural Racism in U.S. Health Care

“Racial and ethnic inequities in the US health care system have been unremitting since the beginning of the country. In the 19th and 20th centuries, segregated black hospitals were emblematic of separate but unequal health care,” begins the editorial introducing an entire issue of JAMA dedicated to racial and ethnic disparities and inequities in medicine and health care, published August 17, 2021. This is not your typical edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The coronavirus pandemic has changed so many aspects of American health care for so many people, including doctors. Since the second quarter of 2020,

 

Can the U.S. Improve Health System Performance with Digital Health Tools? Pondering A Big Question for #HIMSS21

Simply put, is the equation, “Spend more, get less” a sustainable business model? Of course not. But that’s the simple math on U.S. health care spending and what comes from it, according to Mirror, Mirror 2021: Reflecting Poorly, a perennial report from The Commonwealth Fund that compares health system performance across eleven developed countries. The first table details the metrics that the Fund compares across the eleven peer nations, which included Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The metrics compared were access to care, care process, administrative efficiency, equity,

 

What Poor Birth and Maternity Outcomes in the U.S. Say About American Healthcare & “Infrastructure”

Cain Brothers is a 100+ year old financial services firm with a strong health care experience, now part of KeyBanc. A recent “House Calls” memo and podcast from two company analysts detailed the state of Medicaid, Motherhood and America’s Future: Giving Birth to Better Maternity Outcomes. Christian Pesci and David Johnson’s in-depth discussion detailed their bottom-line that, “maternity care in the U.S. is in crisis but poised for rapid evolution…(recognizing) that an uncoordinated system with misaligned incentives harms too many individuals, families, and communities.” They lay out the crisis as follows: Medicaid funds nearly one-half of births in the U.S.

 

The Healthiest Communities in the U.S. After the Pandemic – U.S. News & Aetna Foundation’s Post-COVID Lists

Some of America’s least-healthy communities are also those that index greater for vaccine hesitancy and other risks for well-being, found in U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 Healthiest Communities Rankings. U.S. News collaborated with the Aetna Foundation, CVS Health’s philanthropic arm, in this fourth annual list of the top geographies for well-being in the U.S. Six of the top ten healthiest towns in America are located in the state of Colorado. But #1 belongs to Los Alamos County, New Mexico, which also ranked first in ___. Beyond Colorado and New Mexico, we find that Virginia fared well for health in

 

The Digital Home: A Platform for Health, via Deloitte and the COVID-19 “Stress Test”

Wherever you live in the world touched by the coronavirus pandemic, you felt (and were) stress-tested. Both you were, and your home was as well. In this year’s 2021 annual report by Deloitte into Connectivity & Mobile Trends, their report details How the pandemic has stress-tested the crowded digital home. This analysis was done, as it is every year, by the Deloitte Center for Technology, Media & Telecommunications. Deloitte’s Center commissioned an online survey among 2,009 U.S. consumers to gauge five generations of peoples’ perspectives on connected life in the context of COVID. The report covers the various life-flows of

 

The ROI on Virtual Care – Thinking About Value and Future Prospects With the AMA

When a new technology or product starts to get used in a market, it follows a diffusion curve whose slope depends on the pace of adoption in that market. For telehealth, that S-curve has had a very long and fairly flat front-end of the “S” followed by a hockey stick trajectory in March and April 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was an exogenous shock to in-person health care delivery. The first chart from the CDC illustrates that dramatic growth in the use of telehealth ratcheting up since the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in the U.S. Virtual care has

 

Spending on Medicines In and Post-COVID Say a Lot About Patients and Larger Healthcare Trends – an IQVIA Update

Spending on medicines, globally, will rebound this year and rise above pre-pandemic levels through 2025. Between 2021 and 2025, the annual growth global growth rate for prescription drugs spending is expected to range from 3% to 6%, a $1.6 trillion bill for the worlds’s total Rx medicines market. That relatively low single-digit growth rate is tempered by savings from biosimilars and the loss of brand exclusivity (that is, more generics coming to market). On the faster-growth side, we can expect two big therapeutic areas to drive spending upward: oncology and immunology, projected to expand by 9% to 12% each year

 

And the Oscar Goes To….Power to the Patients!

