February 23, 2022 | Five tips to restore your health care workers

INDUSTRY NEWS

Corporate medicine loves primary care

Private investors, retailers and health insurers are pumping billions into primary care ventures. “A medical profession once defined by solo offices and small partnerships is now dominated by corporate practices and hospital-owned clinics,” Bloomberg reports. US companies focused on primary care raised about $16 billion from investors in 2021, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine’s Catalyst. The article includes interviews with representatives from primary care organizations that have been backed by private equity for at least five years. (Bloomberg; NEJM Catalyst)

PBMs: Beyond the Basics

Just what do pharmacy benefit managers do? For one thing, they negotiate prescription drug benefits for health insurers, large employers, Medicare Part D plans and other payers who currently cover more than 266 million Americans. But what does that involve? Medscape took a deep dive and identified “5 Things to Know About Pharmacy Benefit Managers” from an oncology perspective. They include spread pricing, prescription steering and mandatory “white bagging.” (Medscape)

Walgreens, Amazon keep moving ahead with clinics

Walgreens and value-based medical network VillageMD expect to open more than 200 co-branded primary care practices by the end of the year, Healthcare Dive reports. The company recently added a third Florida market to Orlando and Tampa: Jacksonville, bringing their total markets in the state up to three. Meanwhile, Amazon announced plans for a major expansion of its almost two-year-old virtual care program. Along with virtual health services now being available for employers nationwide, Amazon Care is expanding its in-person benefit to 20 more cities in 2022. (Healthcare Dive—Walgreens; Healthcare Dive—Amazon)

INNOVATION & TRANSFORMATION

MA plans reaching those most in need of care

More people are enrolling in Medicare Advantage plans, "channeling a significant portion of that money … to buy care by the package, not by the piece,” George Halvorson writes in Modern Healthcare. Notably, lower-income enrollees disproportionately join Medicare Advantage “Many of these enrollees are receiving patient-focused team care for the first time in their lives.” The result: lower use of emergency departments and lower hospital admission rates “for some of the chronic conditions that lend themselves to proactive best practices of care.” Halvorson served as CEO of six health plans over the past 30 years. (Modern Healthcare)

CONSUMERS & PROVIDERS

Five tips to restore your health care workers

Want to combat burnout and restore depleted health care workers? Leaders from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Henry Ford Health System have five recommendations—with examples. They appear in a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review. Among them: Make the most of extended teams. “Well-executed, team-based care honors clinicians’ level of training and reduces the time and effort clinicians spend on the administrative tasks that they so often find physically and emotionally depleting.” Another one is to allow time for what matters. “Rushing clinical interactions with patients has both human and financial costs.” (HBR)

More than half of family medicine docs are burned out

Across all specialties, 47% of physicians reported feeling burned out, compared to 42% in 2020, according to Medscape's 2022 Physician Burnout and Depression report. Women were more burned out than men (56% vs 41%), but both saw increases. The study involved more than 13,000 physicians across 29 specialties. Emergency medicine topped the list of burned-out doctors list with 60% of them reporting burnout. Critical care came in second (56%) followed by OB-GYN (53%). Tying for fourth with 51%: family medicine and infectious diseases. The report goes into the reasons behind the frustration. (report; Becker's Hospital Review)

NEW & NOTED

Surviving COVID associated with higher mental health risk: People have had COVID-19 are 60% more likely to suffer from mental problems—including anxiety, depression, drug and alcohol use disorders and sleep disturbances—than those not infected, according to a study publishes in the BMJ. (UPI; BMJ)

Making better connections: EHR are not only useful in managing patients at risk of diabetes, physicians who use them are more likely to refer patients to the National Diabetes Prevention Program, according to a study published in the American Journal of Health Promotion. Such referrals may help prevent high-risk patients from developing diabetes. (Becker's Hospital Review; American Journal of Health Promotion)

Loneliness and dementia: Loneliness is associated with increased dementia risk; “this tripled in adults whose baseline risk would otherwise be relatively low based on age and genetic risk, representing a majority of the US population,” according to research published in Neurology. "The body treats loneliness as a state of threat," Steve Cole, PhD, of UCLA, tells MedPage Today. (MedPage Today; Neurology)

MULTI-MEDIA

Satcher on a more equitable health system

Dr. David Satcher, former Surgeon General, CDC Director and Assistant Secretary of Health, recently spoke with Science Friday about how to closes gaps in health care access. (Science Friday)

MARKETVOICES…QUOTES WORTH READING

“Health care systems that focus too narrowly on getting the most productivity possible out of each clinician risk depriving patients and their care teams of what matters most: a trusting, collaborative, therapeutic relationship. Placing primary value on productivity is shortsighted, disempowers patients and ultimately depletes clinicians by diminishing their joy in work.” — Rana L.A. Awdish, MD, of Henry Ford Health System; and Leonard L. Berry and Stephen J. Swensen, MD, of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, writing in the Harvard Business Review.