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Hospitalogists, Welcome to another week of healthcare events and happenings! I've got another great, strategy and finance dense newsletter for you healthcare information carnivores out there. Let me know what you're keeping an eye on or what I missed. Also, I'm pumped to announce an opportunity for Hospitalogists - I'm opening up 3 additional tickets for the sold-out Hospitalogy VBC retreat, exclusively for folks working at health systems, ACOs, or payvidors. That's right. I'm fully comping your ticket and you'll join other VBC leaders and me in Austin for a full day of conversation and networking around how to move the needle forward in healthcare. Here's the agenda, covering topics like macro themes in VBC entering 2026, policy outlook given the OBBBA, the future outlook of payor-provider dealmaking, state of venture and sustainability of VBC, practical drilldowns of AI in VBC, and much more. Apply for a ticket here! |
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The big stories from the week |
Quick Nonprofit Q2 financial roundup |
I pulled together some recent reports on ongoing nonprofit high level financials with the intention of taking a deeper dive once most have reported their quarters. Here's how revenue and operating income are tracking over the first 6 months of the year (9 in the case of MGB) along with their respective unaudited filings. Somewhat of a mixed bag but something is in the water with AdventHealth! |
Drilling down a bit into Kaiser, here's a snapshot of revenue by Kaiser market segment, including a breakout of Risant Health (Cone Health and Geisinger), through the first half of 2025: |
…Along with the fair values of both Geisinger and Cone Health added to Risant / Kaiser's balance sheet in exchange for capital commitments - access to 'capital, technology, and resources to fuel improvements in facilities, drive innovation and investment in patient care, and continue the expansion of Geisinger Health Plan' to each of these Risant member health systems: |
UnitedHealth Group FINALLY seals the deal with Amedisys after Divestitures |
After a long, multi-year, beleaguered road, including some significant concessions and divestitures, UnitedHealth Group completed its acquisition of Amedisys after initially announcing the deal in June 2023. Recall that 2022 and 2023 were peak 'vertical integration' years as we saw UnitedHealth Group on a major acquisition spree while CVS acquired Oak Street Health, and other payors followed suit to build out their payvidor strategies. |
THE WEEKLY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY |
Notable moves, policies, and strategies from around healthcare. |
I find the micro hospital strategy with players like Christiana Care and Emerus interesting as it places smaller hospitals next to neighborhoods. Almost as an evolution of the freestanding ED, it makes me question the micro hospital's role versus an FSED. I'm not necessarily criticizing, but I am skeptical - so if someone wants to dive into why the micro hospital strategy is better outside of financial reasons (e.g., capturing more commercial volumes in affluent neighborhoods) over and above an FSED I'm all ears. The inpatient only list proposed rule is getting plenty of rumbling and poses significant risks for hospitals conducting a larger percentage of their procedures on an inpatient basis for procedures that are at risk - or in the process of - shifting outpatient. A couple of large medical group acquisitions: Optum acquired Holston Medical Group, a 200-provider group throughout Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, while Cardinal Health continues its own flavor of vertical integration with its acquisition of Solaris Health, a large urology MSO, to be added to its assemblage of multispecialty providers within the Specialty Alliance. Solaris Health's network contains 750+ physicians and clinicians across 250 practices in 14 states, and urology holds a close tie-in with specialty drugs in oncology for those of you wondering what's mostly in it for Cardinal Health. |
Highmark Health and Abridge made much fanfare (which Rik and I covered last week) by announcing a go-live implementation of real-time prior authorization across the Highmark and Allegheny Health Network enterprise. Also, I'd be remiss to mention Epic's announcements around AI during its company event, including the Nuance-powered scribe, but the overall event went much further than that, as touched on by Brendan Keeler here. Kaufman Hall's latest Hospital Flash Report noted broad revenue and volume increases, particularly on the outpatient front while expense inflation in supplies, purchased services, and professional fees present upward pressure on margins. Still, operating margins held steady through June at ~3%. |
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My favorite reads & resources from the week |
*This read is brought to you by one of my brand partners who help make this newsletter possible! |
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Random personal anecdotes and musings from me |
Did you guys see the new corporate branding on the Texas field? They're adding a corporate logo for the first time ever. Crazy stuff!! |
Cracker Barrel's new logo is abysmal. Why do we have to make everything plain fonts these days? I mean at least Hospitalogy has a fun little orange plus sign in the name, ya know? |
Tommy Fleetwood finally gets it done. I have to say I had no confidence in him considering his history and with Scottie chasing him down - though I understand his wife - who is 23 years older than him - was a no show at his first PGA tour win?? His first win ever on tour and you're not there??! C'mon! I hope she has a good excuse. College football is here! This week! We made it! Medvedev / Bonzi match - did any tennis fans watch this? I happened to be up late and caught the US Open matches and this was an absolute spectacle. I had no idea Medvedev was in such a slump either. |
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Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email. — Blake |
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