| Top YTD performers included SOC Telemed (bought out at a 300% premium, returning 133% thru Q1), Signify Health (up 30% after buying ACO provider Caravan and performing well YTD), and Oscar (really just rebounding from a very dismal 2021) Worst YTD performers included Aveanna Healthcare (down 53.8% after a poor Q4 earnings showing, labor struggles, and growth decay), Cue Health (down 54.7% after free Covid testing reimbursement from the government ended), and GoHealth (down 67.3% after horrible earnings and general selloff) If you want to follow the Health Tech Index in real time, you can find the free resource here: (Link). It also includes links to all investor relations websites for companies included. Nifty, eh?
Digital Health Consolidation is just getting started.
Tremors in the Water: As we're now well underway into 2022, deal-making is just getting started. Several digital health and other mergers have been announced in recent weeks, all between players making strategic acquisitions. Firms are now realizing that offering one specialized endpoint solution isn't enough anymore: Specialized telehealth firm Thirty Madison and remote prescription drug firm Nurx are merging into one platform caring for about 750k 'active' patients and $300 million in revenue. - There doesn't seem to be much overlap between the two as far as patients are concerned, so I imagine the combined co now has a much larger patient base to cross-sell, larger scale to negotiate with payors, and a more attractive offering to sell to employers. (Link)
Doximity bought Amion for $82.5 billion, continuing to offer lots of useful products for physicians to bolster its ridiculously profitable advertising biz Signify Health bought Caravan Health for $250 million (including payout incentives) to help it create an "end-to-end suite of value-based care" tools (notice a theme here?). Caravan will give SGFY access to 200 health systems and 3k providers. (Link) Bottom Line: Digital health is no longer immune to the wave - or, rather, tsunami - of consolidation happening widespread in healthcare. This trend is just getting started as frothy private valuations fall apart, rates rise, and savvy competitors snap up the strategic pieces to create attractive offerings. (Link) Something you'll probably read at least 20 times over the next few years: "This acquisition is just the beginning of our evolution toward a holistic, end-to-end care model..."
Under the Radar M&A deals & partnerships M&A: IBM finally sold Watson Health to a private equity firm for about a billion. (Link) Partnerships: Humana is expanding its partnership with PE firm Welsh-Carson over its primary care senior clinics into 12 more states. I feel as if this partnership, announced in 2020, is somewhat in the radar, but it's gaining serious traction. (Link) Hospital M&A: NorthShore and Edward-Elmhurst completed their merger to create Illinois' 3rd largest health system at 9 hospitals. (Link) It's Over: Providence is ending its affiliation with Hoag at the end of January. (Link) M&A: Revenue cycle operator R1 RCM is acquiring Cloudmed, a fellow revenue cycle management platform, for $4.1 billion, or about 2.5 Transcarent's. Chump change. (Link) M&A: Convey Health Solutions is acquiring HealthSmart International, a home health supplemental benefits company, for $77.5 million. (Link) M&A: Circulo, a startup focused on the Medicaid population, acquired Huddle for an undisclosed sum. (Link) Partnerships: Here's an interesting little announcement - HCA Healthcare is partnering with Diana Health - a maternal health startup - to open a location inside of one of HCA's facilities. Women's health space is heating up. (Link) $AMEH: ApolloMed, a value-based care company you really should be paying a lot closer attention to (I mean check out this spiffy investor deck), acquired Orma Health, a value-based care tech company focused on risk stratificatio and identifying patients for clinical programs. As a part of the transaction, two top execs from Orma Health will transition over to AMEH's leadership team. (Link) Partnerships: Big partnership news in Texas - GI Alliance and USPI are forming a partnership to expand their joint gastroenterology presence in Texas. Like I mentioned before, Texas is a hotbed for population growth and all these millennials have plenty of digestive issues (lol). (Link) Digital Health M&A: This acquisition had the whole #healthtwitter world rockin' Vera Whole Health is acquiring healthcare navigation company Castlight Health in a $370M deal. (Link) SPAC: Interesting little tidbit here...Healthcare Merger II, a SPAC, withdrew its plans to go public. The folks behind this SPAC also took SOC Telemed public...so I wonder if there's a connection there or if nothing is attractive enough valuation wise to take public. (Link) Hospice: Another interesting tidbit from this week - Humana is looking to offload Kindred's hospice segment and fetching a multiple reportedly up to 12x EBITDA, implying around $3 billion purchase price. (Link) Physician staffing firm US Acute Care Solutions acquired Alteon Health - forming a huge practice of post-acute care providers (9 million patients, 500 programs, 25 states). My bet is on at least a handful of PE backed