Hatch Chief Growth Officer Adam Peebles

Digital Health

The Case For More Retailers and Health Systems to Partner

A new viewpoint in the Harvard Business Review made the case that health systems and retailers are only scratching the surface of their partnership potential.

The authors – a trio of professors out of Harvard and UNC – outline four actions they believe health systems and retailers should take to better coordinate their complementary services.

Move Beyond Convenience. Retailers like CVS and Walmart are beginning to add services such as primary care, mental health counseling, and home care, yet even more robust solutions like Amazon Clinic still fall short of integrated care. 

• Things like cancer treatments and surgeries remain well outside the realm of retail health, yet a close partnership between a retailer and a health system could help integrate the many elements involved in treating more-serious conditions.

Move Care Into the Home. Although retail clinics are more convenient and accessible than hospitals, patient homes have them beat on both metrics. Hospitals have begun offering more care in the home, but often lack the logistical prowess to supply patients with the monitoring tech needed for larger programs.

• Efficiently equipping patients’ homes with RPM devices is right in the retailer wheelhouse, and a partnership could fill the gap. Look no further than Best Buy and Geisinger for proof.

Leverage Data to Improve Care. The data held by retailers and health systems largely remains in separate databases, with some notable exceptions like Target-Kaiser Permanente.

• The authors point out that better integration could help with everything from flu outbreak prediction (grocery carts filled with tissues = sick people) to food-as-medicine programs (well-timed nudges and incentives).

Change Who Delivers Care. Labor shortages are one of healthcare’s biggest immediate obstacles, and few employers have a larger workforce than retailers. The article gives the example of Walmart, which subsidizes education for its employees to train for roles like pharmacy technician and medical assistant.

• Health systems could ensure these training programs meet quality standards and help graduates find jobs, creating a model where retailers attract more ambitious candidates and providers have a new talent pool to tap into.

The Takeaway

One way or the other, retailers are moving past the Retail Care 1.0 era, and it’s hard to argue against the case for tighter retailer-provider partnerships. Even if consumers might not jump at the idea of sharing their grocery list with their physician, the ideas outlined in this article are good food-for-thought for combining the complementary strengths of retailers and providers to improve the system as a whole.

Mankato Clinic Shares Lessons From AI Implementation

Ambient documentation solutions have arrived in a big way, and they’re generating a lot of noise in the process. To help cut through that noise, Mankato Clinic CMO Dr. Andrew Lundquist shared the biggest lessons from his team’s implementation of Nabla Copilot, along with advice for other clinics seeking their own ambient AI solution. Make sure to check out Nabla’s full interview with Dr. Lundquist here.

Discover Clear Arch Health’s RPM Platform

With ready-to-use devices, data-driven dashboards, and integrated analytics, Clear Arch Health’s turnkey RPM platform is designed to meet the evolving needs of care delivery. Find out how Clear Arch Health can help keep your providers connected to their patients and equipped with the actionable insights they need to improve outcomes.

Selecting Your Drug Database and CDS Solution

Do your providers need easy access to real-time drug knowledge and clinical decision support? Explore Synapse Medicine’s complete guide to drug database advantages, use cases, challenges, and factors to consider when selecting the right solution for your organization.

The Wire

• New QHINs Make Debut: HHS added two more organizations to its Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (better known as TEFCA), with the CommonWell Health Alliance and Kno2 both receiving their QHIN designation. The pair of new QHINs join Epic, Health Gorilla, eHealth Exchange, KONZA, and MedAllies, which were among the original December cohort. CommonWell and Kno2 can immediately begin supporting data exchange under TEFCA, which aims to establish a universal policy for network-to-network health information sharing.

• Medical Debt On the Rise: The percentage of Americans with medical debt ticked up to 24% in 2022, according to a KFF analysis of national survey data. If you broaden the definition to include things like debt to family members, that percentage spikes all the way to 41%. Not exactly ideal, especially considering that those with medical debt are more likely to skip care when they have a problem (46% vs. 11% without medical debt), dip into their retirement to make ends meet (40% vs. 6%), and describe themselves as “just getting by” (58% vs. 28%).

