You've probably heard about Ozempic, especially if you're one of the millions who regularly scroll through TikTok or browse other social media platforms. It's the drug that influencers are lauding as a revolutionary aid for weight loss, making it a hot topic of conversation.
While Ozempic was initially developed to manage Type 2 diabetes, its emerging potential for weight loss is captivating medical professionals and the public alike.
How Ozempic Works: The Basics
Ozempic is a
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Health M&A: Financial Distress Driving Q3 Healthcare Deals
What You Should Know:
- More than one-third of hospital and health system transactions announced in Q3 2023 involved a party that cited financial distress as a transaction driver, according to Kaufman Hall’s latest mergers and acquisitions (M&A) report. The reports reveal third quarter M&A activity remained high with 18 announced transactions resulting in $8.2B in total transacted revenue.
- Kaufman Hall experts say transaction activity is regaining momentum as hospitals,
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UnitedHealthcare Launches No Deductible Health Plan, Surest
What Should Know:
- UnitedHealthcare has announced the Surest™ health plan leads to more preventive care, improves satisfaction and lowers costs for members and employers.
- UnitedHealthcare’s Surest, which eliminates deductibles and offers upfront pricing information to people in advance of treatment, helps members more frequently access preventive care services and lower out-of-pocket costs, according to recent data.
- Hundreds of employers with a combined
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M&A: Virgin Pulse and HealthComp Merge in $3B Deal
What You Should Know:
– Virgin Pulse, a global digital-first health, wellbeing, and navigation company announced its intent to merge with HealthComp, a next-generation benefits and analytics platform valued at $3B.
The blockbuster merger will create a technology and data-powered health platform-as-a-service organization poised to tackle some of the industry’s biggest challenges. Together, the combined entity will aim to improve health outcomes and lower costs for members and
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Metriport Launches Open-Source API to Instantly Pull Medical Records from Any EHR
What You Should Know:
Metriport, the company on a mission to provide instant and efficient access to comprehensive patient medical data, is launching its Medical API—the world’s only open-source, single API platform—to retrieve patient clinical histories from all major electronic health records (EHR) systems.With an innovative engineering approach, Metriport delivers a wealth of enterprise-grade patient information to organizations ranging from very large healthcare providers to the new,
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Consumers Cite Healthcare Affordability as Biggest Concern to Paying Medical Bills
What You Should Know:
Rising healthcare expenses, lack of certainty over costs and financial support and poor coordination between providers and payers have caused consumers to feel more stressed than ever before about their healthcare bills. According to the 2024 Healthcare Financial Experience Study, 72% of consumers cite affordability as the biggest challenge to paying larger healthcare bills—not that they don’t want to. Struggling to afford healthcare bills isn’t just a headache, it can
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Roundups: 16 Recent Strategic Digital Health Partnerships
Walgreens and Pearl Health, a provider enablement company has announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the expansion of value-based care in collaboration with community-based primary care physicians. As part of the strategic partnership, Walgreens will provide complementary services, including prescription fulfillment, medication adherence, immunizations, care gap closure and diagnostic testing. In addition, Walgreens will also work with providers to help patients discharged from the
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Q/A: DocStation CEO Shares How AI Will Help Pharmacies Use the DIR Fee Changes to Their Advantage
Early next year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will remove the application of retroactive DIR fees and move DIR fees to the point of sale instead. The major issues with the DIR fees, which are paid by pharmacies to pharmacy benefit managers, are the fact that they drive up the costs of prescriptions for patients and delay reimbursement of care to the pharmacies.
Now, a brand new issue will arise in early 2024 - namely, pharmacies will be facing a DIR “cliff” where
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How Telehealth Can Combat Clinician Burnout
The crisis of clinician burnout is worsening.
Clinicians are feeling stressed, overworked and underappreciated. Some are responding by leaving healthcare or cutting back on hours. Nearly 334,000 healthcare providers, including 117,000 physicians left the workforce in 2021, according to a 2022 study.
And the problem did not end when the public health emergency did. In a recent survey by a financial consulting firm, 40% of clinicians said they were considering leaving their jobs for
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Provider AI Strategy Moves From The IT Dept. To The C-Suite
What You Should Know:
A new study from Bain & Company and KLAS Research shows US healthcare providers are accelerating spending on IT and software. The research shows nearly 80% of healthcare executives say they increased spending materially over the past year, spurred by emerging technologies—particularly generative AI—labor shortages, and cost pressures.The survey of more than 200 US healthcare provider executives showed nearly 75% are expecting growth in software and technology
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