Tag Archives: Market Consolidation

Hospital Mergers Improve Health? Evidence Shows the Opposite

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Hospital Mergers Improve Health? Evidence Shows the Opposite

Image result for hospital market power

Many things affect your health. Genetics. Lifestyle. Modern medicine. The environment in which you live and work.

But although we rarely consider it, the degree of competition among health care organizations does so as well.

Markets for both hospitals and physicians have become more concentrated in recent years. Although higher prices are the consequences most often discussed, such consolidation can also result in worse health care. Studies show that rates of mortality and of major health setbacks grow when competition falls.

This runs counter to claims some in the health care industry have made in favor of mergers. By harnessing economies of scale and scope, they’ve argued, larger organizations can offer better care at lower costs.

In one recent example, two Texas health systems — Baylor Scott & White, and Memorial Hermann Health System — sought to merge, forming a 68-hospital system. The systems have since abandoned the plan, but not before Jim Hinton, Baylor Scott & White’s chief executive, told The Wall Street Journal that “the end, the more important end, is to improve care.”

Yet Martin Gaynor, a Carnegie Mellon University economist who been an author of several reviews exploring the consequences of hospital consolidation, said that “evidence from three decades of hospital mergers does not support the claim that consolidation improves quality.” This is especially true when government constrains prices, as is the case for Medicare in the United States and Britain’s National Health Service.

“When prices are set by the government, hospitals don’t compete on price; they compete on quality,” Mr. Gaynor said. But this doesn’t happen in markets that are highly consolidated.

In 2006, the National Health Service introduced a policy that increased competition among hospitals. When recommending hospital care, it required general practitioners to provide patients with five options, as well as quality data for each. Because hospital payments are fixed by the government — whichever hospital a patient chooses gets the payment for care provided to that patient — hospitals ended up competing on quality.

Mr. Gaynor was an author of a study showing that consequences of this policy included shorter hospital stays and lower mortality. According to the study, for every decrease of 10 percentage points in hospital market concentration, 30-day mortality for heart attacks fell nearly 3 percent.

Another study found that hospital competition in the N.H.S. decreased heart attack mortality, and several studies of Medicare also found that hospital competition results in lower rates of mortality from heart attacks and pneumonia.

Another piece of evidence in the competition-quality connection comes from other types of health care providers, including doctors. Recently, investigators from the Federal Trade Commission examined what happens when cardiologists team up into larger groups. The study, published in Health Services Research, focused on the health care outcomes of about two million Medicare beneficiaries who had been treated for hypertension, for a cardiac ailment or for a heart attack from 2005 to 2012.

The study found that when cardiology markets are more concentrated, these kinds of patients are more likely to have heart attacks, visit the emergency department, be readmitted to the hospital or die. These effects of market concentration are large.

To illustrate, consider a cardiology market with five practices in which one becomes more dominant — going from just below a 40 percent market share to a 60 percent market share (with the rest of the market split equally across the other four practices). The study found that the chance of having a heart attack would go up 5 to 7 percent as the largest cardiology practice became more dominant. The chance of visiting the emergency department, being readmitted to the hospital or dying would go up similarly.

The study also found that greater market concentration led to higher spending. And a different study of family doctors in England found that quality and patient satisfaction increased with competition.

For many goods and services, Americans are comfortable with the idea that competition leads to lower prices and better quality. But we often think of health care as different — that it somehow shouldn’t be “market based.”

What the research shows, though, is that there are lots of ways markets can function, with more or less government involvement. Even when the government is highly involved, as is the case with the British National Health Service or American Medicare, competition is a valuable tool that can drive health care toward greater value.

 

 

How health care is like an airline

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , • Leave a comment

A rapidly consolidating industry. One that generally delivers on very difficult work, but with such a horrible customer-service reputation that people hate dealing with it. Known for wringing every last dollar out of its customers. You and the person next to you may be paying wildly different prices.

Health care, or an airline?

It’s a common comparison, and not without merit.

  • Harvard doctor and researcher Ashish Jha invoked the metaphor last year, in response to a non-profit hospital telling investors that it was trying to boost admissions: “Every extra passenger they can squeeze in is profit,” Jha said.
  • Here’s Brent Miller, a nephrologist at Indiana University, explaining to Modern Healthcare why most dialysis patients are treated in facilities instead of at home: “An empty chair is kind of like an empty seat on an airplane. If we were just looking at this not as people and not as health care but just as a business like an airline, our goal would be to fill all those slots.”
  • And, for the trifecta, here’s Elizabeth Rosenthal, writing in Kaiser Health News: “Just as airlines have been shown to exaggerate flight times so they can boast about on-time arrivals, hospitals set prices crazy high so they can tout their generous discount.”

The bottom line: In all seriousness, this analogy does get at an underlying problem with health care: As much as providers love to talk about new payment models, volume is still king — it’s simply too lucrative to give up.

Harbinger of things to come as the Healthcare Landscape becomes Dominated by Massive, Vertically-Integrated Competitors

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/18/walmart-cvs-health-hammer-out-new-pbm-pharmacy-network-deal–.html

Subs: CVS Pharmacy exterior

Verticals gonna vertical

As we wrote last week, the recent dust-up between CVS’s pharmacy benefit management (PBM) subsidiary Caremark and Walmart, during which the retail giant threatened to sever its relationship with CVS over a dispute regarding reimbursement levels before finally coming to a settlement, is a harbinger of things to come as the healthcare landscape becomes dominated by massive, vertically-integrated competitors.

A new investigative piece from The Columbus Dispatch this week seems to confirm this view. Examining previously-undisclosed data about CVS’s drug plan pricing practices as part of Ohio’s Medicaid program, the article reveals that CVS paid its own retail pharmacies much higher reimbursement rates than it offered to key competitors Walmart and Kroger to provide generic drugs to Medicaid beneficiaries. According to the article, CVS would have had to pay Walmart pharmacies 46 percent more, and Kroger pharmacies 25 percent more, to match the levels of reimbursement it paid its own retail pharmacies, data that are cited in a state report on the Medicaid pharmacy program that CVS is engaged in a court battle to keep secret. The reimbursement differential is “startling information”, according to a former Justice Department antitrust official quoted in the article. A spokesman for CVS maintained that the PBM’s payment rates are “competitive” and influenced by a complex range of factors. Underscoring the opaque and complicated methodology drug plans use to determine payments to retail pharmacies, independent pharmacy operators were paid more than CVS stores, as were Walgreens stores. A separate analysis of PBM pricing behavior in New York uncovered similar evidence, according to Bloomberg.

