retail health

Are $59 Virtual Visits at CVS Health a Play for Women?

By M2|2018-08-23T13:49:46+00:00August 22nd, 2018|Health Care Trends, Innovation, Retail Health, telehealth, Uncategorized|

Are $59 Virtual Visits at CVS Health a Play for Women?

Last week we wrote about how CVS Health offering $59 telehealth video visits through the company’s retail medical clinic, MinuteClinic, would significantly change the health insurance market. This week, we are going a step further to consider the specific effects of the CVS Health offering for women.

As covered previously, CVS Health is looking to serve people with routine health needs who are shopping for lower costs. Who is doing that shopping? Primarily women. Women make “80% of the health care decisions for their families.” If the woman is a mother, surveys show more than 75% of the time, she is responsible for choosing a child’s health care provider and taking the child to health care appointments. Women who aren’t mothers are also often caregivers – nearly 50% of women without kids make health care decisions for a family member.

The combination of increasing deductibles – more than half of cost-sharing payments were in the form of a deductible for the first time in 2016 – and increasing need for health care at convenient times has already driven women to be the most likely users of retail clinics.

According to FAIR Health, in 2016, women accounted for a higher percentage of retail visits covered by insurance than men in nearly every age group. For people between the ages of 19 and 30 who visited a retail clinic, nearly 70% of visits were by women, as the chart below shows.

CVS Health, no doubt, already knows women are the primary users of their in-person MinuteClinics. Converting women MinuteClinic visitors to $59 telehealth visits shouldn’t be too difficult since women are the primary health care decision makers, and the virtual visits are cheaper and more convenient than going in-person to a CVS store.

Will other health care organizations follow CVS Health’s lead and start to cater more to women as health care consumers? Theirs seems like a data-driven strategy that other entities might be wise to emulate. Just as the $59 virtual visit will disrupt the health insurance market, the new CVS Health offering could also change the way the health care system meets the needs of the primary health care decision-maker in the U.S. – women.

ICYMI: The CVS-Aetna Proposed Merger Could be Public Health Rocket Fuel

By M2|2017-12-07T01:22:04+00:00December 6th, 2017|Health Care Trends, Health Disparities, Insurance, Public Health, Retail Health, Social Determinants of Health, Uncategorized|

ICYMI: The CVS-Aetna Proposed Merger Could be Public Health Rocket Fuel

Sunday, December 3, CVS Health announced it will acquire health insurer Aetna for $69 billion. Lowering the cost of care by enabling a broader range of treatment in retail clinic settings, of which CVS Health has more than 1,100 in 33 states, is one of the obvious rationales of the combination. But what struck me in the comments of the merging companies’ CEOs was how much they sound like public health professors. Social determinants of health? Health as a path to fulfillment? What have they done with the business people? In case you missed it…

Mark Bertolini Really Cares About the Whole Person

Aetna Chairman and CEO Mark T. Bertolini has been talking publicly for quite some time about the importance of thinking about people not as patients, but more holistically. In September, in an interview with Dennis Berman, the Wall Street Journal financial editor, he said, “We believe the only way to truly disrupt the cost of health care … is to go into the homes and meet the social determinants that are now driving as much as 60 percent of life expectancy of Americans.”

What Bertolini has had to say now that the merger is official is straight-up public health speak. On CNBC Monday morning, when explaining the vision of the merger, Bertolini sounded like a philosopher: “Most people,” he explained, “find their health is a barrier to the life they want to live.” Indeed.

Larry Merlo is Fixated on Unmet Need

Larry J. Merlo, President and CEO of CVS Health, reminded anyone who was paying attention something that we in public health have known for a long time, but surprised the CNBC reporters, “You look at chronic disease in this country today, about half of all Americans have at least one of those chronic diseases. It’s accounting for 80% of the health care costs.”

Merlo further explains, “there’s billions of dollars every year on unnecessary and avoidable spending because people are not following…care plans.” Merlo’s solution, to be executed in part with the announced merger, is to address the unmet need the traditional health care system is creating, but CVS Health knows first-hand because patients come through its doors with health care needs that aren’t being met.

We “lack the element of convenience and coordination…that is the unmet need we are talking about,” says Merlo.

We Are All Public Health

As a public health student, educator and professional, I am public health. This merger discussion shows we are all public health. Georges C. Benjamin, M.D. Executive Director, American Public Health Association wrote in 2015, “Today, the biggest threats to the health and longevity of Americans are preventable diseases. These are the diseases that are burying us in preventable suffering, as well as crippling our communities with mountains of avoidable medical bills. The root causes of many of these health threats are inextricably linked to the social determinants of health and the conditions that shape a person’s opportunity to attain good health and adopt healthy behaviors. These social determinants include access to safe housing, good jobs with living wages, quality education, affordable health care, nutritious foods, and safe places to be physically active. They also include racism, discrimination, and bias.”

To see such similar language from Mark Bertolini and Larry Merlo in the CVS-Aetna merger discussion to date shows that the leaders of what could become the largest health care company in the U.S. are thinking differently about the broken U.S. health care system. Near the end of the investor call about the merger, an analyst asked whether the combined entity planned to be a person’s primary care physician. Bertolini answered: “The real important part here is that you have to understand that almost 60% of Americans don’t have a regular doctor.”

When you connect these dots, you can really see the big picture come together. The CVS-AET vision is bigger than managing the pharmacy benefit.

Will it work? Hard to say at this early stage. Should consumers want it to work? Absolutely. A health care company with a public health lens that focuses on health well before a person shows up at the doctor and prioritizes convenience, coordination, and social determinants of health would be a welcome change for individuals, families, and employers. Score one for public health.