Health care has increased its role in popular culture over the years. In movies in particular, we’ve seen health care costs and hassles play featured in plotlines in As Good as it Gets [theme: health insurance coverage], M*A*S*H [war and its medical impacts are hell], and Philadelphia [HIV/AIDS in the era of The Band Played On], among dozens of others. And this year’s Oscar winner for leading actor, Anthony Hopkins, played The Father, who with his family is dealing with dementia. [The film, by the way, garnered six nominations and won two]. When I say “Oscar” here on the Health

 

Health Disparities and the Risks of Social Determinants for COVID-19 – 14 Months of Evidence

In April 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued a report featuring evidence that in the month of March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic was not an equal-opportunity killer. Within just a couple of months of COVID-19 emerging in America, it became clear that health disparities were evident in outcomes due to complications from the coronavirus. An update from that early look at differences in COVID-19 diagnoses and mortality rates was published in Health Disparities by Race and Ethnicity During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Current Evidence and Policy Approaches, In this report, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, part of

 

Virtual Health Tech Enables the Continuum of Health from Hospital to Home

In the COVID-19 pandemic, as peoples’ daily lives shifted closer and closer to home, and for some weeks and months home-all-the-time, health care, too, moved beyond brick-and-mortar hospitals and doctors’ offices. The public health crisis accelerated “what’s next” for health care delivery, detailed in A New Era of Virtual Health, a report published by TripleTree. TripleTree is an investment bank that has advised health care transactions since 1997. As such, the team has been involved in digital health financing and innovation for 24 years, well before the kind of platforms, APIs, and cloud computing now enabling telehealth and care, everywhere. The

 

How Grocery and Retail Companies Are Delivering Health and Healthcare

The Wall Street Journal featured the grocery chain Kroger in an article yesterday titled, COVID-19 Vaccinations, Tests Give Boost to Kroger’s Health Ambitions. “With 2,250 pharmacies and 220 clinics largely in the Midwest and the southern U.S., Kroger is the fourth-largest pharmacy operator by script count,” the Journal noted, adding details about Walmart, CVS Health, and Walgreens all fast-expanding their respective health care footprints. As more consumers view their homes as personal and safe health havens, there is no shortage of suppliers in the food, retail, and mobility sectors working fast to meet that demand for convenient and accessible services.

 

“Hope Springs Eternal” With the COVID Vaccine for Both Joe Biden and Most People in the U.S.

More Americans are happier in March 2021 than they’ve been for a year, based on consumer research from Civic Science polling U.S. adults in early March 2021. For the first time, a larger percent of Americans said they were better off financially since the start of the pandemic. This week, Civic Science shared their latest data on what they’re seeing beyond the coronavirus quarantine era to forecast trends that will shape a post-COVID America. Buoying peoples’ growing optimism was the expectation of the passage of the American Cares Act, which President Biden signed into effect yesterday. The HPA-CS Economic Sentiment Index

 

Ten Forces Shaping Health Care in 2021: A View from CVS Health

Expanding omni-channel, data-driven, cost-effective health care in the community, tailoring that care, and attending to mental health paint the picture of health through the lens of CVS Health. The company published the Health Trends Report 2021 today, calling out ten forces shaping health care this year. Those themes are, The Year of the Pharmacist The Next Step Forward in Cardiac Care Cancer Needs a Better Roadmap The EHR Hits Its Stride The Mental Health Shadow of COVID-19 Tailor Care to the Older Patient More Agents that Predict Disease Paying for the New Medical Miracle Virtual Care Goes Mainstream, and Diabetes

 

2020 Was Our Year of COVID; 2021 Will Be Our Year of Vaccines and Excess Deaths in America

With a third vaccine approved by the FDA for licking COVID-19, brought to market by Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. can expect an uptick in vaccinations among fellow health citizens. That’s such welcome news and a positive outlook for a healthier 2021. But there’s another angle on 2021 for which health care providers and health citizens alike should prepare: that is the excess deaths that will happen due to patients postponing needed health care, diagnostic tests, and preventive services that stem from people avoiding care in doctor’s offices and hospitals. The chart here comes from IQVIA’s latest study into COVID-19’s

