Category Archives: Lower Acuity Care Services

Amazon launches direct-to-consumer virtual care platform

Posted on by • Posted in Amazon, Amazon Care, Amazonification of Healthcare, Consumer Engagement, Consumer Focus, Consumer Marketing, Consumer Preferences, Consumer-Centered Care Pathway, Consumerism, Direct-to-Consumer Virtual Care Platform, Elective Health Conditions, Elective Procedures, Lower Acuity Care Services, Telemedicine, Telemedicine Strategy, Virtual Care Strategy, Virtual Health Storefront, Virtual Healthcare, Virtual Visit • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/4b683d764cf3/the-weekly-gist-november-18-2022?e=d1e747d2d8

On Tuesday, the e-commerce giant unveiled its latest healthcare endeavor, Amazon Clinic, a “virtual health storefront” that can asynchronously connect patients to third-party telemedicine providers. It offers diagnosis and treatment for roughly 20 low-acuity, elective health conditions—including acne, birth control, hair loss, and seasonal allergies—at flat, out-of-pocket rates. (The service does not currently accept insurance.) It also refills prescriptions, which customers can send to any pharmacy, including Amazon’s. At its launch, Amazon Clinic is available in 32 states. 

The Gist: This is exactly the kind of venture at which Amazon excels: creating a marketplace that’s convenient for buyers and sellers (patients and telemedicine providers), pricing it competitively to pursue scale over margins, and upselling customers by pairing care with Amazon’s other products or services (like Amazon Pharmacy). 

Its existing customer base and logistics expertise could position it to replace telemedicine storefront competitors, including Ro and Hims & Hers, as the leading direct-to-consumer healthcare platform, at least among those that don’t take insurance.

It bears watching to see how Amazon builds on this service, including whether it eventually incorporates insurance coverage, partners with health systems (similar to Hims & Hers), or connects Amazon Clinic to Prime in order to attract greater numbers of—generally young, healthy, and relatively wealthy—consumers.

ED volume remains persistently down, but at higher acuity

Posted on by • Posted in Emergency Care, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Lower Acuity Care Services, Market Trends, Outpatient Care, Urgent Care, Utilization Trends, Virtual Care Strategy, Virtual Healthcare, Virtual Hospital, Virtual Visit • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/f42a034b349e/the-weekly-gist-may-28-2021?e=d1e747d2d8

As we shared recently, post-pandemic healthcare volume is not returning evenly. While outpatient volume is rebounding quickly, other settings remain sluggish, especially the emergency department. We partnered with healthcare data analytics company Stratasan to take a closer look at ED volume decline. As shown in the graphic above, nationally, ED visits were down 27 percent in 2020, compared to 2019. ED-only volume (cases that started and ended in the ED) took a large hit across last year, down nearly a third from 2019. We expect that a portion of this ED-only volume will never fully recover to pre-COVID levels, with patient demand permanently shifting to lower-acuity care settings, including virtual, and some patients avoiding care altogether for minor ailments as they learn to “live with” problems like back pain.
 
ED-to-observation volume saw the greatest decline in 2020, likely as a result both of patients avoiding the ED, and presenting in the ED sicker, meeting the criteria for inpatient admission. However, ED-to-inpatient volume, which fell only seven percent in 2020, has been returning. In the second half of 2020, the ED-to-inpatient admission rate was 20 to 30 percent higher than the pre-COVID baseline. Across all three categories of ED volume, pediatrics saw steeper declines compared to adult cases. While some further ED volume rebound is anticipated, health systems should expect that fewer, but sicker, patients will be the new normal for hospital emergency departments. 

Fewer low-acuity patients utilizing high-cost emergency care is good news from a public health perspective, but health systems must bolster other access channels like urgent care and telemedicine to ensure patients have convenient access for emergent care needs.

CVS announces aggressive expansion plans

Posted on by • Posted in Business Model, Consumer Engagement, Consumer Loyalty, CVS Health, Expansion Strategy, Health Insurance Industry, Home Care, Home-Based Dialysis, Lower Acuity Care Services, Mission, Virtual Healthcare, Vision, Wellness • Leave a comment

https://cvshealth.com/newsroom/press-releases/cvs-health-outlines-strategy-accelerate-growth

Image result for cvs health

In a presentation to investors this week, retail pharmacy giant CVS Health announced plans to expand its “HealthHUB” store concept, first launched at three store locations in Houston, to 1,500 stores in the next three years.

The new store concept, built to take advantage of CVS’s 2018 acquisition of health insurer Aetna, is centered around providing more extensive care management and wellness services than traditionally available at the chain’s Minute Clinics. In addition to Houston, the company is targeting Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Tampa, all in states where Aetna’s existing insurance footprint and the new care offerings can be combined to create new benefit designs and consumer engagement approaches.

In a wide-ranging discussion of the company’s future strategies, CVS executives also outlined plans for delivering home-based dialysis, expanded in-store primary care services, and further expansion of virtual care. In sum, CVS is banking on its ability to lower care costs for health plan enrollees and increase use of its clinic services to grow incremental revenue by $850M in the next three years, and $2.5B longer term.

We continue to view CVS as an entirely new kind of healthcare delivery company, bringing together convenient, lower-acuity care services and a risk model that will allow it to prosper by reducing the cost of care and building consumer loyalty. The speed of CVS’s rollout of this new value proposition should be a wake-up call to traditional healthcare providers everywhere.