Business of Health Care

Business of Health Care / en Sun, 27 Apr 2025 04:40:45 -0500 Mon, 27 Nov 23 09:35:51 -0600 Evening the Playing Field in Health Equity Investing /aha-center-health-innovation-market-scan/2023-12-04-evening-playing-field-health-equity-investing <div class="container"> <div class="row"> <div class="col-md-8"> <img alt="Evening the Playing Field in Health Equity Investing" src="/sites/default/files/2023-11/Health_Equity_Investing_590x327.png"> <h2>Venture Capital Firms Expand Opportunities for Underrepresented Startups</h2> The venture capital (VC) field has been among the least diverse in finance, and studies have shown that this contributes to the lack of capital available to health care startups run by Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, women and other underrepresented groups. Results from the most recent survey conducted in 2022 by Deloitte and its partners show that the VC industry has made “significant but somewhat inconsistent progress” in increasing its gender, racial and ethnic diversity since 2016. Regardless, it’s clear that much work remains to level the playing field in health care for startups led by underrepresented groups. Here’s a look at how three venture capital firms are making a difference and a snapshot of some entrepreneurs to whom they have provided opportunities to help transform health care while addressing health equity. <h3>Jumpstart Nova: Changing the status quo to support Black-led startups</h3> Jumpstart Nova, an offshoot of Tennessee-based Jumpstart Health Investors, launched to the public in January 2022 after raising $55 million, blowing past a $30M initial target for its first fund and increasing the hard cap to $55 million. That offering generated huge interest among the press and innovators. The experience quickly gave the firm an indication of how much demand existed among Black health care entrepreneurs for the opportunities provided by the firm and its over 90 limited partners. <h3>SteelSky Ventures: Bringing equity to women’s health</h3> SteelSky Ventures has a clear premise. The female-led venture capital firm is laser-focused on improving access, care and outcomes across women’s health. The fund, one of the world’s largest focused on women’s health, has provided investments to 16 companies in the consumer health, digital health, and medical device sectors, among others. <h3>Seae Ventures: Advancing equity through opportunity</h3> Founded in 2019 by the former leaders at Zaffre Investments, the venture capital arm of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Seae Ventures has seen steady success, launching a $107 million inaugural fund. The fund has more than 30 investors representing both health care payers and providers, financial services companies, endowments and foundations, and major US corporations. </div> <div class="col-md-4"> <a href="/center" title="Visit the AHA Center for Health Innovation landing page."><img alt="AHA Center for Health Innovation logo" data-entity- data-entity-uuid="7ade6b12-de98-4d0b-965f-a7c99d9463c5" src="/sites/default/files/inline-images/logo-aha-innovation-center-color-sm.jpg" class="align-center"></a> <a href="/center/form/innovation-subscription"><img alt="Market Scan - Stay in the loop" src="/sites/default/files/2019-04/Market_Scan_Call_Out_360x300.png"></a> <a href="/system/files/media/file/2023/11/Health_Equity_Investment_Report_Evening-the-Playing-Field.pdf" target="_blank" title="Venture Capital Firms Expand Opportunities For Underrepresented Startup"><img alt="Venture Capital Firms Expand Opportunities For Underrepresented Startup" src="/sites/default/files/2023-11/Health_Equity_Investing_cover-200x260.png"> </a> <a class="btn btn-default" href="/system/files/media/file/2023/11/Health_Equity_Investment_Report_Evening-the-Playing-Field.pdf" target="_blank" title="Venture Capital Firms Expand Opportunities For Underrepresented Startup"> Download Report </a> </div> </div> </div> .field_featured_image { position: absolute; overflow: hidden; clip: rect(0 0 0 0); height: 1px; width: 1px; margin: -1px; padding: 0; border: 0; } .featured-image{ position: absolute; overflow: hidden; clip: rect(0 0 0 0); height: 1px; width: 1px; margin: -1px; padding: 0; border: 0; } Mon, 27 Nov 2023 09:35:51 -0600 Business of Health Care New ad campaign urges Congress to protect patient access to hospital care /news/headline/2023-09-06-new-ad-campaign-urges-congress-protect-patient-access-hospital-care The Coalition to Protect America’s Health Care Sept. 6 launched a national television ad and digital campaign urging Congress to reject hundreds of billions of dollars in funding cuts that would jeopardize access to patient care across the country, especially in underserved communities. The ad highlights how broken supply chains, workforce shortages and high inflation have pushed America’s hospitals and health systems to the brink, with over 100 rural hospitals closing in the past decade. <a href="https://protecthealthcare.org/media-center/tell-congress-dont-cut-hospital-based-care/">WATCH NOW</a>.