 

Retail Health Gains Consumer Kudos in the Pandemic

The more health consumers use health and wellness services at retail, the greater their satisfaction and brand-love, according to a new report from J.D. Power. J.D. Power found that peoples’ Net Promoter Scores were higher among those folks who used at least one health and wellness service at a brick-and-mortar pharmacy, shown in the first chart. That NPS-delta was 15 points between consumers who used no services (rating an NPS of 55) versus people using at least 2 services (awarding an NPS score of 70). Consumers using more health and wellness services also spent more money at the drug store, a

 

Americans Lost Future Life-Years in 2020: How Much Life Was Lost Depends on the Color of One’s Skin

Some people remark about 2020 being a “lost year” in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. That happens to be a true statement, sadly not in jest: in the U.S., life expectancy at birth fell by one full year over the first half of 2020 compared with 2019, to 77.8 years. In 2019, life expectancy at birth was 78.8  years, according to data shared by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Life expectancy at birth declined for both females and males, shown in the first chart. The differences between

 

Three in Four People Avoiding Health Care in the Pandemic Have Had Chronic Conditions

By the autumn of 2020, U.S. physicians grew concerned that patients who were avoiding visits to doctor’s offices were missing care for chronic conditions, discussed in in Delayed and Forgone Health Care for Nonelderly Adults during the COVID-19 Pandemic from the Urban Institute. More than three-fourths of people who delayed or forewent care had at least one chronic health condition. The pandemic may have led to excess deaths from diabetes, dementia, hypertension, heart disease, and stroke, as well as record drug overdoses in the 12 months ending in May 2020. In their JAMA editorial on these data, Dr. Bauchner and

 

The Health Care Cost Curve is Bending Down – A New View from Deloitte

Over the next 20 years, health care spending in the U.S. will migrate toward well-being and the early detection of disease, away from the funding of America’s sick-care system, according to Breaking the cost curve, a forecast of U.S. health economics in the year 2040 from Deloitte. Current spending on health care in America is roughly $4 trillion (with a “t”) dollars, approaching 20% of the nation’s economy. By 2040, spending is projected to be $8.3 trillion based on future health trends — not historic workflows and delivery mechanisms which would consume an additional $3.5 trillion — close to what we

 

Can Telemedicine Increase Health Equity? A Conversation with Antoinette Thomas, Dave Ryan, and Me with the ATA

“Yes,” we concurred on our session convened by the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) EDGE session today. “We” was a trio including Antoinette Thomas (@NurseTechExec1), Chief Patient Experience Officer with Microsoft, David Ryan (@DavidPRyan), former long-time Global Head of Intel’s Health/Life Science business; and, me. Antoinette posed three questions for all of us to brainstorm, addressing various aspects of health equity. We covered, The theory that telemedicine should increase health equity — where are we and what are the barriers to getting there? The role of social determinants of health in creating equitable opportunities for health citizens; and, Entering a post-pandemic world,

 

The Biden Administration’s Whole-of-Government Approach to Equity – in Health and Beyond

In the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed disparities in housing, food, and job security, and the role that one’s ZIP code and social determinants play in health outcomes. Overall, America has done poorly in light of being 4% of the world’s population but having one-fifth of the planet’s deaths due to the coronavirus. But these have disproportionately hit non-white people, who are nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 than white Americans. I’ve been head-down reviewing the first two days of President Biden’s signing Executive Orders, reading the National Strategy for COVID-19 Response, and inventorying line items

 

