Prospect Medical Holdings goes on hospital divestiture spree

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Scoop: Prospect Medical seeks multiple buyers - Axios

Los Angeles-based Prospect Medical Holdings has inked deals to sell its seven hospitals in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. 

The company announced Feb. 10 that it is selling three Connecticut hospitals with a combined 708 beds to Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health System. The deal is expected to close later this year. If the deal is finalized, the hospitals will transition from for-profit to nonprofit organizations.  

Prospect Medical Holdings announced Feb. 11 that it is selling Crozer Health, a four-hospital system based in Springfield, Pa., to Newark, Del.-based ChristianaCare. Under the deal, ChristianaCare would acquire Crozer’s hospitals, medical group, ambulatory centers and clinics. Crozer’s hospitals have more than 800 beds combinded. 

The deal with ChristianaCare was announced the same day Crozer got a new CEO. The health system appointed Kevin Spiegel, senior vice president of strategy and revenue development at Prospect, as its new CEO. He replaced Peter Adamo, who served in that role at Crozer for two years. Mr. Adamo’s last day at Crozer was Feb. 11, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal.

“The pandemic has demonstrated the vital importance of working together to meet the clinical needs of the communities we serve,” Mr. Spiegel said in a Feb. 11 news release. “We are excited by the potential to join these two great organizations so that we can continue to provide the high-quality, accessible care that our communities — Delaware County and beyond — rely on.”

The sale of the hospitals to ChristianaCare is expected to close in the second half of this year. If the deal is finalized, Crozer would become a nonprofit organization. 

Amazon expands employer health solutions to 20+ new markets

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Amazon Care Goes National With Hybrid Model | PYMNTS.com

Amazon Care, which contracts with employers, will now deliver its virtual care services nationwide. It also plans to expand its hybrid service offering—in which care is delivered by nurses dispatched to employees’ homes—to more than 20 new cities this year, including San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, and New York City. The company also announced it has secured new contracts with its subsidiary Whole Foods Market, as well as Hilton Hotels, semiconductor manufacturing company Silicon Labs, and staffing and recruiting firm TrueBlue.

The Gist: Amazon Care is looking to differentiate itself with a virtual-first, asset-light, hybrid service offering. But given the slow-moving and complex nature of employee health benefit contracting, Amazon’s recent moves could displace employer-facing point solutions, but present less of a threat to incumbent providers, instead offering a partnership opportunity for downstream care. 

Ultimately, Amazon could combine its care delivery offerings with its pharmacy and diagnostics businesses to launch a robust direct-to-consumer offering—should the company find healthcare a lucrative and manageable market. 

The Decentralization of Clinical Trials

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Medable and CVS Health partner to expand clinical trial access - Drug Discovery and Development

CVS Health announced it has struck a deal with Medable, a decentralized clinical trial software company, incorporating its offerings into MinuteClinics to help reach more patients for late-stage clinical trials. With over 40 percent of Americans living near a CVS pharmacy, CVS says it can help gather data and manage patients at MinuteClinic locations, and through its home infusion service, Coram. CVS has already cut its teeth in the clinical research space by conducting COVID-19 vaccine and treatment trials and testing home dialysis machines, and said it plans to engage 10M patients and open up to 150 community research sites this year.

The Gist: With this deal, CVS Health joins companies like Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences subsidiary, in taking advantage of patient appetite for clinical trials without regularly traveling to a research center, which became difficult during the pandemic.

Clinical research is a $50B market that has largely revolved around academic medical centers in large urban areas, which could see their dominance of the research business challenged. CVS’s entry into this space could lower the barriers to entry for community health systems to expand into clinical research. 

Ultimately, the decentralization of the clinical trials business is a win for patients, especially groups that have historically been under-represented in medical research, including rural and lower-income individuals. They may find participation through a local pharmacy—or even completely virtually from the comfort of their own home—much more accessible, affordable, and convenient.

Taking Away the Vetoes

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LICA - LICA Continues To Fight Sand Mine Legislation

A brainstorming session with the CEO of a digital health startup this week highlighted a frustration familiar to anyone who’s tried to make innovation happen in the slow-moving world of health systems.

Meeting with a system executive team to discuss a new approach to virtual care delivery, he described the cross-enterprise collaboration required, and said, “You could see everyone looking around the table to see what everyone else thought, before anyone was willing to react.” 

No surprise, as complex bureaucracies don’t reward risk-taking by leaders; often, innovation is slowly suffocated by internal politics and turf-protecting behavior.

That’s why we often repeat advice from one of the most progressive, successful system CEOs we’ve worked with: “You’ve got to eliminate the vetoes if you want to get stuff done. I don’t let people leave the room until we’ve managed to set aside all the reflexive objections and arrive at a resolution. 

I expect leaders to be solution-driven, not objection-driven.” For all the times we’ve been asked how to build a successful “innovation infrastructure,” it strikes us often the answer lies in leadership, not org charts.

MA payers cutting premiums to attract enrollees

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Last week, we examined how the fast-growing Medicare Advantage (MA) market remains heavily concentrated among a handful of large carriers. But amid this concentration, consumers have more options than ever before, both in terms of carriers and plans, as shown in the graphic below. 

The average MA enrollee can now choose from among 39 health plans offered by nine different payers, the majority of which feature $0 insurance premiums. An increasing number of plans also now offer a variety of non-medical benefits. 

Landing an MA consumer soon after they become eligible is critical for carriers, as more than seven in 10 Medicare beneficiaries stick with the plan they have year after year. While this “stickiness” may suggest enrollees are satisfied with their current coverage, it also calls into question whether the MA marketplace is actually working as intended. 

With another revenue boost to MA plans proposed for 2023, competition between plans—as well as consolidation among carriers—will continue to heat up, especially as the number of Medicare-eligible Americans will increase by nearly 50 percent over the next three decades.