News roundup: Amwell’s socko IPO raises $742M, Walmart and the Clinic Wars, Taskforce on Telehealth Policy report released, Israel’s Essence releases fall detection sensor system

Telehealth bullishness shows no sign of diminishing. On Wednesday, Amwell‘s (the former American Well) IPO stunned markets by not only debuting at $18 per share (a price only large investors received) but also opening at $25.51 on the NYSE (AMWL) and floating more than 41 million shares for a raise of $742 million. If underwriters exercise all their options, the raise could exceed $850 million. Only last week, the SEC filing projected a sale of 35 million shares at $14 to $16 a share. Back in August, the raise was estimated to be only about $100 million. (One could consider this a prime example of ‘sandbagging’.) Friday closed at $23.02 in a week where Mr. Market had a lot of IPOs and hammered traditional tech stocks. As reported earlier, Amwell is backed by Google via a private placement and also Teva Pharmaceutical.

Smaller and lower profile than Teladoc, Amwell provides services for 55 health plans, 36,000 employers, and in 150 of the nation’s largest health systems, with an estimated 80 million covered lives. Like Teladoc, Amwell has yet to be profitable, with 2019 losses of $88 million and $52 million in 2018. FierceHealthcare, Marketwatch. Meanwhile, the Teladoc acquisition of Livongo has gone quiet, as is usual.

The Clinic Wars continue. Another front in the consumer health wars (and repurposing retail) is more, bigger, better clinics onsite. CVS drew first blood early this year with the expansion of MinuteClinics into fuller-service HealthHUBs, with a goal of 1,500 by end of 2021. Walgreens flanked them with 500 to 700 Village Medical full-service offices [TTA 9 July]. In this context, the expansion of Walmart Health locations looks limp, with their goal of 22 locations in Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, and Chicago metro by end of 2021. Another concern is with scale and modularizing the Walmart Health locations’ construction via constructor BLOX,  One wonders with recently reported layoffs of 1,000 at corporate and the replacement of industry innovation veteran Sean Slovenski with Lori Flees, whether there’s some radical rethinking of their clinic business investment as not mass but targeted to underserved areas that avoid CVS and Walgreens. FierceHealthcare, Walmart blog  CVS also announced the doubling of their drive-thru COVID-19 testing sites to 4,000 by mid-October. FierceHealthcare

More Weekend Reading. Here in the US, the Taskforce on Telehealth Policy, a joint effort between the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), the Alliance for Connected Careand the American Telemedicine Association, has issued a report that focuses on maintaining quality care, fitting telehealth into value-based care models, enforcing HIPAA for patient privacy, and ensuring widespread and equitable access to broadband and technology. The involvement of the NCQA is a major step forward in advancing policy in this area. Press release/summary, Report page, Powerpoint slides, and webinar recording  Hat tip to Gina Cella for the ATA.

New entrant in passive fall detection. Israel’s Essence SmartCare is launching MDsense, a multi-dimensional fall detection solution for the residential market. It is sensor-based, using wall mounted intelligent sensors rather than wearable devices that statistically are not worn about half of the time and have their own well-documented performance concerns. The release also mentions it can differentiate between multiple persons and pets, which this veteran of QuietCare would like to see. MDSense is part of Essence’s Care@Home system which uses AI and machine learning to continuously collect actionable data to respond to fall events and manage care better towards improved outcomes.

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