Our Homes Are Health Delivery Platforms – The New Home Health/Care at CES 2021

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn on 18 January 2021 in Aging, Aging and Technology, Baby health, Big data and health, Bio/life sciences, Bioethics, Boomers, Broadband, Business and health, Connected health, Consumer electronics, Consumer experience, Consumer-directed health, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Data analytics and health, Demographics and health, Dental care, Design and health, Diagnostics, Digital health, Digital therapeutics, Electronic medical records, Exercise, Fitness, Food and health, GDPR, Grocery stores, Guns and health, Health and Beauty, Health at home, Health care marketing, Health citizenship, Health Consumers, Health costs, Health disparities, Health Economics, Health ecosystem, Health engagement, Health equity, Health marketing, Health media, Health Plans, Health policy, Health politics, Health privacy, Health regulation, Healthcare access, Healthcare DIY, Heart disease, Heart health, HIPAA, Home care, Hospitals, Housing and health, Internet and Health, Internet of things, Medical device, Medical innovation, Nutrition, Obesity, Oral care, Patient engagement, Patient experience, Pharmacy, Physicians, Popular culture and health, Prevention and wellness, Primary care, Privacy and security, Public health, Remote health monitoring, Retail health, Robots and health, Safety net and health, SDoH, Self-care, Sensors and health, Sleep, Smartwatches, Social determinants of health, Social responsibility, Sustainability, Telehealth, Telemedicine, Transparency, Trust, Virtual health, Wearable tech, Wearables, Wellbeing

The coronavirus pandemic disrupted and re-shaped the annual CES across so many respects — the meeting of thousands making up the global consumer tech community “met” virtually, both keynote and education sessions were pre-recorded, and the lovely serendipity of learning and meeting new concepts and contacts wasn’t so straightforward. But for those of us working with and innovating solutions for health and health care, #CES2021 was baked with health goodness, in and beyond “digital health” categories. In my consumer-facing health care work, I’ve adopted the mantra that our homes are our health hubs. Reflecting on my many conversations during CES

 

Preaching Health Equity in the Era of COVID on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Today as we appreciate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., I post a photo of him in my hometown of Detroit in 1963, giving a preliminary version of the “I Have a Dream” speech he would deliver two months later in Washington, DC. Wisdom from the speech: “But now more than ever before, America is forced to grapple with this problem, for the shape of the world today does not afford us the luxury of an anemic democracy. The price that this nation must pay for the continued oppression and exploitation of the Negro or any other minority group is

 

How COVID-19 Mobilized Participatory Health and the Importance of “Correct” Personal Health Records

explained in a new report from EY co-sponsored by the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the AHA Center for Health Innovation. Digital Transformation – Anywhere Care envisions “health care with no address, or bringing care to the consumer or patient rather than expecting the patient to go to the hospital” as a “vital sign” of health care’s changes going into the new year of 2021. COVID-19 accelerated a movement in which I’ve been involved for over a decade, known as “participatory health.” In its early phase in the U.S., Dr. Tom Ferguson identified the emerging role of the internet in

 

Will 2021 Be the Year of Sicker Americans? Pondering Late 2020 Data from IQVIA

Yesterday, IQVIA presented their end-of-year data based on medical claims in the U.S. health care system tracking the ups, downs, and ups of the coronavirus in America. IQVIA has been tracking COVID-19 medical trends globally from early 2020. The plotline of patient encounters for vaccines, prescribed medicines, foregone procedures and diagnostic visits to doctors begs the question: in 2021, will Americans be “sicker,” discovering later-stage cancer diagnoses, higher levels of pain due to delayed hip procedures, and eroded quality of life due to leaky guts? Here are a few snapshots that paint a picture for greater morbidity and potentially more “excess

 

The Coronavirus Pandemic Has Made Patients Less Patient – Insights from Accenture

When it comes to patients, health care providers have been hit hard in two ways in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hit #1 has been the direct negative impact of the coronavirus on health care volumes and patients not utilizing hospitals and doctors’ services, avoiding physical encounters in health care sites Hit #2 has been the negative impact of patient experience for those health consumers who sought health care services during the pandemic — and had a negative response to the encounter. Accenture explored this phenomenon in their latest report, Elevating the Patient Experience to Fuel Growth. In the

 

The Comforts of Home Drive Demand for Healthcare There

Two in three U.S. consumers skipped or delayed getting in-person medical care in 2020. One in 2 people had a telehealth visit int he last year. Most would use virtual care again. The coronavirus pandemic has mind-shifted how patients envision a health care visit. Today, most consumers prefer the idea of getting health care at home compared with going to a doctor’s office. Most Americans also like the idea of recovering at home instead of at a medical facility after a major medical event, according to the report, Health-at-Home 2020: The New Standard of Care Delivery from CareCentrix. COVID-19 has

 

Consumers Seek Health Features in Homes: How COVID Is Changing Residential Real Estate