physician practice platform co's going public in 2022/2023 and my guarantee is that the multiple here was in the double digits. (Link) Spectrum Health and Beaumont Health completed their 22-hospital merger on February 1st. The new system will be temporarily named BSHS Health until they spend an ungodly amount of marketing dollars on a spunky new name likely ending up with a circular logo and a sans serif font. (Link) Dialyze Direct bought Compass Home Dialysis to add 9 SNFs to its portfolio. Did you know that Dialyze is the 'leading SNF dialysis provider' in the US with 130 SNFs in its portfolio? I truly had no idea. (Link) Rhode Island health systems Lifespan Health and Care New England just straight up cancelled their previously announced merger plans after they caught wind of a potential FTC intervention amid local provider concerns. It's like they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, backed up and said "haha, my b." (Link) $AMED: Amedisys acquired a couple of home health biz's in the mid-Atlantic region, including AssistedCare Home Health and RH Homecare Services. Ro acquired male fertility company Dadi (c'mon guys) for about $100 million. Ro's DTC fertility strategy is shaping up nicely. Couple this acquisition with its Modern Fertility acquisition back in May 2021 for a rumored $225 million, and you have a pretty significant footprint in the fertility space. (Link) $HCAT: Health Catalyst announced a partnership with Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare to scale its data analytics platform across TMHC's entire system. (Link) Virtual Care: MVP Health Care, a Medicaid plan in NYC, created a sweet partnership with virtual care platform Galileo. The model will provide MVP's Medicaid members with a bilingual offering for specialty and primary care. (Link) - Why this matters: According to MVP, a wild 40% of its Medicaid members "have not seen a primary care provider in the past 18 months due to various barriers, including transportation and language barriers." Virtual care - especially a Spanish/English one - does a much better job of meeting these folks where they're at and can provide whole-person care across a variety of services (AKA, hospitals, specialists, lab tests, imaging, etc.)
Bigger trend: More people than EVER are on Medicaid, and there's a real opportunity to reach these people groups through bilingual apps and virtual care options. New virtual care capabilities will reduce care costs and expand access for these types of members. From the outside, it looks like the partnership is working - MVP is expanding the program to all of its Medicaid members including those in Vermont. (Link) Policy Headlines I'm Watching. Medicaid: Georgia sued the Biden Administration this week, saying CMS pulled a bait and switch on them after previously approving their proposal for Medicaid work requirements (under Trump) and then revoking that proposal (under Biden). (Link) CMS: After a long, drawn out saga, Medicare has decided to limit the coverage of Biogen's controversial Alzheimer's treatment Aduhelm to JUST clinical trial patients (AKA, only if patients are enrolled in ongoing trials). As a result of the significant coverage decrease, lawmakers are now pressing CMS to reduce Part B premiums. (Link) Fact Sheet: CMS released its 2023 proposed MA fact sheet this week. Based on a risk score trend increase of 3.5% and general reimbursement increase of 4.75%, among other items, the total adjustment for 2023 is expected to be around 8% (inflation am I right). (Link) Telehealth Waivers: Lots of different organizations are requesting for Congress to extend the current telehealth waivers through 2024. Current telehealth waivers only exist as part of the public health emergency - Senators this quarter introduced a bipartisan bill to expand telehealth access thru 2024, and also introduced a separate bill to allow those with high deductible health plans to permanently have access to telehealth. (Link)
Mental Health: In the first hearing in more than a decade on mental health, Congress is tackling behavioral health inequities and other mental health related topics. Makes you wonder if mental health funding will be part of a future stimulus package. (Link) - Related: A somewhat unfortunate side effect of the No Surprises Act - mental health providers are asking to be exempt from the bill, since the price transparency provision surrounding Good Faith Estimates disproportionately affects mental health providers over most other providers. (Link)
ACA: A Record 14.5 million people signed up for ObamaCare. (Link) Settlement: JnJ and other distributors finalized a $26 billion opioid settlement. (Link) Surprise Billing: In a win for providers related to surprise billing, a judge threw out part of the No Surprises Act related to arbitration, saying that it favored insurers. That's because it does - the arbiter was directed to resolve disputes by referencing the median in-network rate for that service in that region. Which side do you think has thousands of data points of claims data to set those rates? - This whole thing is so very messy, but I'm not surprised this provision was struck down. (Link)