The Ohio and New York pharmacy stories are yet more evidence that, as healthcare companies continue to expand their control over greater segments of the “value chain”—combining, for example, insurance, distribution, and care delivery—they are able to flex their market power in ways that look increasingly anti-competitive. Hospitals that “own” their referral sources, insurers that “own” the delivery of care, and pharmacies that “own” drug benefit managers all edge closer to creating closed, proprietary platforms that can lock out competitors in any one segment.

That’s a feature, not a bug—indeed, much of the logic of population health is predicated on “network integrity”: keeping consumers inside a fully-controlled ecosystem of care to enable better coordination and reduce duplication and inefficiencies. Yet as giant healthcare corporations turn themselves into Amazon-style “everything stores”, we need to keep a watchful eye on competition.

Red flags to watch for: using the courts to maintain secret agreements or block the free flow of talent or information, “vertical tying” behavior that requires all-or-nothing contracting, and pricing strategies that leverage market power in one segment to raise prices in another.

The biggest flaw in using “market competition” to lower the cost of care: most companies hate actually competing in the marketplace—a problem made even more vexing by vertical integration.

 

 

 

Healthcare M&A now more about strategy than opportunity, Kaufman Hall says

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/healthcare-ma-now-more-about-strategy-than-opportunity-kaufman-hall-says/545909/

Dive Brief:

  • The size of the companies involved in healthcare M&A continues to grow. The average size in revenue of sellers was $409 million last year, nearly 14% higher than a decade ago, Kaufman Hall said in a new report.
  • Kaufman Hall found that seven transactions in 2018 involved sellers with net revenues of at least $1 billion.
  • Healthcare M&A today is more of a strategic decision than one about opportunistic growth. Fewer deals last year involved financially distressed sellers, according to the report.

Dive Insight:

Healthcare M&A isn’t so much about saving a struggling hospital now. Instead, these deals often involve strong health systems looking to expand into new areas.

Nearly one-third of healthcare transactions last year involved companies with revenues of between $100 million and $500 million. About one-fifth of deals were at least $500 million.

Nearly half involved not-for-profit companies acquiring other nonprofits and about one-quarter were not-for-profits buying for-profits. Another nearly 25% involved a for-profit acquiring either another for-profit or nonprofit.

Kaufman Hall said M&A activity isn’t about taking advantage of a struggling competitor. A mere 20% of deals involved a distressed company. Instead, health systems want strategic advantages.

“Health system leaders are seeking to acquire organizations that bring embedded expertise and resources to the deal, making these transactions more of a strategic partnership than an asset acquisition,” according to the report.

Kaufman Hall said it has found that health systems with “strong operational or clinical capabilities” are looking beyond their local markets.

New competitors in the market are offering larger scale and resources, including annual revenues as much as nearly 10 times the levels of the biggest not-for-profit systems. The CVS Health-Aetna deal kicked off a trend that continued with Humana-Kindred Healthcare and Optum-DaVita Medical Group and goes on with Amazon’s efforts to enter healthcare.

“New combinations across healthcare verticals and new market entrants are creating competitors that dwarf the scale of even the largest health systems,” according to the analysis. “The forces that are reshaping the industry affect not-for-profit and for-profit health systems alike and are causing not-for-profit and for-profit strategies to converge.”

Kaufman Hall found that consolidation is happening faster in some states than others. Not surprisingly, Texas led with eight deals in 2018. Florida (seven), Pennsylvania (six) and Louisiana and Tennessee (five each) ranked next.

Texas ($6.8 billion) and Florida ($3.6 billion) led in terms of revenue of announced deals. Kaufman Hall said 16 states didn’t have any healthcare transactions. However, some of those states, such as Kentucky and Massachusetts, have seen a high volume or large deals in recent years.

One downside of M&A is consolidation that can limit competition. The Center for American Progress recently reported that provider consolidation has led to higher healthcare prices. That report also found that consolidation isn’t lowering costs and improving care coordination, which is a common argument in favor of M&A activity.

 

 

 

 

Report: There were fewer, but larger, hospital mergers and acquisitions in 2018

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/hospitals-health-systems/report-what-to-expect-healthcare-m-a-2019?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTkROak5UWXpOR1ZtT0RNeiIsInQiOiJBbmtrSGp0c0ZtU1hwNzRlOGNveVdHQ3JyenpWRE1FeXdVVjVYYzN0WFwvV1Vyb1ZkQWpVNHNMM29kOGw1bXRMVDA0bTNuUm1lQ1RVb0NzYVFGa0NWdGVRVk5pOGw3amFtbEI1YlpEdTdTTkYxbkFWSGlDT2lMMCtIZktpN0ZkYlcifQ%3D%3D&mrkid=959610&utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

Handshake business deal executives

The number of hospital mergers last year dipped about 22% in 2018 but grew in overall size as part of a broader trend toward megamergers, according to a new report.

In all, hospitals announced a total of 90 transactions in 2018, down from 115 in 2017, according to a report (PDF) from Kaufman Hall. The firm began monitoring hospital M&A in 2000. About 20% of the acquisition deals were considered distressed transactions.

The value of those deals is increasing, with the average size of a seller by revenue has grown at a CAGR of almost 14% per year since 2008 and reached a new high of $409 million in 2018.

“That so many of 2018’s mega-mergers involve the combination of systems from different—though often contiguous—geographies signals the desire of health system leaders to expand their organizations into new markets, or to bring in a partner from an outside market,” Kaufman Hall said in the report. “For health system leaders looking for an acquisition partner from outside of their organization’s home market, considerations may include the desire to improve operations within the home market, or a need for additional capital to better compete within the home market.”

Texas led the nation for M&A last year, clocking eight hospital deals with a total value of deals estimated to be about $6.8 billion. Most notably, the report points to Baylor, Scott & White’s planned merger with Memorial Hermann will bring together two Texas-based systems and combine Dallas/Fort Worth and central Texas markets with the Houston market.

Florida had seven announced deals worth about $3.6 billion, and Pennsylvania had six deals worth about $2.2 billion.

Kaufman Hall also cited the “slow but steady movement toward population health” as a factor in the desire to increase market presence and penetration.

“Effective risk management depends on a health system’s ability to improve cost efficiencies, care efficacy, and care management across the continuum, which may require both horizontal and vertical integration to achieve,” they said.

Kaufman Hall said as new combinations and competitors appear in the healthcare market, hospitals and health systems should double down on their consumer strategy and the fight to control healthcare’s “front door.”

They should also seek opportunities to deepen growth across the spectrum of healthcare services through combinations or partnerships with other healthcare organizations.

 

 

 

 

Top 12 takeaways from the 2018 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference — while the destination is uncertain, the direction is clear

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/12-things-you-need-to-know-from-the-2018-jp-morgan-healthcare-conference-while-the-destination-is-uncertain-the-direction-is-clear.html

The recent breathtaking flurry of mega-mergers coupled with increasingly challenging market forces and an ever shifting political landscape has cast a cloud of confusion regarding where the U.S. healthcare delivery system is heading.  

