THIS WEEK IN HEALTHCARE
What happened in healthcare this week—and what we think about it.
Missouri backtracks on Medicaid expansion
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson announced Thursday that his state would not expand Medicaid coverage to 275,000 residents who will become eligible on July 1st, despite a 2020 ballot initiative in which a majority of the state’s voters approved the expansion. Because the Missouri legislature has blocked funding for the expansion, Parson declared that the state’s Medicaid program, MO HealthNet, would run out of money if it moved forward. The legislature’s decision to block funding was bolstered by an appeals court opinion last year, which challenged the expansion because the ballot initiative did not include a funding mechanism for widening coverage. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the federal government would have picked up 90 percent of the cost of expanding Medicaid in the state, in addition to boosting funding for existing Medicaid enrollees by 5 percent, thanks to a measure in the recent American Rescue Plan Act. The governor’s decision leaves in place one of the strictest Medicaid eligibility standards in the nation: a family of three in Missouri must earn less than 21 percent of the federal poverty level—$5,400 per year—in order to qualify for coverage. The expansion measure would have opened the program to childless adults, and raised the eligibility limit to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. The Missouri Hospital Association called the decision an “affront” to voters, pointing out that the state is currently running a budget surplus, and could easily allocate funds for the expansion. The status of Medicaid expansion in Missouri, which would become the 38th state to undertake expansion since the ACA’s passage, will ultimately be decided by court ruling, according to observers. Meanwhile, like other states (mostly in the Southeast) that have resisted Medicaid expansion, Missouri will continue to see tax dollars flow out of the state to fund benefits in states that have expanded eligibility—despite the express will of voters. Given ample evidence that Medicaid expansion boosts access to care, health status, and health system sustainability, it’s nearly unfathomable that the politics of “Obamacare” continue to complicate the extension of this critical safety-net program.
Walmart, Amazon continue to build healthcare presence
Late last week, retail giant Walmart announced its plan to acquire national telemedicine provider MeMD, for an undisclosed sum. According to Dr. Cheryl Pegus, Walmart’s executive vice president for health, the acquisition “complements our brick-and-mortar Walmart Health locations”, allowing the company to “expand access and reach consumers where they are”. MeMD, founded in 2010, provides primary care and mental health services to five million patients nationally. The acquisition extends Walmart’s health delivery capabilities beyond the handful of in-store and store-adjacent clinics it runs, and follows the launch of its own Medicare Advantage-focused broker business, and partnership with Medicare Advantage start-up Clover Health to offer a co-branded insurance product. Walmart has been climbing the healthcare learning curve for several years, building on its sizeable retail pharmacy business, and seems to have hit on a successful formula in its latest in-person clinic model, which includes primary care, behavioral health, vision, and dental services. The retailer plans to add 22 new clinic locations by the end of this year, and its new telemedicine offering will allow it to expand its virtual reach even further. The MeMD acquisition also represents a new front in Walmart’s head-to-head competition with Amazon, which launched its own national telemedicine service earlier this year. That service, Amazon Care, is targeted at the employer market, and right on cue, Amazon announced its first customer sale last week—to Precor, a fitness equipment company. Both retail giants are slowly circling the $3.6T healthcare industry, targeting inefficiencies by deploying their expertise in convenience and consumer engagement. Incumbents beware.
Hospital giants bet big on hospital at home
This week Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente announced a $100M joint investment in Boston-based Medically Home, a provider of virtual hospital solutions. Founded in 2016, Medically Home is one of a handful of companies that coordinate with hospitals and doctors to provide in-home clinician visits, round-the-clock communications and monitoring, and access to support services to enable hospital-level care in the home. While interest has surged during the pandemic, the first hospital at home programs launched in the 1990s, and the model has a proven track record of delivering care that is lower cost and clinically equivalent (or better), when compared to a traditional hospital admission. A confluence of market forces has driven rapid expansion in the model across the past year. Health systems are increasingly looking to hospital at home to address emerging consumer demand for care outside the hospital, and achieve the longer-term goals of providing flexible, lower-cost acute care capacity. And payers are looking to add hospital at home capabilities to their growing virtual and home-based care platforms to manage acutely ill Medicare Advantage beneficiaries in a lower-cost care setting.
Early adopters estimate that as many as 30 percent of patients admitted to hospitals today could be candidates for treatment at home. The large infusion of funding from Kaiser and Mayo will enable Medically Home to scale across the US, and also provides an endorsement of, and commitment to, the care model from these respected systems, which may help convince physicians who remain skeptical. Coupled with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ waiver program, allowing payment for home-hospital care, this investment should drive a new wave of growth in the model—and will likely make hospital at home a routine part of the care options available to patients. |