&nbsp; &nbsp; For more on the legislative proposals, see the AHA’s <a href="/system/files/media/file/2023/09/Fact-Sheet-Medicare-Site-neutral-Legislative-Proposals-Under-Consideration-Would-Jeopardize-Access-to-Care-for-Patients-and-Communities.pdf">fact sheet</a> and <a href="/system/files/media/file/2023/07/Highlights-of-Legislation-under-Consideration-by-Congress-that-could-Affect-Hospitals-and-Health-Systems.pdf">chart</a>.&nbsp; Wed, 06 Sep 2023 13:55:30 -0500 Business of Health Care DOJ withdraws certain health care antitrust enforcement guidance /news/headline/2023-02-03-doj-withdraws-certain-health-care-antitrust-enforcement-guidance The Department of Justice today withdrew three <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-withdraws-outdated-enforcement-policy-statements">policy statements</a>&nbsp;on health care antitrust enforcement, saying they are “overly permissive on certain subjects, such as information sharing,” and that “a case-by-case enforcement approach” would allow it to better evaluate health care mergers and competition. The policies include a 1993 <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archive/atr/public/press_releases/1993/211661.htm">statement </a>describing circumstances under which DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission would not challenge certain hospital mergers and health care joint ventures; a 1996 <a href="https://www.justice.gov/atr/page/file/1197731/download">statement </a>on health care provider networks; and a 2011 <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/atr/legacy/2011/10/20/276458.pdf">statement</a> regarding accountable care organizations participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program.&nbsp; “AHA is deeply disappointed with the precipitous withdrawal of guidelines for hospitals and other health care providers and with DOJ’s unsupported assertion that some were ‘overly permissive,’” said AHA General Counsel Melinda Hatton. “Over the years, AHA has urged both federal antitrust agencies to modernize the guidelines to accommodate the need for more flexibility in enforcement actions to support hospitals’ ability to navigate a changing health care landscape. And, AHA was instrumental in securing appropriate ACO guidance that allowed hospitals to fully participate in that important program. Withdrawing all the guidance without consultation with the field is both unnecessary and reckless.” The FTC is expected to follow DOJ’s lead in the coming weeks. Fri, 03 Feb 2023 14:43:29 -0600 Business of Health Care CMS: National health spending up 4.6% in 2019 /news/headline/2020-12-16-cms-national-health-spending-46-2019 U.S. spending on health care grew 4.6% in 2019, similar to 2018 but slightly more than overall growth in the economy, the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services&nbsp;<a href="https://health-policy.healthaffairs.org/martin/jan2021">reported</a> today in Health Affairs. The data precedes the COVID-19 pandemic and does not reflect the pandemic’s effect on health care spending. On a per capita basis, national health spending grew 4.1% in 2019, reflecting faster growth in the residual use and intensity of health care goods and services and slower growth in medical prices, CMS said. Spending grew 6.2% for hospital care; 5.7% for retail prescription drugs, which excludes the cost of inpatient drugs; and 4.1% for physician and clinical services in 2019. Faster growth in spending for medical goods and services was offset by a decline in the net cost of health insurance due to Congress’ suspension of the health insurance tax for 2019, CMS said. “Health care spending in 2019 increased at about the same rate as it had in 2018 and was similar to the average annual growth since 2016,” said Anne Martin, an economist in the CMS Office of the Actuary and lead author on the article. “This relative stability in health care spending growth over the last four years preceded the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The full impact of the pandemic on the health care sector is still not known, but it will certainly have profound consequences