So, where do you go to find the map?

Every year, the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference provides an incredibly efficient snapshot of the strategies for large healthcare delivery systems, the hub for healthcare in the U.S. Most of these organizations are also the largest employers in their respective states. The conference took place this week in San Francisco with over 20 healthcare systems presenting, including Advocate Health Care, Aurora Health Care, Baylor Scott & White Health, Catholic Health Initiatives, Geisinger Health System, Hospital for Special Surgery, Intermountain Healthcare, Mercy Health in Ohio, Northwell Health, Northwestern Medicine, Partners HealthCare System, WakeMed Health & Hospitals and many of the other big name brands in the market. Each provided their strategic roadmap in a series of 25-minute presentations from their “C” suite. If you’re looking for the GPS on strategy and a gauge on the health of healthcare, this is it.  

How do their strategies differ? What direction are they heading in? There is a great line from Alice in Wonderland that goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” You would think that line applies perfectly to the U.S healthcare system, but the good news is it actually doesn’t.

While the exact destination for everyone is TBD, the direction they are heading in is actually pretty clear and consistent. It turns out that they are all using a very similar compass, which is sending them down a similar path.

So, what are the roadside stops health systems consider absolutely necessary to be part of their journey to creating a more viable and sustainable value-based business model?

Based on the travel plans for over 20 of the largest and most prestigious healthcare delivery systems in the country, here’s your GPS and list of 12 things you “must do” on your journey.

1. You Must Scale

Clearly the headline at #JPM18 was the flurry of major announcements regarding major mergers. With that said, two of the mergers were front and center: teams were there to present from Downers Grove, Ill.-based Advocate and Milwaukee-based Aurora, which will be a $10 billion organization with 70,000 employees, as well as San Francisco-based Dignity Health and Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives, which will be a $28 billion organization with 160,000 employees. The size and scale of these mergers is pretty stunning. While the announcement of these and the other recent mega-mergers has forced many into their board room to determine what the deals mean to them, the consensus at the conference was this: There are a number of different paths forward to achieve scale. Some, like Baylor Scott & White in Texas, have aggressive regional expansion plans. Others are betting on partnerships to provide the same or even more value. Taking a pulse of the room, two things were clear. The first is there is no definition of scale any more in this market. The second is that, despite this flurry of mergers, “getting really big” is not the only destination.  

2. You Must Pursue “Smart Growth” and Find New Revenue Streams

Running counter to the merger narrative in the market, Salt Lake City-based Intermountain provided a good overview of the movement to what is called an “asset light” strategy of “smart growth.” This is a radically contrarian approach to the industry norm, which is the capital intensive bricks and mortar playbook of buying and building. As part of their strategy, Intermountain will open a “virtual hospital” delivering provider consultations and remote patient monitoring via telehealth. The system will also launch a number of healthcare companies every year, leveraging their considerable resources in a manner they believe will produce a higher yield. Other health systems outlined a similar stream of initiatives they have in motion to diversify their revenue streams and expand their business model into higher margin, higher growth businesses. One example is Cincinnati-based Mercy Health, which achieved strong growth and leverage via their investment in a revenue cycle management company. Advocate in Illinois formed a partnership with Walgreens. Together, they now operating 56 retail clinics and Advocate has seen a significant impact on driving new patients and downstream revenue to their system. The bottom line is all now recognize that they must think and act differently to be able to continue to fund their clinical mission and serve their community.

3. You Must Measure and Manage Cost and Margins

While some are moving aggressively to get scale, everyone is looking to more effectively use the resources they have and get more operating leverage. Margin compression was a consistent theme, with many systems now moving into consistent, stable operating models around managing margins versus launching reactionary initiatives when they find a budget gap. What is emerging is a new discipline and continuous process around managing cost and margins that is starting to look similar to the level of sophistication we have seen in the past for revenue cycle management. To that end, there has been major movement in the market to implement advanced cost accounting systems, often referred to as financial decision support, which provide accurate and actionable information on cost and help organizations understand their true margins as they take on risk-based, capitated contracts. Some during the conference referred to it as the “killer app” for the financial side of driving value. Regardless of what you call it, all are moving aggressively to understand the denominator of their value equation.

4. You Must Become a Brand

Investing in and better leveraging their brand has become a strategic must for health systems. The level of sophistication is growing here as providers shift their mental model to viewing patients as “consumers.” Aurora in Wisconsin cited their dedicated Consumer Insights Group and outlined their “best people, best brand, best value” approach that has been incredibly effective both internally and externally. At the same time, the bigger investments for many health systems relative to brand are more on brand experience than brand image, with a focus on understanding and radically rethinking the consumer experience. As an example, at Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger, close to 50 percent of ambulatory appointments are scheduled and seen on the same day. And every health system is making meaningful investments in their “digital handshake” with consumers, creating and leveraging it via telehealth as well as mobile applications to enhance the customer experience.

5. You Must Operate as a System, Not Just Call Yourself One

One clear theme at #JPM18 is different organizations were at different points along the continuum of truly operating as a system vs. merely sharing a name and a logo. There are a number of reasons for this, but you are increasingly seeing tough decisions actually being made vs. just kicking the can down the road. There has been a great deal of acquisitions over the last few years coupled with a new wave of thinking relative to integration that is more aggressive and more forward-looking. This mental shift is actually a very big deal and perhaps the most important new trend. Many health systems are heavily investing in leadership development deep into their organization to drive changes much faster.   

6. You Must Act Small

The word “agile” is quickly becoming part of everyone’s narrative with health systems looking to adopt the principles and processes leveraged in high tech. Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine is an example of an organization that has grown dramatically in the last five years, now approaching $5 billion in revenue. At the same time, they have still found a way to operate small, leveraging daily huddles across the organization to drive their results. The team at Raleigh, N.C.-based WakeMed has achieved a dramatic financial turnaround over the last few years, applying a similar level of rigor yielding major operational improvements in surgical, pharmacy and emergency services that have translated into better bottom line results.

7. You Must Engage Your Physicians

Employee engagement was a major theme in many of the presentations. With the level of change required both now and in the future, a true focus on culture is now clearly top of mind and a strategic must for high-performing health systems. That said, only a handful articulated a focus on monitoring and measuring physician engagement. This appears to be a major miss, given that physicians make roughly 80 percent of the decisions on care that take place and, therefore, control 80 percent of the spend. One data point that stood out was a 117 percent improvement in physician engagement at Northwestern. Major improvements will require clinical leadership and a true partnership with physicians.