SOTU: Here's a thread of mine which broke down Biden's State of the Union (Link) Sutter: Sutter Health BEAT its antitrust lawsuit this week, alleging that the health system engaged in monopolistic practices in its markets. I'm sure Sutter is extremely relieved with the result given its recent history. (Link) - Last August, Sutter settled a monopoly lawsuit for over $500mil
- A year before that, Sutter settled a False Claims lawsuit for $90mil
HaH: Hospital at home operators are hoping for a waiver extension for the program once the public health emergency ends. From a larger perspective, I'll be very keen to see what Congress decides to keep or change related to all of the deregulation stemming from the public health emergency - AKA, what's next for telehealth? Mental health and prescriptions? LTACH/IRF admittance guidelines? And more. (Link)
HHS Extends 'Rona Health Emergency & SCOTUS Halts Vaccine Mandates
Emergency: HHS extended the Covid-19 health emergency for another 90 days. The emergency was about to expire on January 16 so this news was pretty expected. In fact, I was frantically Googling 'public health emergency extended' since I hadn't seen anything come through yet. - What this means: All of the loosened healthcare regulations and flexibilities around telehealth, waivers, Medicaid enrollment freezes, and stipulations in the CARES act, will remain in place for another 90 days. Set to expire April 15 as of this writing. (Link)
Mandate: The Supreme Court struck down OSHA's vaccine mandate on 100+ employee-count employers nationwide earlier in January, ruling that OSHA, under the executive branch, doesn't have that scope of authority. - They argued that such a national public health measure should be implemented via an act of Congress
- Here's a good summary of the mandate positioning (Link) and here's a link to the full opinion. (Link)
Direct Contracting Controversy and CMS Revamps DCE to ACO REACH
Disarray: All of a sudden, Medicare's Direct Contracting ("DC") program, a new risk-based capitation model for primary care unveiled by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) in 2020, is under attack by a progressive consortium of policymakers. - What's DC? At a high level, the program allows primary care providers operating in Direct Contracting Entities ('DCEs') to take on risk voluntarily - through monthly lump sum payments - for their Medicare fee-for-service patients. So, CMS and the DCE get to streamline administrative $$$, the DCE pockets a bit more cash if risk is successfully managed, and the patient stays on traditional Medicare as opposed to MA. The program is only open to about 50 of these direct contracting entities so far while kinks are ironed out and public commentary is received.
- TL;DR: CMS contracts with PCP providers. Seniors on traditional Medicare keep traditional Medicare insurance while the primary care provider entity (the DCE) gets paid per member per month for that beneficiary behind the scenes. Goal of the program = reduce costs, increase quality of care, move toward value-based arrangements.
The Attack: The cohort of progressives, including Elizabeth Warren, sent a letter to HHS accusing the payment model of catering to 'corporate profiteers.' They assert that the DC model will only serve to further privatize Medicare, which might result in reduced choice for traditional Medicare beneficiaries. - There's some other nuanced concerns in there too, like taking advantage of risk score adjustments (fair) and that the entities are able to pocket more $$$ if care is managed effectively. Here's a good write-up of the specific grievances from Fierce: (Link)
The Defense: Of course, the letter attracted a frenzied response. Over 200 healthcare entities ranging from Intermountain, agilon, Babylon, a multitude of ACOs, and more, signed a letter urging HHS to 'Plz fix, thx' the program instead of ending the program altogether, arguing that ending any sort of pioneering program like this would severely affect the value-based movement as a whole. (Read the Letter Here) Hot Take: I find the take by progressives pretty perplexing considering DCE is one of the largest tailwinds powering value-based care in the U.S. - a model that has at least shown promise in predictable cost control for a nearly bankrupt Medicare trust fund. - Progressives of all people should want to test out new things in healthcare, even if there are kinks in the model currently.
Still, this rhetoric is not going to go away - I'm seeing headlines all over the place, like 'Medicare privatization experiment puts Ohio seniors at the mercy of for-profit entities.' As if damn, they forgot the entirety of healthcare is already for-profit. Let's do some research here folks and at least attempt to align profits with quality incentives. - This is a pioneering program in Medicare and one that needs to continue forward in some form. The progress of value-based care and related payment models depends heavily on CMMI and Medicare. There's too much momentum (and funding) in the space to back out now.
- Keep an eye on the tweaks and mutations of the direct contracting model, because it heavily affects the prospects of companies like Privia, Oak Street, One Medical, and health systems who manage large Medicare populations or are in the value-based care space.