on the provision and consumption of health care in 2020 and perhaps beyond.” Experts predict that 2020 spending trends will be very different than those reported today. Altarum projects that hospital spending has declined 4.1% since January 2020, as hospital volumes remain low due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Wed, 16 Dec 2020 14:24:22 -0600 Business of Health Care AHA blog: Analysis gets it wrong on health care spending /news/headline/2020-10-06-aha-blog-analysis-gets-it-wrong-health-care-spending A recent analysis from the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation provides an incomplete picture of U.S. spending on health care while downplaying the “immense role” that drug costs play, writes Aaron Wesolowski, AHA’s vice president of policy research, analytics and strategy, for the AHA Stat Blog. Read <a href="/news/blog/2020-10-06-analysis-gets-it-wrong-health-care-spending">more</a>. Tue, 06 Oct 2020 14:38:14 -0500 Business of Health Care Analysis Gets it Wrong on Health Care Spending /news/blog/2020-10-06-analysis-gets-it-wrong-health-care-spending A recent analysis from the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation, “<a href="https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/what-drives-health-spending-in-the-u-s-compared-to-other-countries/">What drives health spending in the U.S. compared to other countries</a>,” does not provide a full picture on health care spending in the U.S. while also downplaying the immense role that drug costs play in overall health care spending. First, according to the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services, price growth for hospital care services was just 2.4 percent in 2018, and non-price factors such as intensity of services and inpatient bed days grew slowly as well. These factors combined for historic low growth in hospital spending. More recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows hospital prices have consistently grown less than 3 percent per year over the last decade and have frequently grown by less than the average rate of inflation. In fact, even when excluding the artificially low rates paid to hospitals by Medicare and Medicaid, annual price growth has still been below 3 percent in recent years. Second, the analysis doesn’t fully account for the role that drug costs play in driving up overall health care spending. For example, the analysis’ inpatient spending trends includes spending on prescription drugs provided during an inpatient stay. This is also true for drugs administered in an outpatient setting. Hospital spending on prescription drugs has far surpassed medical inflation in recent years. According to a <a href="/system/files/2019-01/aha-drug-pricing-study-report-01152019.pdf">2019 AHA study</a>, total drug spending for inpatient and outpatient hospital drugs increased by nearly 19 percent between 2015 and 2017 per adjusted admission. This increase was on top of a double-digit percentage increase from 2013 to 2015. The AHA study also showed that large percentage increases of over 80 percent were seen across different classes of drugs, including those for anesthetics, parenteral solutions and chemotherapy, and that one in four hospitals had to cut staff to mitigate budget pressures due to drug costs. It is also worth noting that a significant percent of outpatient costs are attributable to drug costs, such as infusion services for cancer patients, which have a significant drug cost component.&nbsp; Third, this analysis distills health spending into overly broad and blunt categories. For example, inpatient care as defined here includes inpatient hospital care, prescription drug or medical device spending that occurred during an inpatient stay, rehabilitative stays and admissions to skilled nursing facilities. Outpatient care here is defined as most of the services people receive from clinicians and health professionals, regardless of where this care is received (i.e. clinic, physician office, health center, outpatient facility, or hospital). Finally, health spending in the U.S. grew at the same pace as other countries (3.7 percent vs. 3.6 percent) over the last 10 years. Comparing spending across countries while ignoring other differences is problematic. This analysis overlooks some key differences that may affect health spending, such as different disease burden and health status in each country, and differences in salaries, wages and other labor costs. Aaron Wesolowski is AHA vice president of Policy Research, Analytics and Strategy. Tue, 06 Oct 2020 08:05:52 -0500 Business of Health Care