8. You Must Leverage Analytics

Many have reached their initial destination of deploying a single clinical record, only to find that their journey isn’t over. While health systems have made major investments big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence, there was a consistent theme regarding the need to bring clinical and financial data together to truly understand value. Part of this path is the consolidation of systems that is now needed on the financial side of the house with a focus on deploying a single platform for financial planning, analytics and performance. The primary focus is to translate analytics not just into insights, but action.

9. You Must Protect Yourself

As organizations move deeper into data, there is increased recognition that cybersecurity is a major risk. Over 40 percent of all data breaches that occur happen in healthcare. During the keynote, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon shared that his organization will spend $700 million protecting itself and their customers this year. Investments in cybersecurity will continue to ramp up due to both the operational and reputational risk involved. Cybersecurity has become a board room issue and a top-of-mind initiative for executive teams at every health delivery system.

10. You Must Manage Social Determinants of Health in the Communities You Serve

Perhaps the most encouraging theme for healthcare provider organizations was the need to engage the community they serve and focus on social determinants of health. As Intermountain shared: “Zip code is more important than genetic code.” To that end, Geisinger refers to their focus on “ZNA.” They have deployed community health assistants, non-licensed workers who work on social determinants of health and have implemented a “Fresh Food Farmacy,” yielding a 20 percent decrease in hemoglobin A1c levels along with a 78 percent decrease in cost. Organizations like ProMedica Health System in Ohio have seen similar results with their focus on hunger in Toledo. WakeMed has an initiative focused on vulnerable populations in underserved communities that has resulted in a significant decrease in ER visits and admissions and over $6 million in savings.

11. You Must Help Solve the Opioid Epidemic

The opioid issue is one that healthcare professionals take very personally and feel responsible for solving. It came up in virtually in every presentation, and it’s an emotional issue for the leaders of each organization. This is good news, but the better news is that they are taking action. As an example, Geisinger invested in a CleanState Medicaid member pilot that resulted in a 23 percent decrease in ER visits and 35 percent decrease in medical spending, breaking even on their investment in less than 10 months. While many would rightly argue that the economic rationalization isn’t needed for something this important, the fact that it’s there should eliminate any excuse for anyone not taking action.

12. You Must Deliver Value

The Hospital for Special Surgery in New York is the largest orthopedics shop in the U.S. and a great example of how value-based care delivery is taking shape. Perhaps the most revealing stat they shared is that 36 percent of the time patients receive a non-surgical recommendation when they are referred to one of their providers for a second opinion. This is exactly the type of value-based counseling and decision-making that will help flip the model of healthcare. Some systems are farther along than others. Northwestern currently has 25 percent of its patients in value-based agreements, but other systems have less. As the team from Intermountain re-stated to this audience this year, “You can’t time the market on value, you should always do the right thing, right now.” Well said.  

 

 

 

The No. 1 takeaway from the 2019 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference: It’s the platform, stupid

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/the-no-1-takeaway-from-the-2019-jp-morgan-healthcare-conference-it-s-the-platform-stupid.html

If you want to understand the shifting sands of healthcare, you’ll find no better place than the nonprofit provider track during the infamous JP Morgan Healthcare Conference that took place this week in San Francisco.

Over 40,000 players were in town from every corner of the healthcare ecosystem. However, if you want to hear the heartbeat of what’s happening at ground level, you needed to literally squeeze into the standing room only nonprofit provider track where the CEOs and CFOs of 25 of the most prominent hospitals and healthcare delivery systems in the country shared their perspectives in rapid-fire 25 minute presentations.

This year those presenters represented over $300 billion, or close to 10 percent of the annual healthcare spend in U.S. healthcare. These organizations play a truly unique role in this country as they are integrated into the very fabric of the communities that they serve and are often the single largest employer in their respective regions. In other words, if you work in or care about healthcare, understanding their perspective is a must.

Every year I take a shot at condensing all of these presentations into a set of takeaways so healthcare providers who aren’t in the room can share something with their teams to help inform their strategy. So what do you need to know? Glad you asked, here you go.

Shift Happens — Moving from Being a Healthcare Provider to Creating a Platform for Health and Healthcare in Your Community

Trying to synthesize 25 presentations into a single punch line is pretty stressful. I listened to every presentation, debriefed with other healthcare providers in the audience afterwards and then spent the next 48 hours trying to process what I heard. I was stumped.

But then, finally, it hit me. To take a new spin on an old phrase, “It’s the platform, stupid.” To be clear, even though I’ve been in healthcare for close to 30 years, “stupid” in that sentence is absolutely referring to me.

So the No. 1 takeaway from the 2019 JP Healthcare Conference is this — for healthcare providers, there is a major shift taking place. They are moving from a traditional strategy of buying and building hospitals and simply providing care into a new and more dynamic strategy that focuses on leveraging the platform they have in place to create more value and growth via new and often more profitable streams of revenue. Simply stated, the healthcare delivery systems of today will increasingly leverage the platform and resources that they have in place to become a hub for both health and healthcare in the future. There is a level of urgency to move quickly. Many feel that if they don’t expand the role that they play in both health and healthcare in their community, someone else will step in.

Folks in tech would think of this as the difference between a “product” strategy (old school) and a “platform” strategy (new school). Think of this as the difference from cell phones (Blackberry) to smartphones (iPhone and Android devices). One was a product, the other was a platform. Common platforms that we’re all familiar with such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple and even Starbucks have always 1) started with a very small niche, 2) built an audience, 3) built trust and 4) then added other offerings on top of that platform. By now there is no need for a “spoiler alert.” We all know that this strategy works and these companies have created a breathtaking amount of value. The comforting news for hospitals and healthcare delivery systems is that many have already completed the first three steps and have many of the building blocks they need to leverage a “platform” as a business strategy. The presentations at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference made it clear that most are now actually taking that fourth step to separate themselves from the pack.

There is enormous upside to those who understand this pivot and take advantage of this change in the market. Dennis Dahlen, CFO of Mayo Clinic, shared his perspective on this: “Thinking differently in the future is essential. In many ways, at Mayo, we are already operating as a platform today, but we have to continue to leverage this approach to uncover additional ways that we can be a hub for both health and healthcare in our community.” Mayo’s platform includes leveraging research, big data, expert clinic insights and artificial intelligence to create new value for Mayo’s clinical practice as well as new opportunities for Mayo’s partners.

To be clear, the mental shift here is massive. It’s the difference of being on defense (where most healthcare providers are) to be being on offense (which is where they know they need to be). Executive teams have focused their time, energy and resources on driving and supporting inpatient admissions via a traditional bricks and mortar presence coupled with the acquisition of physician practices. The difficulty of thinking through what it means to truly be “asset light” and taking a different approach shouldn’t be underestimated. The good news is that the recent financial results of many health systems have improved, providing a little breathing room for investments to enable this shift in strategy. Those who don’t may fall way behind.