The coronavirus pandemic has shifted everything that could “come home,” home. THINK: tele-work, home schooling for both under-18s and college students, home cooking, entertainment, working out, and even prayer. All of this DIY-from-home stuff has been motivated by both mandates to #StayHome and #WorkFromHome by government leaders, as well as consumers seeking refuge from contracting COVID-19. This risk-shift to our homes has led consumers to re-orient their demands for home purchase features. Today, home is ideally defined as a safe place, offering comfort and refuge for families, discovered in the America at Home Study. The Study is a joint project of

 

The COVID Healthcare Consumer – 5 Trends Via The Medecision Liberation Blog

The first six months into the coronavirus pandemic shocked the collective system of U.S. consumers for living, learning, laboring, and loving. I absorbed all kinds of data about consumers in the wake of COVID-19 between March and mid-August 2020, culminating in my book, Health Citizenship: How a virus opened hearts and minds, published in September on Kindle and in print in October. In this little primer, I covered the five trends I woven based on all that data-immersion, following up the question I asked at the end of my previous book, HealthConsuming: when and how would Americans claim their health

 

How Grocery Stores Are Part of the Health/Care Ecosystem – the Case of ALDI and Instacart

As humans in the Age of the Coronavirus focus on physiological needs, people have intensely focused on hunting-and-gathering food and hygiene products. We will remember memes about toilet tissue stockpiling and re-visiting canned and shelf-stable comfort foods from childhood long after the pandemic. Some people, though, haven’t had easy access to nutritious food in their communities or the ability to engage with ecommerce platforms to order food for delivery. An alliance between ALDI, the value-priced grocer, and Instacart, was forged to address that gap as a key social determinant of health. Food-is-medicine when it comes to managing chronic conditions like

 

Redefining PPE As Primary Care, Public Health, and Health Equity – The Community PPE Index

In May 2020, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) re-visited the acronym, “PPE.” As OED evolves the definition of PPE, the wordsmiths could borrow from OSHA’s website, noting that PPE, “is equipment worn to minimize exposure to hazards that cause serious workplace injuries and illnesses. These injuries and illnesses may result from contact with chemical, radiological, physical, electrical, mechanical, or other workplace hazards. Personal protective equipment may include items such as gloves, safety glasses and shoes, earplugs or muffs, hard hats, respirators, or coveralls, vests and full body suits.” Perhaps Definition 3 in the OED could be updated by a blog

 

Telehealth Use Among Older Americans: Growing Interest, Remaining Concerns

In the Fear of Going Out Era spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic, many patients were loath to go to the doctor’s office for medical care, and even less keen on entering a hospital clinic’s doors. This drove health consumers to virtual care platforms in the first months of the public health crisis — including lots of older people who had never used telemedicine or even a mobile health app. In the August 2020 National Poll on Heathy Aging, the University of Michigan research team found a 26% increase in telehealth visits from 2019 to 2020, March to June 2020 year-over-year.

 

Return-To-School Is Stressing Out U.S. Parents Across Income, Race and Political Party

The worse of the coronavirus pandemic is yet to come, most Americans felt in July 2020. That foreboding feeling is shaping U.S. parents’ concerns about their children returning to school, with the calendar just weeks away from educators opening their classrooms to students, from kindergarten to the oldest cohort entering senior year of high school. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s July 2020 Health Tracking Poll focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic, return-to-school, and the governments’ response. KFF polled 1,313 U.S. adults 18 and older between July 14 to 19, 2020. The first line chart illustrates Americans’ growing concerns about the coronavirus, shifting

 

A New Era of Virtual Care Has Begun, Accenture Finds

Patients embraced virtual care and communications at very high rates in the first months of the pandemic, and want to continue to use telehealth platforms after the pandemic ends. The new era of virtual care has begun and is here to stay, Accenture expects in its latest look at How COVID-19 will permanently alter patient behavior, a patient survey conducted in May 2020. Accenture polled 2,700 patients around the world, 450 participants each from China, France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. Patients represented one of three conditions, with one-third each managing cardiovascular, immunology/rheumatology, and oncology. Topline, consumers “faced

 

