Kaiser, Mayo Partner for Home Health; Self-Pay Strategies Pulls in $1.5M for Inspira

May 13, 2021 - Happy Thursday and welcome to a run-down on the latest developments across the healthcare industry.

Kaiser Permanente, Mayo Clinic Partner for Home Health

Kaiser Permanente and the Mayo Clinic are planning to expand a relatively new care model that combines telehealth, mHealth, and in-person visits to treat acute care patients in their own homes rather than the hospital.

The two health systems have announced a $100 million investment in Medically Home, a Boston-based company that has been working with, among others, the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Adventist Health, and UNC Health on acute care at home programs. The investment will help the Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente scale up the connected health platform in their regions.

Spurred on by the coronavirus pandemic, healthcare providers are looking to shift care services out of the hospital and into the home.  This includes care management for patients who would otherwise be in the ICU. READ MORE

AMA Tackling Health Equity, Legacy of Medical Racism

The American Medical Association has released its strategic plan for improving health equity, which the organization said would entail an inward look at its own past missteps and plans to be better in the future. This strategic plan comes after the AMA’s 2019 creation of the AMA Center for Health Equity. Additionally, it comes after a year fraught with a nationwide racial reckoning and commitments from the AMA to address racism in medicine.

“This strategic plan represents a step forward in a much longer journey to ground the AMA, health care, and our nation’s health care system around equity with a vision of achieving optimal health for all,” AMA President-Elect Gerald E. Harmon, MD, said in a statement. READ MORE

BCBS of Rhode Island Using AI to Identify Low-Risk Members

Artificial intelligence (AI) can shed light on trends within low-risk member populations so that health plans can prevent them from progressing into the high-risk category. There are a couple of key opportunities within the care management process for payers to implement artificial intelligence and machine learning tools. One of the primary steps in care management is identifying populations that need healthcare support.

“To be good at care management and to be effective and produce the outcomes that you are trying to achieve, you have to first be able to stratify your population and find out who is the most impactful,” observes Matt Collins, MD, BCBSRI executive vice president and chief medical officer.” READ MORE

Bringing Precision Medicine to Cancer Care

Providing cancer patients with personalized treatment plans can lead to better outcomes and improved survival rates, an advantage over current standard cancer therapies.

At Karmanos Cancer Institute, an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center located in Detroit, Michigan, precision medicine treatments have become standard. When implementing the precision medicine approach, Karmanos researchers knew that educating providers on the potential of molecular testing was a critical first step.

“In any institution or healthcare system, or even in practice, you have to redefine what the culture is for a particular approach. In medicine, we're really good at creating guidelines for best practices. In precision medicine or precision oncology, it's a little gray in terms of the guidelines that should be considered because it's a new and emerging field,” says Elisabeth Heath, MD, associate center director for translational science. READ MORE

Patient Financial Responsibility Strategies Grew Inspira’s Revenue by $1.5M

Patient self-service, such as online bill pay, not only accelerated payments but also drove revenue growth to the tune of $1.5M at Inspira Health.

Accelerating the patient collections process is a major opportunity for most provider organizations, especially after the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic. But a lack of digital tools and patient self-service capabilities has hindered healthcare’s progress with addressing the pressing patient financial responsibility problem.

“In most other industries, patients have the ability to do an online payment and to do an online payment with ease. They can also receive electronic statements and have a really easy way to get those,” explains Lynda Carbone, director of patient business services. READ MORE

Eli Lilly to Collaborate with MiNa Therapeutics for Drug Discovery

Eli Lilly and Company and MiNA Therapeutics recently entered into a global research collaboration  that will leverage small activating RNA (saRNA) research technology for drug discovery.

MiNA Therapeutics is the leader in saRNA therapeutics. The RNA therapeutics are a new class of medicines that can restore normal function to patients’ cells. Using MiNA’s saRNA technology platform, the companies will research up to five targets selected by Eli Lilly and Company that aim to address diseases across specific therapeutic focal areas.

“Small activating RNAs are a promising new technology, which will expand the breadth of Lilly's RNA therapeutics platform and the targets we can pursue,” Andrew C. Adams, PhD, vice president for new therapeutic modalities at Eli Lilly and Company said in the announcement. READ MORE