A New Way of Thinking — What it Means to be a Hub

Being a hub is essentially bringing together people with common interests to spark innovation and facilitate work getting done more efficiently. Examples include Silicon Valley as a “tech hub,” Los Angeles as an “entertainment hub,” New York as a “financial hub,” Washington, D.C. as a “hub for politics” and how essentially every college town is or can become a “research hub.”

Given that hospitals and health systems are the largest employers in their community, they are already set up to become a hub. In the past, they leveraged that position to simply care for the sick. Increasingly in the future, these organizations will be health and healthcare hubs for innovation and building new companies, for bringing the community together to tackle issues like hunger and homelessness, for education and training, for research and development partnerships, for coordinated, compassionate and longitudinal care delivery for treatment, for support groups for specific chronic conditions, for digital and virtual care, and for thoughtful and effective support for mental and behavioral health. Changes in the care delivery market over the last 10 years have put the right building blocks in place to make this happen.

Hiding in Plain Sight — The Single Biggest Change in Healthcare We May Ever See Has Already Happened

Taking advantage of becoming a hub and leveraging the strategic concept of being a platform requires new thinking, new structures and new skill sets. The great news for healthcare providers is they have already made the toughest move of all in order to set this in motion.

Over the last decade, there has been a massive level of consolidation with hundreds of hospitals and thousands of physician practices being acquired every year. While more mergers and acquisitions will still happen, this stunning and fundamental restructuring of healthcare delivery has taken place and there is no turning back. This is likely the single biggest shift relative to how healthcare is structured in this country that will take place during our lifetime, and it barely gets mentioned. The strategy many were chasing was primarily being driven by a “heads in beds” pay-off that was both based on offense (“an easier way to grow”) and defense (“we better buy them before someone else does”). That said, as this consolidation happened most healthcare delivery systems were really just an amalgamation of stand-alone hospitals set up as a holding company that provided no real leverage other than more top-line revenue.

During the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, it was clear that most have made the shift from a holding company into a single operating entity. Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine shared a very refined playbook for quickly bringing acquisitions onto their “platform,” and the results are pretty stunning as they have transformed from a $1 billion academic medical center into a $5 billion regional healthcare hub in a handful of years.

And over the last few years, these organizations have gotten super serious about making the toughest decisions right away. The mega-merger of Advocate Health and Aurora Health, the largest healthcare delivery systems in Illinois and Wisconsin respectively, was accompanied by a gutsy decision to fast-track the implementation of Epic at Advocate to get the leverage of a single EHR platform across the system. While many focus on the cost of the transition and the shortcomings of some of the applications, what gets missed is the enormous long-term leverage this provides regarding communication, integration, continuity of care and, of course, access to data and the potential to improve clinical and financial performance. This creates a “platform-like” experience for both employees and customers. 

So, the twist in the story is that the pay-off for consolidation will likely be very different and perhaps much better than many had originally intended. They have the building blocks in place to be a health and healthcare platform for their community. But now they need to figure out how to truly take advantage of it.

Your Action Plan — 6 Ideas from 25 Healthcare Delivery Systems on How to Leverage Your “Platform”

During their presentations the 25 non-profit provider organizations opened up their playbooks on how others can leverage their platforms and the idea of becoming the hub for health and healthcare in their respective communities. Here is what they shared.

1. Create the Digital Front Door — or Someone Else Will

The big shift in play right now is the moving away from traditional reliance on transactional face-to-face interactions with individual providers. Building relationships and trust is something that has been a core competency and core strategic asset for hospitals in the past. In the future, this simply won’t be possible without leveraging digital platforms as we do in every other aspect of our lives today. As Stephen Klasko, MD, CEO of Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health, shared, the real strategy will be to deliver “health and healthcare with no address.”

Many provider organizations are moving aggressively to create digital front doors. Kaiser Permanente delivered 77 million virtual visits last year. Intermountain introduced a virtual hospital that provides over 40 services and has delivered over 500,000 interactions. Nearly every health system leverages MyChart or a similar personal health record platform. There is an enormous amount of risk for hospitals and health systems that don’t take action here, as traditional healthcare providers will be competing with more mainstream and polished consumer brands for the relationships and trust of the folks in their community.

As the team from Spectrum Health shared, “87 percent of Americans measure all brands against a select few — think Amazon, Netflix and Starbucks.” Google, Apple and Facebook as well as Walgreens or CVS are all going after this “digital handshake,” and are big threats to healthcare providers. There is no question that some of these organizations will be “frenemies,” where they are both competing and collaborating. Healthcare organizations will need to approach any partnerships mindful of that risk.

2. Drive Affordability and Reduce Cost — or Risk Being the Problem

As the burden of the cost of care increasingly shifts to the patient’s wallet, healthcare providers will need to play in driving affordability. Coupled with the recent federal requirement to post prices online, there is a great deal of visibility around the price of care, even if the numbers are way off the mark. Understanding and reducing the total cost of care is now viewed as a requirement. As legacy cost accounting applications relied on charges as a proxy for cost and were limited to the acute care setting, most provider organizations have or are now in the process of deploying advanced cost accounting applications with time-driven and activity-based costing capabilities including a number that presented during the conference, such as Advocate Aurora Health, Bon Secours Mercy, Boston Children’s Hospital, Hospital for Special Surgery, Intermountain Healthcare, Northwestern Medicine, Novant Health, Spectrum Health and Wellforce.

This was one of the hottest topics during the conference, and there was significant buzz regarding having a single source of truth for the cost of care across the continuum. Vinny Tammaro, CFO of Yale New Haven Health, commented, “We need to align with the evolution of consumerism and help drive affordability in healthcare. How we leverage data is mission critical to making this concept a reality. Bringing clinical and financial data together provides us with a source of truth to help both reduce the cost of care as well as reallocate our finite resources to high impact initiatives in our community.” Organizations like Intermountain Healthcare, which implemented a 2.7 percent price reduction in exchange pricing, are taking the next step in translating cost reduction into lower prices for consumers. And now healthcare systems are starting to work together to create additional leverage via Civica Rx, which now includes 750 hospitals joining forces to help lower the cost of generic drugs.

3. Tackle Social Determinants of Health — or You Won’t Be the Hub for Health in Your Community

It is always less expensive to prevent a problem than it is to fix it. The good news is that the economic incentives for hospitals and healthcare delivery systems to both think and act that way are beginning to line up. They are certainly there already for providers that are also health plans such Intermountain, Kaiser Permanente, Providence St. Joseph Health, Spectrum Health and UPMC. They are also in place for providers that have aggressively taken on population-based risk contracts such as Advocate Aurora Health. With that said, it feels like every health system is starting to lean in here — and they should.

