Tuesday Tidbits

Telehealth providers are looking to move beyond urgent care services   For example,

• American Well announced a new venture with the Cleveland Clinic called the Clinic. "The Clinic will offer convenient online access to expert care across a wide array of specialties without requiring individuals to leave their homes. Through a secure digital platform powered by American Well, people from around the world will be able to connect with Cleveland Clinic’s leading specialists and receive insights, opinions, recommendations, and assistance for a variety of conditions."  The American Hospital Association delves into the deal here.

• "Livongo Health, Inc. (Nasdaq: LVGO), a leading Applied Health Signals company empowering people with chronic conditions to live better and healthier lives, announced at the HLTH 2019 Conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada, that it has teamed with MDLIVE and Doctor On Demand to enable access to virtual acute and primary care services for people living with chronic conditions."  Health Care Dive provides more information on this deal here.

So are the in-phamacy clinics. The Wall Street Journal offered an interesting article today comparing and contrasting the clinic offerings at Walgreens and CVS Health pharmacies. 

Walgreens’s roughly 400 walk-in clinics and CVS’s 1,000 Minute Clinic locations have at best barely broken even for the companies. The goal now for both is to shift away from treating minor or acute issues and focus instead on people with chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and hypertension.

The news is that Walgreens "said Monday it will close the roughly 160 in-store health clinics the company runs itself in the U.S., while keeping 220 clinics that are run by local health systems. It didn’t provide an estimate for the financial impact."

Last but not least, Health Payer Intelligence reports that

To counteract the high-cost, high-risk potential of using opioids to treat back pain, UnitedHealthCare ("UHC") created a benefit that does not rely on medication or technology but rather on physical therapy and chiropractic care.

The benefit allows eligible employers to offer physical therapist and chiropractor visits with no out-of-pocket costs. Members who already receive physical therapist and chiropractic care benefits under UHC’s employer-sponsored health plans and who have maxed out their visits will not receive additional visits under this benefit.

However, for those who still have visits to use and who choose physical therapy or chiropractic care over other forms of treatment, the copay or deductible for those visits will be waived and they will receive three visits at no cost.  UHC has high expectations for the fiscal and physical impacts of this benefit.