Handy resources & perspectives: - Olivia Webb wrote a solid overview of the direct contracting program here. She does the best job possible explaining all of the relevant nuances. (Link)
- Here's a viewpoint in opposition to direct contracting. (Link)
- What do you think? If you have a perspective, I'd love to hear it.
CMS Revamps Direct Contracting to ACO REACH
As if on cue, on Friday, CMS dropped a next-gen program slated to replace the current Direct Contracting starting in 2023. - Details: CMS is replacing all direct contracting programs (Global/Professional/Geo) with a re-skinned model called ACO REACH. The new program is essentially DC with some extra bells & whistles.
ACO REACH aims to continue to move traditional Medicare toward risk-based and capitation payment models through... - Allowing mainly provider-controlled groups into the program. 75% of applicant boards have to be provider-controlled. Non-provider groups have to demonstrate a certain level of direct patient care to be included in REACH.
- Addressing health equity (SDOH) - Every entity has to identify & determine ways to address health disparities in specific markets & geographies - dope
- Preventing the abuse of risk score adjustments. CMS is capping adjustments based on population trends & traditional Medicare risk score trends among other more specific items.
- Maintaining a similar PMPM payment structure to DC by keeping the professional and global payment tracks, but ditching the controversial geographical track.
- Alleviating Progressive concerns about 'corporate profiteering' and 'getting rid of Medicare' - Beneficiaries will keep all provider choice freedom that traditional Medicare provides. This is in contrast to Medicare Advantage programs that typically create narrower networks.
- Providing greater transparency into the program. AKA, more reporting on how entities are doing, how health equity is being addressed regionally, etc.
ACO REACH will start accepting new applicants in Jan. 2023. It'll run thru 2026 and by that point I'm sure we'll have some new acronym and the next iteration of VBC payments. - Companies expected to leverage the new ACO REACH model include all of the normal VBC names - ApolloMed, Privia, agilon, Alignment, Clover, and plenty of others. I'll personally be reading management commentary at investor days to see what the general sentiment is for each company specifically.
Resources: - Link to CMS announcement. (Link)
- A link to the actual RFP if you're interested in checking that out. (Link)
- A recent Aledade podcast discussing ACOs, payment models, and the future of Medicare. (Link)
Takeaways from a 604 page MedPAC report.
Everyone's favorite payment advisory committee MedPAC dropped its 600 page report related to all of the healthcare services verticals and fee-for-service reimbursement recommendations given the current dynamics in each of those industries. If you have the time and are interested in how policymakers shape reimbursement decisions for Medicare, give the executive summary a read (about 30 pages). My general takeaway: it seems as if MedPAC is treating the public health emergency as a one-time thing and approached the report from a business-as-usual perspective (and/or they said "we have no effing clue so we'll just report based on previous methodologies). - That's fine, but do we have any finance people in there? They're using 2020 data for payment policy decisions while every headline in America is screaming about inflation, labor shortages, and supply chain issues. I get that the committee is limited by lagging data but man...some of these recommendations are way out of touch.
I am physically ill at the fact that they recommended reimbursement cuts of 5% for some verticals while inflation sat at 8% in 2021. Physically ill. - I mean, even if Medicare's wage adjustment index accounts for some of the inflation, there's still inflation in other expenses...AKA, supplies? G&A? And you can bet your bottom dollar that consultants and lawyers aren't planning on making any less either.
- If MedPAC had its way, providers would get destroyed financially next year.
Anyway, here are 2 sentences on each vertical based on what I thought was relevant from the MedPAC report: - Acute Care Hospitals
- Costs per hospital stay grew at almost 4% higher than revenues / payments for those stays indicating what we all already knew: hospital margins on Medicare patients are negative and according to MedPAC, hover around -10%.
- MedPAC Rec: Maintain the current updates - IPPS basket increase of 2.5% and OPPS basket increase of 2.0%
- LTACHs: MedPAC Rec: Increase the base rate by 2.0%
- Inpatient Rehabilitation Facilities
- The supply of IRFs increased for the first time in a while from 2019 to 2020 which probably is indicative of the demographic tailwinds in the industry and Florida CON repeal. Freestanding IRFs continue to grow at a steady (3-4%) clip while hospital units are shrinking. During 2020, IRFs experienced higher than normal lengths of stay, higher labor costs, and higher supply costs / usage.
- MedPAC Rec: Cut base payments by 5%. Rationale: MedPAC estimates that IRF Medicare margins in 2022 will be around 14%, a healthy margin in their eyes.
