The Top 8 Healthcare Trends to know

Blake Madden
7 min readMar 11, 2020

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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:

Policy healthcare trends:

Digital health & innovation trends:

Hospital trends:

  • Rural hospitals are closing at record rates (learn more).
  • Staffing shortages will affect providers’ future financial performance and viability.

Post-Acute Care trends:

Physician Practice trends:

  • Physicians are all getting employed by health systems, private equity firms, or insurance companies like UnitedHealth. As a result, independent docs are getting harder to come by.

Health Insurance trends:

I dare you to find any healthcare trends I missed. Holler at me.

Other healthcare stories from the week…

The biggest global M&A deal so far this year was just announced. And it’s (partially) in healthcare.

Aon is acquiring Willis Towers Watson for a smooth $30 billion. Both of these companies are involved in risk and insurance brokerage, which involves some healthcare plans.

  • It’s the largest deal announced so far in 2020, and the announcement comes on one of the most volatile days in the stock market.

Online pharmacy Ro wants to disrupt the generic drug market.

Ro, a new online pharmacy, is piloting a new service that would offer users of the platform $5 per prescription for generic medications.

  • Details: $5 per prescription, per month. 500 generic drugs included. Delivery included.

Ro…sounds familiar: You might recall that Ro is formerly the startup called Roman, which discreetly sold male ED and hair loss medication directly to men.

  • It’s a power play: Ro probably won’t make any money off this program without some SERIOUS customer acquisition. The pharmacy is rolling the service out to a small subset of patients first.

Project Gesundheit.

In a years-long project, a secret division within Amazon called Grand Challenge is reportedly working on a cure for the common cold. It’s called…Project Gesundheit. Really.

Coronavirus.

~100,000 cases worldwide. Here’s an interactive map from nonprofit HealthMap. Conferences like HIMSS and SXSW are getting canceled. Airlines are cutting flights. South Korea is a coronavirus testing machine. The U.S. funded an $8 billion emergency package, part of which lifts Medicare’s restrictions on telehealth. On that note, Teladoc’s stock is surging on the prospects of virtual care. Biotech firms are tapping into (WSJ paywall) A.I. to speed up drug development. A mass-produced vaccine/drug will still take 18 months to get here. Meanwhile, stocks are tanking across the globe.

Digital Health. Top Innovation, Collaborations, and Tech Stories

Election 2020 update

Super Tuesday dropouts.

Elizabeth Warren and Mike Bloomberg dropped out after poor Super Tuesday showings. It’s a 2-man race at this point between Biden and Sanders.

As you can imagine, it’s now also a 2-horse healthcare race on the Democratic side between Public-Option-Biden and Medicare-for-All-Sanders.

After Biden’s big Super Tuesday showing, healthcare stocks — particularly, payors — screamed into the stratosphere. UnitedHealth had its best one-day performance in a decade.

Other election stuff to know

  • The Role Of Healthcare In The 2020 Election.
  • Biden has a double-digit lead over Sanders in the latest CNN Poll.

Policy Corner, week of 3/9/2020

Sharing personal health data across providers is about to get WAY easier.

For better or worse, HHS released its final interoperability ruling Monday (catch up on interoperability here). The ruling will ease the ways that personal health data can be shared across electronic health record platforms like Epic and Cerner.

  • Because the rule standardizes data sharing methods AND mandates that consumers will have access to their own health records online, the final interoperability ruling is expected to have huge effects on the health data industry.

Think about it like this: every provider has its own health records system. This system acts similar to a ‘walled garden‘ for providers, which keeps patients coming back to them.

  • With the final HHS interoperability ruling, these walls are coming down. In my mind, that makes it much easier for the patient to switch between providers.

Things to consider: This news ALSO means that new entrants, a la, Amazon/Apple/Google, will have an easier time competing with traditional players like Epic and Cerner. Then there’s also that whole patient data privacy element, too.

  • If sharing personal health data gets easier, that means less privacy over your health data. Is this ruling too big of an administrative burden on providers? After all, almost 70% of hospitals still use some sort of mail or faxing for sending and receiving records.

Read more:

  • The WSJ includes some helpful graphics in its write-up (WSJ)
  • Long-awaited interoperability rules finalized by Trump admin, prompt industry ire (Healthcare Dive)
  • HHS releases final interoperability, data blocking regulations (Fierce Healthcare)
  • On the interoperability mandate: healthcare decision-makers surveyed (Reaction Data)

Other policy stuff.

Quick Hits

Biz Hits

  • LifePoint, a large has-been public hospital operator recently taken private, is selling 2 hospitals to Prisma Health in Tennessee.
  • Health Care Service Corp is suing the feds for $2 billion stemming from the ACA risk corridors program.

State Hits

  • Virginia just passed the most stringent insulin price cap to date — $50 per month.
  • Oklahoma has plans to expand Medicaid soon.
  • Maine voters upheld a ‘controversial’ new law tightening school vaccination requirements
  • VCU Health will drop all patient lawsuits stemming from medical debt.

Other Hits

  • How much does it cost to develop a drug and bring it to market? $985.3 million.

Thought-Provoking Editorials

  • The dangers of Medicare for All (NY Times)
  • Opinion: Super Tuesday results suggest that Americans ‘aren’t looking for big structural changes’ in health care March 5, 2020 (Stat)
  • Medicare-For-All Would Be A Boon To The U.S. Job Market, Study Finds (WaPo)
  • Doctors working while sick is bad enough in ordinary times. During the Covid-19 outbreak it could be catastrophic. (Stat)
  • Surprise medical bills, coronavirus and bad insurance: 3 arguments for Medicare for All (USA Today)

Thanks for reading.

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Originally published at https://thehealthymuse.com on March 11, 2020.

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Blake Madden

I write about healthcare. Policy, business, digital health, & more. Written in plain English. Here to connect, learn, and continue the healthcare convo.