Being the central community hub for these issues makes a ton of sense. The way that Kaiser framed it is that while they have 12 million members, there are 68 million people in the communities they serve. Taking that broader lens both allows them to make a bigger impact but also broaden their market. Many organizations, such as Henry Ford Health System, are taking on hunger via fresh food pharmacies. Geisinger shared how a 2.0 reduction in Hemoglobin A1c reduction leads to a $24,000 cost reduction per participant in their fresh food “farmacy.” So while hospitals are perfectly positioned, have the resources and know it’s the right thing to do, they are now also beginning to understand the business model tied to targeting the social determinants of health. There is also strong strategic rationale associated with taking on a broader role of driving health versus only providing healthcare.

4. Create Partnerships for Healthcare Innovation — or Lose the Upside

Spectrum Health has a $100 million venture fund. Providence St. Joseph’s Health announced a second $150 million venture capital and growth equity fund. Mayo Clinic Ventures has returned over $700 million to their organization. Jefferson Health has a 120-person innovation team focused on digital innovation and the consumer experience, partnering with companies to build solutions. These are all variations on a theme as virtually every organization that presented is leveraging their resources to make a bigger impact and drive additional upside from their platform. “We have close to 900 agreements with over 500 partners,” stated Sanda Fenwick, CEO of Boston Children’s Hospital. “Our strategy is to be a hub for research, innovation and education in order to help evolve how care is delivered. This can only be done by collaborating with others.”

5. Become the Hub for Targeted Services and Chronic Conditions — or They Will Go Elsewhere

Perhaps the best example here is the work of Hospital for Special Surgery, the largest orthopedics shop in the world. It is has become a destination for good reason — fewer complications, fewer infections, a higher discharge rate to home and fewer readmissions. The most compelling data point is that when patients come to HSS for a second opinion, one-third of the time they receive a non-surgical recommendation. The same type of shopping is increasingly going to happen for chronic conditions.

Healthcare delivery systems that take a more holistic yet targeted approach have significant potential. They will need to think more deeply about the end-to-end experience and become immersed within the community outside of the four walls of the hospital. Other players in the community, such as CVS Health and Walgreens, would say they have a platform — and they would be right. The platform that healthcare providers have built and are building will absolutely be competing against other care delivery platforms.

6. Leverage Applied Analytics — or You’ll Lose Your Way

In order to enable everything listed above, the lifeline for every health and healthcare hub will be actionable data. Applied analytics is a boring term that is actually gaining traction and starting to dislodge buzzwords like big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence relative to its importance to healthcare providers.

Similar to how analytics are being used in a practical way in baseball to determine where to throw a pitch to a batter or position players in the field, healthcare providers are pushing for practical data sets presented in a simple, actionable framework. That may seem obvious, but it is simply not present in many healthcare organizations that have been focused on building data warehouse empires without doors to let anyone in. Many organizations, such as Advocate Aurora Health, Bon Secours Mercy and Spectrum Health, have deployed more dynamic business decision support solutions to access better insight into performance and care variation. This allows them to assess opportunities to reallocate resources to invest in more productive ways to leverage their platform.

While leveraging a platform as a business strategy is new to healthcare providers, the good news is that building blocks are already in place. It’s time to leverage that platform to drive better outcomes and more affordable care in the community. And now is the time to get started.

 

OUTLOOK ‘STABLE’ FOR HEALTH INSURERS IN 2019 DESPITE ACA UNCERTAINTY

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/finance/outlook-stable-health-insurers-2019-despite-aca-uncertainty

A robust job market bolstering employer-sponsored plans, Baby Boomers transitioning to Medicare Advantage, and ACA exchanges attracting new payers are good signs for health plans in the coming year.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Consolidations among larger payers makes it harder for smaller players to enter the market or sustain a presence.

Payment reforms around the ACA will continue to drive more cross-sector collaboration among payers and providers.

Despite the uncertainty over the future of the Affordable Care Act, the U.S. health insurance sector remains stable heading into 2019, according to a new analysis by S&P Global Ratings.

“A combination of still-favorable business conditions, financial factors, and diminished near-term legislative uncertainty balances our concerns relating to merger and acquisition activity, elevated policy risk, and re-emergent legal overhang,” said S&P analyst Joseph Marinucci.

Strong job growth is bolstering commercial markets, aging Baby Boomers are driving Medicare Advantage growth, states are shifting their high acuity populations into managed Medicaid, and the ACA exchanges are stabilizing and attracting new competitors, S&P said.

“We assess capital and liquidity as strong or better for most of our rated U.S. health insurers, which supports balance-sheet strength,” Marinucci said. “U.S. health insurers’ operating performance reflects sustained earnings strength and improved earnings quality.”

However, Marinucci said that profitability could moderate somewhat this year.

M&As remain a key rating factor, especially with larger transaction sizes, raising concerns about financial leverage, integration, and cultural compatibility. Consolidations, joint ventures, and partnering among larger insurers are defragmenting the sector, allowing the big insurers to build scale, “and create more touch points as the trend toward consumerism gains traction.”

“This is making it harder for newer and smaller players to enter the market or sustain their presence,” S&P said. “As a result, we continue to see larger health insurers taking a bigger share of the marketplace, and smaller players being displaced or struggling to achieve profitable growth as the competitive gap widens.”

“Although the mid-term elections removed a good deal of legislative uncertainty for the industry, policy risk remains elevated given the administration’s preference for ACA alternatives,” S&P said.

In addition, S&P says that payment and delivery reforms mandated in the ACA around value-based care will continue to drive greater cross-sector collaboration among payers and providers.

“A COMBINATION OF STILL-FAVORABLE BUSINESS CONDITIONS, FINANCIAL FACTORS, AND DIMINISHED NEAR-TERM LEGISLATIVE UNCERTAINTY BALANCES OUR CONCERNS RELATING TO MERGER AND ACQUISITION ACTIVITY, ELEVATED POLICY RISK, AND RE-EMERGENT LEGAL OVERHANG.”

 

 

 

Healthcare’s vertical mergers kick-started a massive industry shift in 2018. Will it pay off?

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/healthcare-s-vertical-mergers-kick-started-a-massive-industry-shift-2018-will-it-pay-off?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTnpBNE1HTmtObUl3WVRkayIsInQiOiJFOU1xMDRPMGtzMCtnWXU4MExUVFAzZ3Jrdm5cL2s3S1dMRkVldTRWS2QyNmJZU255UWRIWW14QmtXVkJ2T2VTeGpYTVBvQXZWWW1JVnB0S0crTXV3aFhDS0wrY3NzTmtEYmJEMHdvSG03bGkxS2ZlREdiaWZydFZkbkdlXC9tTHE1In0%3D&mrkid=959610&utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

Mergers and acquisitions deals consolidation

Two massive megamergers in CVS-Aetna and Cigna-Express Scripts dominated the conversation around mergers and acquisitions in healthcare.

