Tenet posted consolidated revenues of $19.2B and adjusted EBITDA of $3.47B, in-line with expectations. (Tenet)
Tower Health and Penn Medicine canceled their plans to merge on February 10. (Beckers)
Oscar's full year earnings seem to have blown investor expectations out of the water (Oscar)
Centene Q4 and full year 2022 earnings included expectations of losing 2.2 million Medicaid members post public health emergency. It has also agreed to pay a total of $805.6M so far - while it has $1.2B reserved - in PBM settlements (HCD)
Digital Health and Startup Updates:
The firsthand team raised $28M. Instead of linking to that press release, check out some of their job openings here.
Clinical trials platform Medable was selected by the Nova Scotia Health Innovation Hub to improve patient access and clinical trials diversity across Canada. (Link)
OCD-focused NOCD raised $34M. (BHB)
Included Health partnered with Solv to help facilitate Included's longitudinal, integrated care delivery platform. (Link)
BCBS of California added diabetes care company Virta Health to its statewide provider network for 2023. (MedCity)
GE HealthCare acquired AI-enabled ultrasound player Caption Health. (Link)
Doximity rolled out a beta version of its ChatGPT tool for docs - DoctGPT.com, which will integrate with Doximity's fax service. Potential uses include using the generative AI platform for healthcare-specific medical prompts, prior authorization drafts, and more. Of course this opens up a whole can of worms if docs start doing the bare minimum for documentation. (Fierce)
Evvy, a femtech startup, launched a new research tool focused on specialized areas of women's health. (Fierce)
Policy and Payment Updates:
In a win for freedom and competition, the state of South Carolina repealed its Certificate of Need program. (WLTX)
In a recurring theme for the state, North Carolina is once again weighing doing the same as South Carolina and repealing its CON program while expanding Medicaid. (TNO)
Biden said a few interesting things during his State of the Union address:
- The end of Covid
- Desire to cap insulin costs at $35/mo and address overdoses from opioids and fentanyl, continuing the Cancer Moonshot initiative
- Drawing a strong stance on abortion
- Protecting Medicare and Social Security at all costs
- HHS has paused arbitration in surprise billing payment disputes after a Texas court decision vacated parts of the No Surprises Act. (HCD)
Costs, Data, and Other Updates:
An interesting piece from NPR covers a dynamic slowly unfolding in healthcare: more mid-level providers are staffing critical parts of the healthcare system (AKA, CRNAs or nurse anesthetists instead of anesthesiologists; employing nurse practitioners instead of physicians in the ER). As full practice authority increases in prevalence throughout the US, so does physician animosity toward the trend. Very noteworthy and likely worth a deep dive. (NPR) and a good overview here from Axios on the bigger issues at hand.
The Warped Incentives Behind Amgen's Humira Biosimilar Pricing–And What We Can Learn from Semglee and Repatha (DrugChannels)
The healthcare industry added 58,200 jobs in January, with ambulatory healthcare services seeing the highest job gains, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Advisory)
Whitepapers and Resources
The BDO 2023 Healthcare CFO Outlook Survey had some interesting commentary from CFOs. (BDO)
The AHA released its 2022 National Healthcare Governance Survey Report with some summary insights linked here. (AHA)
Workforce challenges ranked No. 1 on the list of hospital CEOs' top concerns in 2022, according to the American College of Healthcare Executives' annual survey of top issues confronting hospitals. (ACHE)
The Brookings Institute posted an essay on nurse licensure compacts and how these have changed over the past few years. (Brookings)
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