PARTNERED WITH  |
|
|
How about them Longhorns?! I decided to buy some tickets to the game last minute and man, what a game. Did you know OU has yet to score a touchdown on Texas since starting SEC play? Crazy stat. Alright, I'm done now. On to this week's Hospitalogy news roundup. But first - I do have one favor to ask you guys. Starting this week (AKA right now) you'll have the chance to submit anonymous questions to Hospitalogy for me to ask my community / network and feature their responses in the newsletter around tactical challenges, trends, or anything in your role you want to learn more about. Ask a question here! This 'Ask Hospitalogy' segment will be included in newsletters from here on out. |
Was this email forwarded to you? |
|
|
SPONSORED BY PERFECTSERVE Clinician burnout is a systems problem. This guide treats it like one. Healthcare is losing talent and revenue because of burnout. But telling clinicians to "do more self-care" won't solve what outdated tech, unsustainable workloads, and systemic pressures created. This new guide breaks down the real drivers of burnout and offers concrete, organization-level strategies to stop the damage before it spreads. You'll discover: The financial toll of burnout (and what you can save) One of the strongest predictors of clinician well-being A step-by-step framework to identify burnout hotspots Actionable fixes backed by AMA, CDC, and KLAS data No platitudes. Just a practical roadmap to improve how you support your team and your bottom line.
|
|
|
The most important news from the week |
The Medicare Advantage Teeter Totter |
Which side of the Medicare Advantage see-saw are you on? The bearish camp would say the current crop of managed care players - both small and large - are structurally unequipped to deal with 'hard times' in Medicare Advantage. The bullish camp would say healthcare - and MA more specifically - sees a reset every so often, and this current challenging environment is a healthy reset. That there are still pockets of growth (like in C-SNP / duals) and that clinically excellent models are still finding growth and success. Recently I've seen a bunch of data and notable commentary emerge on the current state of MA and wanted to aggregate some of those viewpoints and visuals for you guys here. First off, I would highly recommend following Peter Yates for his wonderful visualizations of all things MA star ratings (released last week here) like the tree maps below. Find his posts here. He often highlights the results for each managed care player's outlook on stars for the upcoming year. Overall, star ratings have declined and since stabilized after CMS tightened up the scoring post-pandemic (leading to certain lawsuits you're all probably familiar with). Here's a good overview from Healthcare Dive on winners and losers. Clover continues to complain about having to play the game by the same rules as everyone else instead of coming up with fake metrics like normalized MLR every quarter (though they do have a point about star ratings methodologies). |
As a reminder, many MA players shrank their footprints drastically after the 2024 and 2025 utilization/risk disasters. The collective large carrier contraction creates an interesting phenomenon where Medicare Advantage could shrink or stay flat in 2026, while market exits will cause weird member growth dynamics for those who remain in those local markets. Considering some of the projections out there around continued MA penetration folks were throwing around a couple of years ago, the possible contraction is pretty crazy. Along with the contraction, HealthScape put out an analysis on the unsustainable trajectory of regional health plans noting that many have less than 2 years of runway, and operating results are worsening given rising administrative and medical costs in their markets. All of that stuff you've been hearing hit the national carriers? Yeah, it's exacerbated at the regional level. An unsustainable dynamic - with the OBBA looming - will only cause consolidation for mere survival purposes. The Blues plans seem to be right there with them too given their federated structure. |
Finally, this think-piece by Duncan Reece made its rounds over the past few days and I can always appreciate someone throwing a thesis out there to zig when others zag. Personally I'm with the jive of the article - that there is still plenty of opportunity in MA. This is healthcare. We're not talking about drastic boom and bust cycles here. Nonetheless, there's your aggregation of MA datapoints for collective review. Where does your camp sit with MA? |
|
|
THE WEEKLY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY |
Notable moves, policies, and strategies from around healthcare. |
Amazon is doing its best CarePods impression (sorry, couldn't resist) by setting up self-serve kiosks for One Medical and Pharmacy customers to grab prescriptions for common medications. While specialty drugs and those needing refrigeration will stay behind the counter, Amazon is in talks to roll out the kiosks to health system partners in an attempt to extend pharmacist capacity while cutting down on logistical costs. Kaufman Hall released its hospital Q3 M&A report, signaling a bounce-back in M&A activity in Q3. In general, anecdotally it seems like Q3 was pretty busy with activity. Notable hospital transactions included joint venture 'portfolio realignment' transactions like Baylor and Geode Health. Notably, ALL 15 of the buyers in Q3 were nonprofit health systems. |
Trilliant's 2025 Trends Shaping the Economy report is always chock full of great information on the current state of things, with some spin from the firm on what might be coming next highlighting the research and intel platform's capabilities. Interestingly, ICHRA is one of the first trends mentioned in the report, along with price variation, population health factors, and other interesting utilization information. |
Qualtrics is buying Press Ganey for nearly $7B as the mammoths of patient survey data take over the patient survey, feedback, & insights market. I also find it really great and not problematic at all that they are 2 out of the 3 vendors listed in Epic's Showroom. |
Time releases its list of top health tech companies. Talkspace acquires Wisdo, a peer support platform for loneliness. NeueHealth goes private after a beleaguered run on the public markets. Rest easy, child. California's Governor Newsom signs a bill clamping down on private equity activity in healthcare, allowing the California AG to intervene when investors 'interfere' with the control over healthcare decisions of doctors / healthcare assets in which they invest. The bill, also, VERY notably, gets rid of non-compete clauses. General Catalyst announced the formation of Percepta, a firm aimed at helping enterprise-level players in all industries (but probably a lot of healthcare) build infrastructure needed for an AI future. |
|
|
SPONSORED BY ABRIDGE Duke Health launched ambient AI and scaled 30x in 4 months. UNC Health scaled 20x in 2 months. Most AI pilots stall, but these systems accelerated. Why? In a word: results. Get the details in a new report that measures the impact of ambient AI in three primary categories: clinician experience, patient experience, and revenue cycle management. See how ambient AI deployed across 200+ health systems is powering high adoption and retention rates by focusing on what matters: better care quality and experiences.
|
|
|
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! |
|
|
Random personal anecdotes and musings from me |
I mean…you all knew this one was coming. Hook em! |
|
|
Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email. — Blake |
|
|
.png) | Share Hospitalogy, Earn Rewards | Have friends who'd love Hospitalogy too? Click the link below to share Hospitalogy with your friends and earn awesome rewards! | |
|
PS: You have referred 0 people so far | | Share Hospitalogy! | |
|
|
|
|
Get your brand in front of 49,000+ executives and healthcare decision-makers. |
I'm building a community of leaders in strategy, finance, and ops at hospitals and health systems to help us connect, learn, and grow together. |
Workweek Media Inc.
1023 Springdale Road, STE 9E
Austin, TX 78721 Want to ruin my day? Unsubscribe. |
|
|
|
No comments