About health insurance/insurers
Elevance posts $1B profit in Q3, lowers earnings forecast “Elevance Health posted $1 billion in net income during the third quarter, a 21% decrease compared to the same period last year, according to the company's earnings report published Oct. 17.
The company lowered its full-year earnings outlook from $37.20 in net income per diluted share to $33.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Is Hospital Market Concentration Related to Medical Debt? While medical debt on credit reports declined across most US counties between 2012 and 2022, increases in hospital market concentration prevented such improvements in many areas of the country.
We find that counties that experienced larger increases in hospital market concentration, as measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), experienced smaller declines in the share of residents with medical debt. The correlation between a county’s change in medical debt and its HHI is 0.2. For comparison, this correlation is similar in magnitude to that observed between a county’s medical debt and its racial and ethnic makeup but is a weaker correlation than that between a county’s medical debt and its health insurance coverage rates and chronic disease prevalence.”
About pharma
Wave Clinical Trial Shows First Successful RNA Editing in Humans “Wave Life Sciences said today its alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD) candidate WVE-006 succeeded in the first-ever clinical demonstration of RNA editing in humans by achieving positive proof-of-mechanism in an early-phase clinical trial.”
Why hundreds of US pharmacies are closing Changing consumer trends and market dynamics are leading to hundreds of pharmacy store closures in the U.S.
Brick-and-mortar locations are losing to mail-order and digital options, according to a J.D. Power study of pharmacy customers. Between 2023 and 2024, overall customer satisfaction in physical drug stores declined 10 points on a 1,000-point scale, and satisfaction scores for mail-order pharmacies increased six points.”
About healthcare IT
Early Warning Scores With and Without Artificial Intelligence “Findings In this cohort study that compared 6 early warning scores across 362 926 patient encounters, eCARTv5, a machine learning model, identified clinical deterioration best with an area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUROC) of 0.895 and the highest positive predictive values at both the moderate- and high-risk matched thresholds. The National Early Warning Score, a non–artificial intelligence score with an AUROC of 0.831, was the second-best performer at both thresholds, while the Epic Deterioration Index was one of the worst, with an AUROC of 0.808 and the lowest positive predictive values.
Meaning Given the wide variation in accuracy, these findings suggest that additional transparency and oversight of early warning tools may be warranted.”
Change Healthcare cyberattack costs to reach $2.87B “UnitedHealth estimated the company would absorb about an additional 10 cents a share in costs for the February ransomware attack that disrupted claims processing and breached patient data across the nation, bringing the total to 75 cents a share, according to a third-quarter earnings report.
The healthcare conglomerate now estimates it will take a $2.87 billion hit from the cyberattack in 2024, after originally anticipating $1.6 billion in costs.”