• Omada Enhances GLP-1 Care: Omada Health rolled out enhancements to its GLP-1 program, adding detailed reporting for employers/PBMs/payors to support prior authorization, as well as expanded exercise programming to help maintain weight loss. The enhanced GLP-1 Care Track will augment Omada’s full cardiometabolic suite (prevention, diabetes, hypertension), providing patients with behavioral support, nutrition, and tailored exercise plans designed by Omada’s physical therapists to optimize muscle mass (~40% of GLP-1 weight loss can be muscle mass).

• Nabla Appoints New CMO: Fresh off the heels of closing its Series B, Nabla appointed Ed Lee, MD, MPH, as its new Chief Medical Officer to help guide its product and deployment strategy. Dr. Lee is a board-certified internal medicine physician with 20 years of experience and a successful track record in executive roles at The Permanente Medical Group. That also means that Dr. Lee is bringing hands-on implementation experience with Nabla Copilot, which rolled out to 10,000 TPMG physicians last year and has been delivering some promising results.

• Private Equity Isn’t Going Anywhere: A report from the American Investment Council highlighted the increasing prevalence of private equity in healthcare, including over $15B that PE investors raised last year to deploy within the industry. The PE lobbying firm’s report argues that private equity makes the healthcare system more efficient, but it also arrives at a time when lawmakers are probing PE’s industry involvement and new research is indicating PE hospital ownership might not be ideal for patients.

• DiMe Physical Activity Resource: DiMe launched the final resources from its physical activity project, including a core set of digital measures to track what’s increasingly recognized as the “6th vital sign.” In typical DiMe fashion the complete project is publicly available, allowing anyone to better assess the impact of exercise on well-being. It also includes ontologies, a decision tool, and illustrative scenarios to help researchers, providers, and developers implement the new core measures.

• Medicare Advantage Projections: New projections from the CBO expect Medicare Advantage enrollment to max out at 60% of total Medicare beneficiaries before 2030. That would represent a fairly substantial slowdown from the past decade, which saw MA enrollment nearly double to 30.8M people in 2023, representing the first time in history that over half of all eligible Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in a private MA plan.

• Virgin Pulse + HealthComp = Personify Health: Just a few short months after their $3B merger, Virgin Pulse and HealthComp are rebranding the combined company to Personify Health. The newly unified Personify Health will combine Virgin Pulse’s employee wellness platform with HealthComp’s revenue cycle suite to form a “health platform-as-a-service company” with 20M users and 1,000 employers. Love the wink from the design team.

• Healthcare’s Super Bowl Moment: Three healthcare-specific ads ran during this year’s Super Bowl, with Power to the Patients, Pfizer, and Roswell Park all enjoying 30 seconds of record viewership during their $7M ad slot (123M people tuned in). Patient advocacy group Power to the Patients brought out the celebrities to demand more transparency. Pfizer showcased some amazing scientific breakthroughs over a similarly amazing Queen soundtrack. Cancer center Roswell Park might have taken the cake with its tear-jerking commercial narrated by a golden retriever.

• $2B Medicare Scam: A potentially massive Medicare scam was uncovered involving seven companies that allegedly drove a nearly $2B increase in billings for catheters since 2022. The Washington Post reported that the seven companies all share the same address and leadership team, yet until two years ago they had only worked with 14 patients all together. The companies used real patient information (probably involving a breach), and it sounds like several federal investigations are now looking into the situation.

• Smartphone-Based BP Personalization: In the PERSONAL‐CovidBP trial, a novel smartphone-enabled approach to blood pressure medication dosing effectively reduced 205 participants’ average BP from 142/87 to 131/81 mmHg. Using Closed Loop Medicine’s dose-personalizing smartphone app, almost 85% of patients achieved BP control on novel doses (1-10mg, excluding 5 and 10mg), while adherence to BP monitoring and medication reached 84% and 94%, respectively.

Master the Art of Provider Credentialing

Crafting better patient care experiences starts with refining your operations and nurturing provider satisfaction. Dive into Medallion’s new guide to discover top strategies for effective provider communication, accelerating processes through automation, and creating adaptable workflows. Elevate your credentialing game with Medallion.

The Best Partner for Sustainable Staffing

Delivering the best care requires a partner who understands the current staffing challenges. See how connectRN empowers its partners to deliver sustainable staffing through tools and resources designed to enable the best care possible.

Better Diabetes Management With Glooko

Glooko’s diabetes management platform transforms the way patients connect with their providers, driving better engagement, adherence, and ultimately outcomes. Take a look at Glooko’s latest clinical studies to see how their platform is driving sustained improvements for people with diabetes.