Mount Sinai Health Partners, through New York Telemedicine Associates, has premiered Babylon Health’s telehealth app as part of its services with five large New York health plans: Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield Commercial and Medicare Advantage; Humana Medicare Advantage; Oscar Commercial, and Cigna Commercial. The coverage of these five plans is claimed to be in the millions. Mount Sinai’s network covers Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and most of Long Island. The app includes the Babylon chatbot and the opportunity to set video consults with a doctor. The app also has COVID-19 information and a chatbot app which leads you through a... Continue Reading
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10 years in 2 months: prognosticating the longer-term effect of COVID-19 on telehealth, practices, and hospitals
This Editor recounted last night in the article below on The TeleDentists’ fresh agreements with Cigna and Anthem the observation of a former associate who has been in the thick of the remote patient monitoring wars for some years that telehealth/telemedicine has progressed 10 years in 2 months. Seema Verma, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), stated to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), “I think the genie’s out of the bottle on this one. I think it’s fair to say that the advent of telehealth has been just completely accelerated, that it’s taken this crisis... Continue Reading
Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield adds virtual dental care with The TeleDentists in 9 states
...and to avoid an initial visit to the ER which can be several hundred dollars. A member will locate a remote dentist through Anthem’s provider finder, then link to The TeleDentists’ site where the member is screened for history. A connection to a dentist then takes place quickly, in as little as 10 minutes, 24/7/365. The format is a video consult plus chat (TeleDentists uses the HIPAA-compliant VSee platform) to evaluate the plan member, then to guide on next steps. If necessary, the dentist will prescribe medications, such as antibiotics and non-narcotic pain relievers. In the US, Anthem is #3... Continue Reading
Cigna launches dental telehealth with Dental Virtual Care–including The TeleDentists
...their employer-sponsored insurance plans are eligible for the program. Teledentristry is designed for urgent situations, such as pain, infection, and swelling, and to avoid an initial visit to the ER. The visit is done through a video consult plus chat (TeleDentists uses the VSee platform) to evaluate the plan member, then to guide on next steps. If necessary, the dentist will prescribe medications, such as antibiotics and non-narcotic pain relievers. The program will continue later than 31 May subject to state regulations and benefit plans as part of Cigna Dental Health Connect. Cigna release. Hat tip to CEO Howard Reis.... Continue Reading
Symptom checker K Health gains $48 million Series C (NY/Tel Aviv)
While we’re on the subject of symptom checkers (Babylon Health below), K Health, a competitor in the US HQ’d in NYC, but also based in Tel Aviv, announced today their win of $48 million in a Series C funding round, led by 14W and Mangrove Capital Partners. Lerer Hippeau, Anthem (also a partner), Primary Ventures, and others participated. Their total funding is $97 million since November 2016. The new funding, according to Crunchbase News, will be used to scale the model, expand primary care to mobile devices, and expand to international markets. K (as they call themselves) concentrates on three... Continue Reading
Shock news: the CVS-Aetna merger officially approved after 9 months
...entire process, which is chronicled here, was unprecedented in the annals of Federally approved mergers. Usually a District Court Tunney Act review of a merger already through the wringer of the DOJ and the states is brief. Judges don’t make headlines, save when their rulings are the coup de grace (see: Aetna-Humana, Anthem-Cigna). Instead, Judge Leon called hearing after hearing, witness after witness from the AMA to PIRG, opining all the way, even turning away five supporting states petitioning (in vain) to be heard. This high-profile precedent doesn’t bode well for future mergers, especially for healthcare. Fierce Healthcare, Columbus Dispatch... Continue Reading
A measured look at the uncertainty around the CVS-Aetna merger
...are in test, the reach of CVS on both the national and local/individual levels will be huge, if only starting with the data and analytics side. And the retail side is no slouch. Their growth on the retail pharmacy side has been over three times the industry. In the prescription drug plan (Medicare PDP) market, that horse already left the barn. 70 percent of the PDP market is controlled by three companies: CVS Health, Express Scripts (Cigna), and Optum (UnitedHealth Group). The concerns expressed at the hearings about premiums rising and reduction of competition has already largely happened, with a... Continue Reading
News roundup: Phreesia’s IPO, Chiptech enters UK telecare market, PatientsLikeMe goes to UHG, Medopad-Tencent UK Parkinson’s pilot, Oxford VR goes to HK, Cigna Singapore’s telehealth intro, HIMSS exiting Cleveland
...pairing with AXA HK and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) to develop treatments for common mental health conditions such as social avoidance, anxiety and depressive symptoms. ‘Yes I Can’ uses virtual reality (VR) sessions over three to six weeks. In the true Chinese model (it’s free, but you don’t control where your data goes), it will also be offered to AXA’s corporate customers as part of their employee benefits services to drive better mental health outcomes in Asia. Mobihealthnews Elsewhere in Asia-Pacific, Cigna Singapore launched a telemedicine service, Cigna Virtual Clinic, where users can access real-time doctor consults... Continue Reading
SNF emergency telehealth provider Call9 shuts down most operations, after $34M raise (updated)
...telemedicine provider, as they adjusted their services to Call9’s capabilities. Payer providers included Anthem, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Healthfirst, plus some Medicare Advantage plans, splitting the savings from avoiding unnecessary ER admissions. Another appeal made by the company for its services was to keep in place higher acuity–sicker–patients in SNFs who would otherwise have to go into the hospital. As our Readers know, these pages have covered the comings and goings of many health tech and app companies. Some succeed on their own, are acquired/combined with others and go on in different form, or are bought out at their... Continue Reading
Digital health: why is it a luxury good in a world crying for health as a commodity?
...And still another barrier–data breaches and cyberattack–is still with us, and growing. Quest Diagnostics’ data breach affects nearly 12 million patients. It was traced to an individual at a vendor, American Medical Collection Agency, and it involved Optum360, a Quest contractor and part of healthcare giant Optum. The unauthorized person had access to the network for eight months – between 1 August 2018, and 30 March 2019–and involved both financial and some health records. Quest now is in the #2 slot behind the massive 79 million person Anthem breach, which, based on a Federal grand jury indictment in Indianapolis in... Continue Reading
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