Economic Anxieties Rise, Medical and Vacation Plans Delayed: the COVID-19 Consumer in June 2020

Some 6 in 10 people in the U.S. have been financially impacted by COVID-19. Those most negatively affected by the pandemic tend to be younger, Gen Z age group and African-American, 63% of whom felt financial pressure directly due from the virus and the national economic lockdown. By late May 2020, 34% of black Americans had lost their jobs compared with 21% in late April, compared with 18% of white consumers, reported in The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Financial Impact on U.S. Consumers, survey research from TransUnion. This post describes data from TransUnion’s Wave 9 report, which polled 2,086 U.S. adults 18

 

More U.S. Patients Scheduling Doctors’ Appointments, Welcoming Telehealth Into Their Visit-Mix

By May 14th, 2020, one-half of consumers in the U.S. expected they would schedule a medical appointment in the next two months. “As the country emerges from COVID-19, we’re watching consumer confidence shift back to where it was prior to the onset of this crisis,” noted Dr. Brad Bowman, Chief Medical Office at Healthgrades. The company published the COVID-19 Patient Confidence Study, a survey launched in late March. Since the first poll was conducted on March 27th, Healthgrades has conducted the study weekly among 200 patients age 18 and over to gauge peoples’ “confidence” in making typical health care decisions through

 

What $6,553 Buys You in America: A Luxury Watch, a Year at Valdosta State, or a PPO for One – the 2020 Milliman Medical Index

Imagine this: you find yourself with $6,553 in your pocket and you can pick one of the following: A new 2020 Breitling Navitimer watch; A year’s in-state tuition at Valdosta State University; or, A PPO for an average individual. Welcome to the annual Milliman Medical Index (MMI), which gauges the yearly price of an employer-sponsored preferred-provider organization (PPO) health insurance plan for a hypothetical American family and an N of 1 employee. That is a 4.1% increase from the 2019 estimate, about twice the rate of U.S. gross domestic product growth, Milliman points out in its report.   Milliman bases

 

How COVID-19 Has Re-Shaped Health Care Delivery So Far

COVID-19 is re-shaping health care in America across many dimensions. In Shifts in Healthcare Demand, Delivery and Care During the COVID-19 Era, IQVIA presents a multi-faceted profile of the early impacts of the pandemic on U.S. health care. In the report, published in April 2020, IQVIA mined the company’s many data bases that track real-time data, including medical claims, flu data, sales data, oncology medical and pharmacy claims, formularies, among other sources. Top-line, IQVIA spotted the following key shifts in U.S. health care since the start of the coronavirus pandemic: Patients’ use of health services Impacts on medicine use, influenced

 

Telehealth and COVID-19 in the U.S.: A Conversation with Ann Mond Johnson, ATA CEO

Will the coronavirus inspire greater adoption of telehealth in the U.S.? Let’s travel to Shanghai, China where, “the covid-19 epidemic has brought millions of new patients online. They are likely to stay there,” asserts “The smartphone will see you now,” an article in the March 7th 2020 issue of The Economist. The article returns to the advent of the SARS epidemic in China in 2003, which ushered in a series of events: people stayed home, and Chinese social media and e-commerce proliferated. The coronavirus spawned another kind of gift to China and the nation’s health citizens: telemedicine, the essay explains. A

 

The Book on Deaths of Despair – Deaton & Case On Education, Pain, Work and the Future of Capitalism

Anne Case and Angus Deaton were working in a cabin in Montana the summer of 2014. Upon analyzing mortality data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, they noticed that death rates were rising among middle-aged white people. “We must have hit a wrong key,” they note in the introduction of their book, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. This reversal of life span in America ran counter to a decades-long trend of lower mortality in the U.S., a 20th century accomplishment, Case and Deaton recount. In the 300 pages that follow, the researchers deeply dive into and

 

Outpatient is the New Inpatient – The Future of Hospitals in America

Outpatient revenue is crossing the curve of inpatient income. This is the new reality for U.S. hospitals and why I’ve titled this post, “outpatient is the new inpatient,” a future paradigm for U.S. hospitals This realization is informed by data in a new report from Deloitte, Where have the many hospital inpatient gone? The line chart illustrates Deloitte’s top and bottom line: “The shift toward outpatient is happening and will likely have a tremendous impact on operations, business models, staffing, and capital. Health systems should prepare for the future today and start thinking not only about how to manage their

