Not So Fast: Deadline Extended for Change-Optum Merger

April 05, 2022 - With a legal battle looming with the Department of Justice and major provider associations shouting foul, Change Healthcare and UnitedHealth Group have extended the merger deadline to year's end.

Extended Deadline for Proposed Change, UnitedHealth Merger

Following a lawsuit from the Department of Justice to block the deal, Change Healthcare and UnitedHealth Group have pushed their April 2022 healthcare merger deadline to the end of the year. Change and UnitedHealth’s Optum have announced that they will extend their healthcare merger agreement to December 31, 2022.

UnitedHealth first announced plans for Optum to acquire Change Healthcare in January 2021. In a proposed transaction valued at $8 billion, the merger aimed to combine Change Healthcare’s revenue cycle management technologies with Optum’s services to ease clinician workflow, improve provider access to clinical data, and streamline payment processes.

The companies had expected to finalize the deal in the second half of 2021, but the transaction hit a series of roadblocks. Most recently, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a civil lawsuit to block the merger deal. The complaint stated that the transaction would hurt competition in the commercial health insurance and healthcare technology markets. READ MORE

Large Employers See Value in Wellness Programming for Hybrid Workforce

Large employers are investing more in their wellness program design in 2022 and their programs revolve around hybrid work environments, job satisfaction, and equity, the Business Group on Health found in a survey.

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The 2022 Employer-Sponsored Health & Well-being Survey drew its data from 166 companies spanning from mid-sized to jumbo-sized. Respondents could access the online survey in December 2021 and January 2022.

Overall spending on wellness program design in 2022 is expected to fall, except among large employers who are responding to the shift to hybrid work environments. Large employers boosted their wellness programming budgets over their 2021 budgets by around $500,000 on average. Also, mid-sized companies with less than 5,000 employees budgeted for higher spending per employee. READ MORE

Phone Betters Mailers for Effective Patient Outreach for Preventive Care

Healthcare organizations deploying patient outreach messaging for preventive care screenings should consider personalizing those messages to patient preferences and characteristics, concluded a group of researchers from Penn Medicine.

Emerging evidence is showing that deferred care is leading to later-stage cancer diagnosis, which often accompanies a grimmer prognosis. Primary care providers are working to ameliorate that problem through better patient outreach, reminding patients and encouraging them to come in for routine screenings.

This data offers some insights into the patient outreach messaging that works best. In a comparative analysis of 600 patients ages 50 to 75 who were eligible but not scheduled for a routine colonoscopy, the researchers determined that tailored patient outreach messaging was the most effective over the telephone. READ MORE

Merck’s Prevymis Highly Effective Against Cytomegalovirus Infection

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Merck recently announced that its cytomegalovirus (CMV) treatment, Prevymis (letermovir), lowered the odds of CMV reactivation by 88% 100 days after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (alloHCT).

Researchers analyzed 48 real-world observational studies of Prevymis compared to controls (mostly preemptive therapy). All studies enrolled CMV-seropositive patients predominantly in the US, Italy, and Japan undergoing alloHCT. These patients are at a notably higher risk for CMV reactivation. 

Overall, Prevymis lowered the chance for clinically significant CMV infection by 91%, the chance of CMV disease by 69%, and the possibility of Grade 2 or greater graft versus host disease by 48%.  READ MORE

Yale Researchers Create AI-Based Model to Diagnosis Health Conditions

Yale School of Medicine researchers have developed an artificial intelligence model (AI) that can help diagnose heart rhythm and conduction disorders based on electrocardiograms (ECG) images.

Machine learning has become increasingly prominent in healthcare, as providers are increasingly using it to enhance diagnoses. Applying machine learning to ECGs can increase the likelihood of physicians locating patterns that often go unrecognized, researchers found.

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The artificial intelligence-based model created by the researchers is based on data from more than 2 million ECGs from 1,506,112 patients. The model was able to diagnose one in six patients with a heart rhythm disorder. READ MORE

New Research Spotlights Telehealth’s Widening of the Digital Divide

Researchers from Boston University and Boston Medical Center examined how telehealth widens the digital divide and developed strategies to eliminate digital health inequities.

As telehealth takes an increasingly permanent position in healthcare delivery, it has produced various benefits. However, its distribution also creates health inequities, often driven by digital redlining, the researchers said in a perspective piece published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Two key inequities include digital fluency, that is, the ability to use digital tools effectively, and the capacity for health advocacy, which is the ability of a patient to advocate for their medical needs.

To reduce these inequities, researchers came up with a three-pronged strategy that includes creating federal and state policies to operationalize telehealth infrastructure, establishing national standards for healthcare access portals, and providing support to families as they adopt new care modalities. READ MORE