this week’s top healthcare news market update: healthcare vs. the S&P 500 ER Staffing and ASC firm Envision considering bankruptcy. Per Bloomberg, Envision Healthcare is considering a bankruptcy filing. The firm with over 25,000 staffed physicians is backed by private equity giants like KKR and has a lot of debt. As you could probably deduce from HCA’s Q1 earnings call, emergency room visit volume is down QUITE a bit for…

This week’s top healthcare news. As of this writing: 784,201 infected and 41,837 deaths in the U.S. (Live Tracker) We’re re-opening the economy — slowly — and states will get to choose how and when that’s done. They’ll use the White House’s 3-phase approach as a guide. Antibody and other lab testing availability will…

The Big Stuff. Let’s level-set on the biggest current healthcare trends. This week, I took some time to sift through the current, major stories and healthcare trends happening right now: Global healthcare trends: Coronavirus (duh) Broad healthcare trends: Consolidation is happening industry-wide — to name a few sectors: physician practices, imaging centers, and home health. Consumer-centric healthcare is rapidly expanding, including direct to consumer services (hand in…

Colorado’s Public option woes. Colorado’s first-ever public option health insurance plan revealed its payment rates — and hospitals aren’t happy with the base payment rate of 155% of Medicare. In fact, Colorado’spublic option woes may be a microcosm for what will happen with any sort of federally mandated public option.(Remind me — what’s…

It’s official. Healthcare is the top issue heading into the 2020 Election. But our healthcare system is so complex. How can I possibly even begin to understand the issues? Don’t worry — that’s what this handy guide is for. I’ll be breaking down the major stuff that you need to know. Here’s the layout of the guide: Healthcare vocabulary you need to know The 3 main healthcare…

The interoperability schism between Epic and Big Tech rages on. On Jan. 27th, the CARIN Alliance, comprised of new entrants like Apple, Google, and the rest of Big Tech, issued a short letter (read it here) to HHS in major support of the data-sharing proposal. The bigger picture. Amidst all of the data privacy concerns as of late, Google and others want better…

Top Weekly Healthcare Stories M&A | Mednax Starboard wants to sell Mednax Starboard Value, a popular activist investment firm, wants Mednax to consider a company sale (WSJ paywall). Since Starboard owns a significant chunk of Mednax, they have a decent bit of power to try and make a sale happen. It’s pretty clear why Starboard wants to pursue a sale strategy. If…

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. As you can imagine, it was a pretty sleepy week for news. Drugs & Pharma | Gene Therapy Billions of $$$ Invested into Gene Therapy That’s a big gene pool. Big Pharma is betting big-time on gene therapies as its next major source of income. …

Welcome back to the Healthy Muse newsletter, where we cover the latest and greatest in healthcare policy, innovation, business, and more — once a week. Biogen’s Alzheimer’s Drug Makes a Comeback It seemed like Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug, — a therapy called aducanumab — was dead after its March clinical trial results came back with gloomy results…