- Physician Practices
- MedPAC added a big section for telehealth in this year's physician services chapter. Total telehealth FFS spending amounted to $4.2 billion, or 5% of FFS spending, up from just $59 million the year prior. Telehealth as a % of total primary care visits sits at just under 20% today.
- MedPAC Rec: Maintain status quo basket rate increase based on current laws (so like, 2%). MedPAC also believes that volumes will rebound to prepandemic levels, or greater, by 2023.
- Home Health
- While the report noted the difficulties associated with 2020 data given the level of visits via telehealth, MedPAC did note that PDGM changes did NOT result in significant changes to referral patterns.
- MedPAC Rec: Cut base payments for home health by 5%. Rationale: they think the home is a good setting for care, but Medicare payments are a bit too high right now as compared to institutionalized care settings. Medicare margin at ~20%)
- Hospice
- MedPAC Rec: Freeze 2023 rates at the current 2022 level, and wage adjust the aggregate cap (AKA, the total amount of Medicare payments a hospice provider can receive in a year). Then reduce that aggregate cap by 20% since around 20% of hospice providers exceeded the cap in 2019.
- Dialysis
- Dialysis patients are SUPER sensitive to COVID-19. Tragically, volumes for ESRD treatments dropped 3% as a result of excess deaths in this beneficiary segment. MedPAC wants to continue incentivizing alternative payment models for chronic kidney diseases. Interestingly, the pandemic almost forced home dialysis service adoption due to increased patient interest and general need for in-home services during the pandemmy.
- MedPAC Rec: Maintain status quo basket increase of 1.2%
- ASCs
- Lots of discussion in this section concerning freestanding ASCs vs HOPDs (hospital surgery departments) and how freestanding ASCs typically benefit physicians more, are run more efficiently, and incentivize lower Medicare spend. Here's an interesting little tidbit though: MedPAC isn't sure whether the lower cost setting of ASCs is offset by a higher volume of outpatient surgeries (AKA, more supply = more demand). MedPAC also wants ASCs to start collecting cost reporting and quality data to this end.
- MedPAC Rec: Congress should eliminate the 2022 Medicare conversion factor update for ASCs - essentially meaning no basket increase
- Skilled Nursing Facilities
- Median occupancy for SNFs dropped from 85% prior to the pandemic to 74% as of September 2021, an intense decline in census volumes. Despite the decline in volumes, MedPAC noted that Medicare margins for SNFs are strong at an average of 25% and that most SNF woes were related to volume drop-offs during COVID.
- MedPAC Rec: Cut base payments for SNFs by 5%. Yes, 5%!! Rationale: SNF performance improved due to the new PDGM payment policies and federal relief bailouts. Volume dropoff is not indicative of future financial earnings potential from Medicare.
Resources: - For all of you fellow nuts out there, here's the full MedPAC report. (Link)
- Here's another article with a helpful summary of the report. (Link)
My Favorite Healthcare Reads. PE: This was a good overview from Keckley on where private equity is at headed into 2022. (Link) Telehealth: This was a great overview of the current dynamics facing the telehealth industry. Has the bubble actually popped? What do you think? (Link) Dialysis: This was a great deep dive by ProPublica into how the pandemic ravaged dialysis and end-stage renal disease patients, an extremely vulnerable population, and that nobody really noticed how big of an impact it made on this patient population. (Link) Noom: This article from Inc was a fantastic deep dive into Noom, a weight-loss company with real weight and lots of momentum behind it (Ha!) Read it here. (Link) Packy's Not Boring took a deep dive into Oscar, albeit from more of a techy perspective. Keep in mind this is a sponsored post, so the bull case is presented pretty nicely - but no real challenges or bear case was presented. Still a good overview of what Oscar does. (Link) Health Systems: This dive into health system incentives showed that fee-for-service, at least for the foreseeable future, is here to stay. (Link) Headspace: This was an interesting watch from THCB about Headspace's merger with Ginger and its go to market strategy, and where it positions against the Lyra's of the world. (Link) Shortages: You should be aware by now of the staffing shortages going on nationwide, but especially in healthcare. Here's a good read from NPR on how it's affecting nursing homes. (Link) LifePoint and Scion: This was an insightful read into the integration between LifePoint Health and Scion Health. It sounds like all systems are a go at the combined organizations. (Link) MA: This article from Axios highlighting the Medicare Advantage space, and all of the players, was a good brief read on the current landscape. (Link) Substacks: I tweeted about these reads earlier this week, but I really enjoyed the following from Olivia Webb and Jan-Felix Schneider: - A timeline of web1, web2, and web3 in healthcare (Link)
- Risk adjustment - the new revenue cycle management? (Link)
