WORKWEEK

No talking about healthcare spice or physician employment dynamics today! We’re simply recapping August and the 16 major healthcare stories in an ultra-skimmable format for your viewing pleasure.

Welcome back to another edition of Hospitalogy. It’s a cool 99 degrees in Dallas, Texas and you might think that sounds dreadful…until you look at the previous 30 days of weather and realize that this feels like a brisk fall day for folks in North Texas. The Kidney Care Race: Interwell Health, Strive Health Find…

The meteoric rise of CareBridge, why its success was a foregone conclusion, and how officials hopping between public agencies and private markets can exert outsized influence over unnoticed corners of healthcare.

In likely the biggest news headline of the week, BCBS CA and its 4.8 million member footprint announced its intention to ditch CVS and is replacing that 3-letter void with a consortium of vendors – Amazon Pharmacy for at-home drug delivery, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs for benefit design and medication access, Prime Therapeutics, and Abarca to fill other existing drug benefit functions.

In today’s send I wanted to aggregate and describe a number of factors facing physicians and physician employment in 2023. While I don’t necessarily have a conclusion here, it seems as if a number of these variables are slowly coming to a head across full practice authority, private equity, corporatization, and rethinking physician agency.

After a long and beleaguered journey to this point, including a lengthy board fight, going concern…concerns, a $150M loan at a 14% interest rate for a year-long lifeline, and a rescheduled Q2 earnings conference call, Cano Health posted dismal results on its Q2 earnings release. The Medicare Advantage-focused senior clinic care platform reported a 103.5% medical loss ratio, meaning that for every premium dollar earned, Cano paid out 103.5% in medical costs. Good on them for subsidizing needed patient care!