Whether you think the mergers will help or hurt consumers, both deals have sparked a distinct shift across the industry as competitors search for ways to keep pace. It also frames 2019 as the year in which five big vertically integrated insurers in CVS, UnitedHealth, Cigna, Anthem and Humana begin to take shape.

Combined, the mergers totaled nearly $140 billion.

Both CVS and Cigna closed their transactions in the fourth quarter with promises that their new combined companies would “transform” the industry. Unquestionably, it’s already triggered some response from other players. Whether those companies can make good on their promises to improve care for consumers remains to be seen, and the payoff may not come for several years, as 2019 is likely to be a year of initial integration.

While CVS and Cigna hogged most of the spotlight, several other notable transactions across the payer sector could have smaller but similarly important consequences going forward.

WellCare acquires Meridian Health Plans for $2.5B

In May, WellCare picked up Illinois-based Meridian Health Plans for $2.5 billion, acquiring a company with an established Medicaid footprint with 1.1 million members. The deal boosted WellCare’s membership by 26%.

But the transaction also thrust WellCare back onto the ACA exchanges. Meridian has 6,000 marketplace members in Michigan.

Importantly, the acquisition gave WellCare a new pharmacy benefit manager in Meridian Rx. CEO Kenneth Burdick said it would provide “additional insight into changing pharmacy costs and improving quality through the integration of pharmacy and medical care.”

WellCare also makes out on CVS-Aetna transaction

WellCare was also a beneficiary of the CVS-Aetna deal after the Department of Justice required Aetna to sell off its Part D business in order to complete its merger.

The deal adds 2.2 million Part D members to WellCare, tripling its existing footprint of 1.1 million.

Humana goes after post-acute care

2018 was the year of post-acute care acquisitions for Humana. The insurer partnered with two private equity firms to buy Kindred Healthcare for $4.1 billion in a deal that was first announced last year. It used a similar purchase arrangement to invest in hospice provider Curo Health Service in a $1.4 billion deal.

Both acquisitions give Humana equity stake in the companies, with room to make further investments down the road. Kindred, in particular, is expected to further Humana’s focus on data analytics, digital tools and information sharing and improve the continuity of care for patients even after they leave the hospital.

Not to be outdone, rival Anthem also closed its purchase of Aspire Health, one of the country’s largest community-based palliative care providers.

UnitedHealth keeps quietly buying up providers, pharmacies

With ample reserves, UnitedHealth is always in the mix when it comes to acquisitions. This year was no different. The insurance giant snapped up several provider organizations to add to its OptumHealth arm. In June, it was one of two buyers of hospital staffing company Sound Inpatient Physicians Holdings for $2.2 billion. It also bought out Seattle-based Polyclinic for an undisclosed sum. The physician practice has remained staunchly independent for more than a century.

Most notably, UnitedHealth is still in the process of closing its acquisition of DaVita Medical Group. DaVita recently dropped the price of that deal from $4.9 billion to $4.3 billion in an effort to speed up Federal Trade Commission approval.

The Minnesota-based insurer is also clearly interested in specialty pharmacies to supplement its PBM OptumRx. UnitedHealth bought Genoa Healthcare in September, adding 435 new pharmacies under its umbrella. Shortly after, it bought up Avella Specialty Pharmacy, a specialty pharmacy that also offers telepsychiatry services and medication management for behavioral health patients.

Centene invests in a tech-forward PBM

Perhaps in an effort to keep pace with Cigna and CVS, Centene has made smaller scale moves in the PBM space, investing in RxAdvance, a PBM launched by former Apple CEO John Sculley. Following an initial investment in March, Centene sunk another $50 million into the company in October and then announced plans to roll the solution out nationally. Notably, CEO Michael Neidorff has said he is pushing the PBM to move away from rebates and toward a model that relies on net pricing.

“You talk about ultimate transparency—that gets us there,” he said recently.

 

 

 

Optum a step ahead in vertical integration frenzy

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/optum-unitedhealth-vertical-integration-walmart/520410/

Vertical integration is all the rage in healthcare these days, with Aetna, Cigna and Humana making notable plays. 

If the proposed CVS-Aetna, Cigna-Express Scripts and Humana-Kindred deals are cleared by regulators, the tie-ups will have to immediately face UnitedHealth Group’s Optum, which has been ahead of the curve for years and built out a robust pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) business already along with a care services unit, employing about 30,000 physicians and counting.

UnitedHealth formed Optum by combining existing pharmacy and care delivery services within the company in 2011. Michael Weissel, Group EVP at Optum, told Healthcare Dive the company began by focusing on three core trends in the industry: data analytics, value-based care and consumerism.

Since then, the company has been on an acquisition spree to position itself as a leader in integrated services.

“For the longest time, the market assumed that they were building the Optum business [to spin it out] and what is interesting in the evolution of the industry is that that combination has now set a trend,” Dave Windley, managing director at Jefferies, told Healthcare Dive.

“United has now set the industry standard or trend … to be more vertically integrated and it seems less likely now that United would spin this out … because many of their competitors are now mimicking their strategy by trying to buy into some of the same capabilities,” he said.

Weissel said Optum will continue to push on the three identified trends in the next three to five years, with plans to invest heavily in machine learning, AI and natural language processing.

The question will be whether and how the company can keep its edge.

What Optum is

Optum is a company within UnitedHealth Group, a parent of UnitedHealthcare. Optum’s sister company UnitedHealthcare is perhaps more well known within the industry and with consumers.

However, Optum, a venture that encompasses data analytics, a PBM and doctors, has been gradually building its clout at UnitedHealth Group.

In 2017, the unit accounted for 44% of UnitedHealth Group’s profits.

In 2011, UnitedHealth Group brought together three existing service lines under one master brand. Services are delivered through three main businesses within a business within a business:

  • OptumHealth – the care delivery and ambulatory care capabilities of OptumCare, as well as the care management, behavioral health, and consumer offerings of Optum;
  • OptumInsight – the data and analytics, technology services and health care operations business; and
  • OptumRx – its pharmacy benefit service.

The company focuses on five core capabilities, including data and analytics, pharmacy care services, population health, healthcare delivery and healthcare operations. Services include but are certainly not limited to OptumLabs (research), OptumIQ (data analytics), Optum360 (revenue cycle management), OptumBank (health savings account) and OptumCare (care delivery services).

