News roundup: of logos and HIMSS roundups, Rock Health’s Digital Health Consumer Adoption survey, and the millennial/Gen Z walkaway from primary care

February 21, 2019 | by

HIMSS19 was last week. Onsite reports to this Editor declared it ‘overwhelming’, ‘the place to be’, ‘more of the same’, and ‘stale’. With a range of comments like these, everyone’s HIMSS is different, but HIMSS is well, a place that for most of us in digital health, have to be (or their companies have to be). It is still a major commitment, and if you are small, a place where you might be better off with no display and simply networking your way through. 

HIMSS must be conscious of a certain dowdiness, because HIMSS is ‘reforming’ with a preview of a new logo and graphics here that changes out their Big ’80s curvy lettering and muted colors to hard edges in typefaces and equally hard blues.

Mobihealthnews (a HIMSS company) delves into blockchain (Boehringer Ingelheim and IBM Canada) and Uber Health’s continuing foray into non-emergency medical transport. Dimensional Insight’s blog takes some of the sessions from the data governance and healthcare business intelligence perspective, including the opioid crisis, AI to detect cancer (the link between falling hemoglobin rates and a cancer diagnosis), and pediatric disease registries. And there is the always incisive HISTalk with last Monday Morning’s Update, their 2/14/19 roundup, and Dr Jayne’s Curbside Consult on John Halamka’s world travels, including nascent care coordination in China and interoperability in Australia.

Rock Health’s survey of consumer attitudes towards digital health adoption leads with these insights:

  • Wearable use is shifting away from fitness toward managing health conditions
    • There was a 10% increase in use of wearables to manage health, corresponding to a 10% decline in physical activity tracking
  • Telemedicine adoption is climbing, with urban consumers more than twice as likely to use live video telemedicine than rural consumers
    • Paradoxical but true, in terms of adoption of at least one form, it was 67 percent for rural residents and 80 percent for urban residents.
  • Highly trusted entities like physicians and health plans lost credibility in 2018—consumers were less willing to share data with them than they were in 2017. There’s an increasing distrust of ‘big tech’ and confidence in their ability to keep private data private–a wise takeaway given the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandals.

More acceptance of healthcare tools, less intermediation–and not trusting that data is secure spells trouble down the road unless these issues are addressed. Rock Health surveyed 4,000 respondents of US adults age 18 and over.

They’re not trad, dad. Accenture’s survey (released at HIMSS) also tracks the rejection of intermediation and gatekeepers when it comes to millennials and Gen Z in choosing non-traditional modes of healthcare, such as retail clinics, virtual and digital services. They are two to three times more likely than boomers to dislike in-person care; over half use mobile apps to manage health and use virtual nurses to monitor health and vital signs. Over 40 percent prefer providers with strong digital capabilities. Also Mobihealthnews 

Outsourcing of retail clinics–another reason for HealthSpot’s demise? (US)

January 14, 2016 | by

Walgreens earlier this week announced another round of outsourcing their in-store health clinics to a local health system, this time in the Midwest US with Advocate Health Care. It affects 56 locations in the Chicago, Illinois area which will operate as Advocate Clinic at Walgreens in May 2016. It’s an interesting spin on the much-touted integration of healthcare services into retail pharmacies. It gives an integrated health system a prime location for community services–a clean, well-lighted place (to quote Hemingway, minus the daiquiris) with minimal overhead that provides one-stop-shopping for patient pharmacy and OTC products. It also solves part of the ‘fragmentation of care’ problem for Advocate patients as their records will go straight into their EHR. For Walgreens, it offloads the licensure and operating expenses of a clinic, gives a strong competitive advantage lent by the legitimacy of a leading provider, and attracts Advocate patients to their locations. Walgreens release  Last August, Walgreens turned over the keys of 25 Washington and Oregon clinics to Providence Health & Services in what now can be seen as a trial balloon.

What is surprising is how few Walgreens have clinic services–400 of over 8,100–over nine years of operations, starting with the acquisition of former travel industry executive Hal Rosenbluth’s 25 or so TakeCare Clinics around Philadelphia back in 2007. Yet further clinic expansion has been difficult as many locations have no physical space, there are restrictive state laws and the competition is everywhere between over 1,000 CVS Minute Clinics and local urgent care clinics. CVS also recently acquired 80 Target pharmacies and walk-in clinics. It’s reported that profitability has been a challenge for Walgreens in the clinic biz. Expect to see more of these arrangements to grow Walgreens’ clinic network.

Why might this be a contributor to HealthSpot Station’s end? A change of direction and a need for cost cutting that wasn’t there a year ago.  (more…)

Soapbox: How healthcare disruption can be sidetracked

April 10, 2014 | by | 3 Comments

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Thomas.jpg” thumb_width=”170″ /]Ron Hammerle’s comment on Disruptive innovation in healthcare hasn’t begun yet: Christensen (TTA 31 Mar), posted on LinkedIn’s Healthcare Innovation by Design group, made the excellent point that a potentially disruptive and decentralizing healthcare service–retail clinics–has been sidetracked, at least in the US, leaving an open question on their reason for being. This Editor thought it was worthy of a Soapbox. Mr. Hammerle knows of what he speaks because his Tampa, Florida-based company, Health Resources Ltd., works with retail and employer-based clinics to connect them via telemedicine/telehealth systems with medical centers.

When Clayton Christensen first anticipated that retail clinics would be disruptive to the established healthcare industry, their business model was potentially disruptive. What has subsequently happened, however, is a prime example of how potentially disruptive movements can be sidetracked.

After acquiring MinuteClinic and laying the foundation for taking retail clinics national, CVS Caremark chose to make deals with hospitals, which could easily afford to rent, open and operate such clinics without making money on the front end or facing real disruption. Retail clinics were a loss leader to hospitals in exchange for large, downstream revenues, and slightly-enhanced market share for the retailer’s pharmacy.

After CVS shocked Walgreens with one-two punches involving MinuteClinic and Caremark acquisitions, Walgreens came back with three counter-punches of its own:

1. They doubled the number of their clinics (to 700) in less than two years, thwarted AMA opposition, leapfrogged ahead of CVS in clinic count and totally changed the retail clinic model by setting up politically-invisible, broader service, make-your-profit-up-front, employer-based clinics. (more…)