Shkreli: The annual Shkreli Awards are here (#FreeShkreli) with a list of some bad actors in healthcare from 2021. (Link) MA: Medicare Advantage, Call Centers, Startups, and the rapidly evolving space. (Link) Watson: A great read from Slate - How IBM's Watson went from the future of healthcare to sold off for parts. (Link) Shortages: This from the Atlantic (soft paywall) was a solid historical overview of the physician shortage. (Link) Hybrid: Timely as ever, Olivia Webb walked through hybrid care models and the future of primary care. (Link) Generics: The FDA released its annual report on generic drug approvals, noting the most significant generic drugs that hit the markets in 2021. Did you know that 90% of drugs in America are generic? (Link) Platforms: This was a good read on Amazon's ability to deploy platforms in healthcare. I personally believe they're the best positioned to do so as far as Big Tech is concerned. (Link) MA: The Commonwealth Fund wrote a great overview of Medicare Advantage, including how the risk adjustment program works for payers. Highly recommend glancing at this just to understand the inner workings of MA. (Link) VBC: Health Affairs wrote a great 2-part series on a single-payer system that already exists in the U.S. - Maryland - and takeaways we can mirror in value-based care payment models. Very timely!(Link) - Along with the above, I enjoyed this piece from TCHB about value-based care and lessons from the pandemic. (Link)
- Final piece on value-based stuff this week - the Keckley report also dove into what to expect for value-based care in 2022 and gives some insightful context for previous value-based initiatives in healthcare. (Link)
Oncology: Olivia Webb wrote on value-based oncology arrangements and how we define value in cancer. (Link) Single-Payer: The New Yorker dove into the history of the AMA's dispute related to single-payer healthcare. (Link) Placebos: Nikhil Krishnan brought out another banger, this time writing about the power of placebos in healthcare. (Link) Therapy: With my wife being a speech pathologist, she pointed out that the CDC published HIGHLY controversial new guidelines related to child development & autism milestones without consulting any therapists prior to releasing those guidelines. Seems like an...interesting decision? (Link) This was a great report from SVB on healthcare investments and exits in 2021. (Link) Nikhil had a great sponsored breakdown of Flume Health and how it's enabling providers to take on risk. (Link) Related, Jan-Felix dove into the value-based care tech stack and the players associated with the various steps in the VBC claims process. (Link) This was a great overview of physician services M&A from Provident across all specialties - an extremely comprehensive report. (Link) I really enjoyed this read highlighting Epic's CEO Judith Faulkner at ViVe: (Link) Bain released its global healthcare private equity and M&A report, chock full of all sorts of interesting info on the state of the private markets. Really really insightful stuff despite it being super consultant-speak. (Link) Another JAMA study found that value-based arrangements consisting of 2-sided risk models (AKA, downside risk) were associated with lower hospitalizations among beneficiaries. So...does that mean that all risk-bearing relationships should include downside risk? Seems so, but the upside reward needs to be worth it. (Link) PCP: The Commonwealth Fund published some data related to primary care investments and access and how the U.S. compares to other countries. I'm personally bullish and excited for the primary care space as it sees increased invvestments. (Link) Prison: Here's a great dive into the prison healthcare landscape and the sadly dramatic disparities that exist. (Link) Supplies: Gist Healthcare had a great dive into how health systems and providers have dealt with, and continue to deal with, supply chain issues including strategies to circumvent challenges. (Link) Regs: Brendan Keeler shared a recording of his related to breaking down need-to-know healthcare regulations. (Link) Fintech x Healthtech: Probably my favorite read of the week, Jacob Effron dove into the stark parallels between Fintech funding from years ago compared to health tech funding today. Turns out, there's some pretty similar stuff going on which is extremely exciting to think about the future of the industry. Tons of momentum in healthcare lately! (Link) HCA: This was a great read from Katie Jennings on HCA's Covid strategy and highlighted the machine that it is. There's a reason why HCA generates $60 billion a year in revenue. (Link) Personalities: This was a great profile from Stat on Will Flanary, the mastermind behind Dr. Glaucomflecken. He's actually incredibly funny, but to see the human unveiled behind the character was really cool. 2.5 million subs across Youtube, Tik Tok, and Twitter!! (Link) Hospitals: Here's a great read from THCB on hospital consolidation and how we can maximize social benefit given the current landscape of health systems and providers. (Link) | 
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