The Eden Prairie, MN-headquartered company has recently expanded its care delivery services, with much of the growth coming from acquisitions. The past two years have seen Optum expand its footprint into surgical care (Surgical Care Affiliates), urgent care (MedExpress) and primary care (DaVita Medical Group).

It’s a wide pool, but the strategy affords UnitedHealth the opportunity to grab more revenue by expanding its market presence. For example, the DaVita acquisition, which is still pending, allows OptumCare to operate in 35 of 75 local care delivery markets the company has targeted for development, Andrew Hayek, OptumHealth CEO, said on an earnings call in January.

Optum’s strategy of meeting patients where they are and deploying more ambulatory, preventative care services works in concert with its sister company UnitedHealthcare’s goal of reducing high-cost, unnecessary care services, when applicable. If Optum succeeds in creating healthier populations that use lower levels of care more often, that benefits the parent company UnitedHealth Group as UnitedHealthcare spends less money and time on claims processing/payout.

The strategy has been paying off so far.

Three charts that show UnitedHealth’s financial health as it relates to Optum

Optum’s presence has grown as it has steadily increased its percentage of profits for UnitedHealth Group.

Credit: Healthcare Dive / Jeff Byers

In 2011, the first year Optum was configured as it looks today, the company contributed 14.8% of total earnings through operations to UnitedHealth Group with $1.26 billion. That’s about 29 percentage points lower than in 2017, when Optum brought in $6.7 billion in profits on $83.6 billion in revenue.

Broken down, it’s clear that pharmacy services make up the lion’s share of the company’s revenue. In 2017, OptumRx earned $63.8 billion in revenue, fulfilling 1.3 billion prescriptions. OptumRx’s contributions to the company took off in 2015 when Optum acquired pharmacy benefit manager Catamaran.

Credit: Healthcare Dive / Jeff Byers

In recent years, OptumHealth has grown due to expansion in care delivery services, including consumer engagement and behavioral and population health management. The care delivery arm served 91 million people last year, up from 60 million in 2011.

OptumInsight has grown largely due to an increase in revenue cycle management and operations services in recent years.

On Wall Street, UnitedHealth Group is performing well and has seen healthy growth since 2008. The stock peaked in January and took a dive when Amazon, J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway — industry outsiders yet financial giants — announced they would create a healthcare company.

Credit: Healthcare Dive / Jeff Byers

While these charts suggest a dominant force, the stock activity shows that investors believe there’s still more room for competition, if the new entrants play their cards right.

Where Optum could lock out and rivals could cut in on competition

UnitedHealth started down this strategic path many years ago and the rest of the industry just now seems to be catching up.

“Optum’s been the leader in showing how a managed care organization with an ambulatory care delivery platform and a pharmacy benefit manager all in house can lower or maintain and bend cost trend and then drive better market share gains in their health insurance business,” Ana Gupte, managing director of healthcare services at Leerink, told Healthcare Dive. “I think they have been the impetus in the large space for the Aetna-CVS deal.”

Because the company is multi-dimensional, Optum’s competition will be varied. If all the mergers making news — including the Walmart’s rumored buyout of Humana — close, here’s what competition could look like:

Credit: Revive Health

Perhaps oddly, its largest revenue contributor, OptumRx, seems to have the largest vulnerability for competition in the coming years.

Optum’s competitive advantage in the PBM space is driven largely by already realized integration. Merging data across IT systems is no easy task, and Optum has spent years harmonizing pharmacy data across platforms to assist care managers in OptumCare to see medical records for United members.

Anyone with experience implementing EHR systems can tell you such integration doesn’t happen over night.

If the Cigna-Express Scripts deal closes, the equity can compete with OptumRx, but the technology investment needed to harmonize data and embed Cigna’s service and pharmacy information into Express Scripts servers will take time, Windley said. Optum, on the other hand, has invested in the effort and integration for years.

Gupte says the encroaching organizations in the PBM space have the ability to realize the efficiencies and savings and the integrated medical that Optum has been realizing across OptumRx and the managed care organization.

Optum’s leg up in PBM space could last two to three years over the competition, she said.

On the care delivery side, OptumHealth has been purchasing large physician groups for a variety of services. There are only so many large physician groups putting themselves on the market, and Optum has been making bids for them.

There’s still a bit of white space to fill in its 75 target markets, but analysts note Optum may have the competition on lock in this space

Even if CVS-Aetna closes, OptumCare is a $12 billion business with many urgent and surgery care access points. If CVS-Aetna is finalized, the company will have about 1,100 MinuteClinics capable of realizing efficiencies with Aetna, but, as Windley notes, they likely won’t have primary care or surgery care elements.

There’s also a lot of time and capital needed for building out and retrofitting retail space to medical areas.

On the surgical care services, “I don’t see either Cigna, Aetna or Humana getting into that business,” Gupte said. “That will be one element of their footprint on care delivery that will be unique and differentiated for them.”

Urgent care has the potential for outsider competition, she added. However, Optum is using its MedExpress business to treat higher acuity conditions and have an ER doctor on staff in each center. Compared to the typical types of conditions treated in retail clinics or those that would be feasible over time, Gupte believes services that could be seen in CVS or Walmart would be lower acuity, chronic care management services.

“[Optum has] been so proactive and so strategic I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of reactive catchup they have to do,” Gupte said. “I think it’s going to be hard for the other entities to play catch up, outside of the PBM.”

One potential issue will be harmonizing the disparate businesses so patients can be effectively managed across the various organizations, Trevor Price, founder and CEO of Oxean Partners, told Healthcare Dive.

“I think the biggest challenge for Optum is operationalizing the combined platform,” Price said. “The biggest question is do they continue to operate as individual businesses or do they merge into one.”

What’s next?

Optum will continue to explore ground in the three core trends it has identified.

Out of the three, consumerism has the longest path to maturity in healthcare, Weissel said, adding he believes consumerism is going to change healthcare more than any other trend over the next decade.

“There is a wave coming, and this expectation that we will move there,” he said. “Increasingly, this aging of people who become very comfortable in a different modality is going to tip the balance with how people will want to interact with healthcare. I know there’s pent up demand already.”

That means the company is putting bets into the marketplace around consumer building and segmentation models as well as thinking about how to connect data to allow patients to schedule appointments, view health records, sign up for insurance, search for providers or renew prescriptions online.

Consumer-centric projects currently underway include digital weight loss programs — including streaming fitness classes — and maternity programs to track pregnancy. The company is also experimenting with remote patient monitoring to understand the impacts on those with heart disease or asthma and to search for service opportunities.

Optum will pursue investments as well as acquisitions to push into the consumer space.

“When it comes to acquisitions to Optum overall, we’re always in the marketplace looking to extend our capabilities, to extend our reach in the care management space to fill in holes or gaps that we have,” Weissel said. “That’s a constant process in our enterprise.”