 

Home Is Where the Health Is, CareMore Health (And Most People) Believe

Most people dealing with chronic conditions, and those who care for them, believe that “home is where the health is,” according to a survey about the “21st century house call” from CareMore Health. To gain peoples’ perspectives on health care at home and chronic disease management, CareMore Health and Aspire Health commissioned a survey among 2,009 U.S. adults 23 years of age and over in September and October 2019. The survey sample included people dealing with chronic disease themselves, as well as caregivers attending to people with chronic illnesses. The definition of that “modern house call” is largely based on the

 

“Digital Health Is An Ecosystem of Ecosystems” – CTA’s 2020 Trends to Watch Into the Data Age

In CTA’s 2020 Consumer Tech Forecast launched yesterday at Media Day 1 at CES, Steve Koenig VP of Research, said that, “digital health is an ecosystem of ecosystems.” Health, medical and wellness trends featured large in the forecast, which brought together key trends for 5G, robotics, voice tech, AR/VR/XR, and the next iteration of IoT — which Steve said will still be called “IoT,” but in this phase will morph into the “Intelligence of Things.” That speaks to Steve’s phrase, “ecosystem of ecosystems,” because that’s not just “digital” health — that’s now the true nature of health/care, and what is

 

Social Determinants of Health – My Early Childhood Education and Recent Learnings, Shared at the HealthXL Global Gathering

My cousin Arlene got married in Detroit at the classic Book Cadillac Hotel on July 23, 1967, a Sunday afternoon wedding. When Daddy drove us back out to our suburban home about 30 minutes from the fancy hotel, the car radio was tuned to WWJ Newsradio 950, all news all the time. As soon as Daddy switched on the radio, we were shocked by the news of a riot breaking out in the city, fires and looting and gunshots and chaos in the Motor City. Two days later, my father, who did business with Mom-and-Pop retail store owners in the

 

What the 2019 Nobel Prize Winners in Economics Teach Us About Health

The three winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics — Banerjee and Duflo (both of MIT) and Kremer (working at Harvard) — were recognized for their work on alleviating global poverty.” “Over 700 million people still subsist on extremely low incomes. Every year, five million children still die before their fifth birthday, often from diseases that could be prevented or cured with relatively cheap and simple treatments,” The Nobel Prize website notes. To respond to this audaciously huge challenge, Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer asked quite specific, granular questions that have since shaped the field of development economics — now

 

Prelude to Health 2.0 2019: Thinking Consumers At the Center of Digital Health Transformation

“Digital transformation” is the corporate strategy flavor of the moment across industries, and the health are sector isn’t immune from the trend. As this 13th year of the annual Health 2.0 Conference kicks off this week, I’m focused on finding digital health innovations that engage people — consumers, caregivers, patients, health citizens all. This year’s conference will convene thought leaders across a range of themes, and as is the Health 2.0 modus operandi, live demo’s of new-new things. As Health 2.0 kicks off today in pre-conference sessions, there is useful context described in a new report from the American Hospital

 

100 Million People in America Lack Broadband — an On-Ramp to Health and Safety

One in three Americans does not have a broadband connection, according to a new report from the NPD Group. This means that about 100 million people in the U.S. can’t benefit from telehealth and other digital health connections that can bolster self-care, home care, and lower cost care. Most of these folks in the broadband-digital divide live in rural America/ “The so-called digital divide, between those that can or cannot make the best use of the Internet, can be clearly felt in rural markets where the lack of broadband impacts everything from entertainment to the educational system,” Eddie Hold, President

 

Gaps in Health Equity in America Are Growing

There’s been a “clear lack of progress on health equity during the past 25 years in the United States,” asserts a data-rich analysis of trends conducted by two professors/researchers from UCLA’s School of Public Health. The study was published this week in JAMA Network Open. The research mashed up several measures of health equity covering the 25 years from 1993 through 2017. The data came out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System looking at trends by race/ethnicity, sex and income across three categories for U.S. adults between 18 and 64 years of age.

