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AdventHealth, Ascension Pull the Plug on AMITA Health

Seven years after merging to form AMITA Health, AdventHealth and Ascension are dissolving the organization and divvying up its facilities.

Mergers & acquisitions, healthcare consolidation

Source: Getty Images

By Kyle Murphy, PhD

- Bucking the merger and acquisition trend of healthcare, AdventHealth and Ascension are calling it quits on their seven-year-old merger.

AdventHealth, Ascension to Separate Seven Years Post-Merger

AdventHealth and Ascension recently announced that they are looking to unwind a longstanding partnership that created a joint operating company that serves the healthcare needs of nearly 6.6 million residents in the greater Chicago area.

The health systems said in an announcement on Oct. 21st that they have decided to dissolve the company called AMITA Health after leaders of both systems “determined that going forward separately is in their collective best interest in order to more nimbly meet the changing needs and expectations of consumers in the rapidly evolving healthcare environment.”

AMITA Health was created seven years ago by AdventHealth and Ascension and consisted of nine hospitals. The company has since expanded to 19 acute and specialty hospitals in Illinois, making it one of the largest hospital systems in the state.  AdventHealth and Ascension did not provide a timeline for the unwinding of AMITA Health. READ MORE

Quality Online Reviews Tied to Better Health Outcomes

Regions with hospitals getting higher online provider reviews tend to have lower mortality rates, demonstrating not only unequal quality of care but also confirming that online provider reviews could be a good insight into that quality, according to data published in JAMA Network Open.

The analysis, conducted by researchers from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, showed that for every one-star drop in online provider review score, the typical hospital saw 18 more deaths per 100,000 people.

And through an assessment of Yelp reviews for about 95,000 hospitals in 1,300 counties, the researchers also found a link between better online provider reviews and county mortality rates. For each one-star drop in online provider review score, the researchers observed an increased mortality rate of 18 per 100,000 people. READ MORE

Amazon Optimizes Alexa for Hospital, Senior Living Facilities

Amazon is ramping up its connected health platform with new services designed to expand Alexa’s capabilities in healthcare organizations and senior living facilities.

Offered through the Alexa Smart Properties business line, the services aim to give Alexa-enabled mHealth devices more opportunities to interact with both care providers and seniors – two distinct populations primed to take advantage of AI chatbots. In addition, the new services are designed to enhance in-hospital telemedicine platforms and telehealth services for seniors living independently.

The enhanced healthcare provider platform enables hospital staff to communicate more easily and efficiently with patients, reducing the need to have patients press a call button repeatedly to summon nurses to a room. Through Echo devices stationed in the hospital, staff can communicate with patients in their rooms, while patients can access customized information ranging from cafeteria menus to podcasts. READ MORE

National Study Details the High Costs of Rare Disease

Researchers provide evidence that individuals with rare diseases face significantly higher healthcare costs in a retrospective study led by the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translation Sciences (NCATS).

Those with rare diseases see costs three to five times greater than those without a rare disease. Additionally, most of the approximately 7,000 to 10,000 known rare diseases disproportionately impact children, adolescents, and young adults.

The pilot study was a joint effort among NCATS, Eversana Life Sciences (Chicago), Oregon Health & Science University (Portland), Sanford Health (Sioux Falls), and a health insurer in Australia. Researchers used International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes to determine those with rare diseases and their direct medical costs for 14 rare diseases in four health care systems compared to patients without rare diseases of a similar age. READ MORE

Mental Healthcare Networks Falling Short of Member Expectations

Private health plan members have found that payers’ mental healthcare networks are less adequate than their medical health networks, a study published in the JAMA Network Open revealed. The researchers used data from a 2018 national internet survey of private insurance health plan members. Over 19,600 individuals participated in the survey with a 66 percent completion rate.

In the network adequacy analysis, more respondents found that their mental health network’s adequacy was not as satisfactory as their medical health network’s adequacy. However, this did not change significantly for members who only received mental healthcare through their primary care providers, nor did it differ significantly from those who solely received in-network care.

One out of every five members reported that at least one provider left their network within the past three years. According to the participants, mental healthcare professionals and primary care providers were equally likely to leave their networks. READ MORE

Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Elicits Strong Response in Children

Moderna recently announced that two doses of its COVID-19 vaccine showed a robust neutralizing antibody response in children six to under 12 years of age.

The Phase 2/3 KidCOVE randomized expansion study evaluated mRNA-1273 at the 50-microgram dose level 28 days apart in 4,753 children.

In the trial, the SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody geometric mean ratio comparing the response in children to young adults was 1.5, with a seroresponse rate of 99.3 percent. These results show strong immune responses one month after the second dose. Notably, mRNA-1273 was generally well-tolerated with a safety profile consistent with the Phase 3 COVE study in adolescents and adults. READ MORE

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