 

Intent, Insiders/Outsiders and Insights — Disney Institute’s Women’s Leadership Summit

There are many forms of magic inspired by Disney, the company. There’s the obvious attraction, the Magic Kingdom, that was Walt’s original destination vision, “imagineered” in 1932. Then there are other kinds of magic. The one I’m deep into in the moment is inspiration, ideation, and “reimagineering” my own thinking about work, legacy, and social justice. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to spend much of this week at the inaugural Disney Institute Women’s Leadership Summit. The Institute convened about 300 women (and a handful of brave “He-for-She” men keen on diversity) in Orlando to learn about and brainstorm

 

How Consumers Look At Social Determinants of Health for Cancer, Diabetes and Mental Health

Enlightened health/care industry and public policy stakeholders have begun to embrace and address social determinants of health. These are the inputs that bolster health beyond health care services: they include economic stability like job security and income level (and equity), education, and access to healthy food, food security, safe neighborhoods, social support, clean environments (water and air), and in my own update on SDoH factors, access to broadband connectivity. As physician leaders in the AMA, technology advocates from AMIA, and numerous health plans focus efforts on strengthening social determinants, what do people – consumers, patients, caregivers — think about these

 

Digital Health As A Basic Human Need – the Dentsu Digital Society Index 2019

We are all Homo informaticus these days, multi-channel, multi-platform beings using digital platforms. “Computing is not about computers anymore. It is about living,” Nicholas Negroponte wrote in Being Digital. He said that in 1995. In that quarter-century since Negroponte made that prescient observation, we come to better understand that being a Digital Society has its upsides and downfalls, alike. We need a “new needs model” for the digital age, asserts a new report, Human Needs in a Digital World, the 2019 Digital Society Index report from the Dentsu Aegis network. Taking Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a basic construct, the Index

 

World Health Day 2019: Let’s Celebrate Food, Climate, Insurance Coverage and Connectivity

Today, 7 April, is World Health Day. With that in mind, I devote this post to three key social determinants of health (SDOH) that are top-of-mind for me these days: food for health, climate change, and universal health coverage. UHC happens to be WHO’s focus for World Health Day 2019. [As a bonus, I’ll add in a fourth SDOH in the Hot Points for good measure and health-making]. Why a World Health Day? you may be asking. WHO says it’s, “a chance to celebrate health and remind world leaders that everyone should be able to access the health care they need,

 

Consumers’ Trust In Health And Personal Care Stores: The Growing Retail Health Ecosystem

CVS + Aetna have merged to evolve a new business model for health and medical care. Walgreen’s continues to add new services beyond the core pharmacy business, and Walmart is expanding telehealth and healthier food aisles in the grocery. More grocery stores  added dietitians to their operations in 2018, as well. As people take on more self-care for health care, they are looking to access products and services in retail bricks-and-mortar and ecommerce channels in the same places they buy food and other products. ACSI’s latest customer satisfaction benchmark study into retailers provides insights into the trusted channels for retail health

 

National Health Spending Will Reach Nearly 20% of U.S. GDP By 2027

National health spending in the U.S. is expected to grow by 5.7% every year from 2020 to 2027, the actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services forecast in their report, National Health Expenditure Projections, 2018-2927: Economic And Demographic Trends Drive Spending And Enrollment Growth, published yesterday by Health Affairs. For context, note that general price inflation in the U.S. was 1.6% for the 12 months ending January 2019 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This growth rate for health care costs exceeds every period measured since the high of 7.2% recorded in 1990-2007. The bar chart illustrates the

 

“Telehealth is a digital distribution channel for health care” – catching up with Roy Schoenberg, President and CEO of American Well

Ten years ago, two brothers, physicians both, started up a telemedicine company called American Well. They launched their service first in Hawaii, where long distances and remote island living challenged the supply and demand sides of health care providers and patients alike. A decade later, I sat down for a “what’s new?” chat with Roy Schoenberg, American Well President and CEO. In full  transparency,  I enjoy and appreciate the opportunity to meet with Roy (or very occasionally Ido, the co-founding brother-other-half) every year at HIMSS and sometimes at CES. In our face-to-face brainstorm this week, we covered a wide range