Page 132 - Mployee Wellness Programs News Today

Medicare is failing its beneficiaries by not treating obesity as a disease. Just like people with high blood pressure often need to take medications to avoid disease-related complications, people with obesity need access to all appropriate, evidence-based therapies to combat the disease.

It’s clear that services like telehealth and remote patient monitoring have potential to provide value within the healthcare industry, but hospitals and digital health companies need to show payers clearer evidence of the outcomes these care modalities can produce in order to earn reimbursement, panelists argued during MedCity's INVEST conference.

The competition saw 23 healthcare startups across biopharma, medical devices, and health tech geared for consumers/employers as well as payers/providers pitch their business plans to teams of investor judges.

The Medicaid continuous enrollment provision ended March 31, meaning states are resuming the renewal process for Medicaid and disenrolling those who no longer qualify for coverage or don't renew coverage. Most Medicaid enrollees are unprepared for this, a survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed.

Fundraising rounds for health startups are taking longer to close and investors are doing more due diligence, said Ulili Onovakpuri, managing partner of Kapor Capital, during a Monday panel at the MedCity INVEST conference in Chicago.

Presented by the Consulate General of Canada, the Canadian healthcare startup showcase included five companies. Technologies included a patient transfer solution, care coordination, women's health, exercise tracking and remote monitoring for dysphagia, and mental health support.

Although there is uncertainty and risk, the implementation of AI with the right compliance framework and infrastructure offers an exciting opportunity to transform healthcare into a new frontier with improved patient outcomes and increased efficiency.

Hospitals are places of healing, but they have also become sites of gun violence. A panel at the MedCity News INVEST conference discussed the ways hospitals can reduce threats and de-escalate situations before they become violent.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration identifies three core crisis services that should be available to those in need of behavioral health support: crisis hotlines, mobile crisis units and crisis stabilization. However, 33 state Medicaid programs don't cover all of these services, a new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation found.

The use of LLMs in healthcare is still quite new, so health systems want to deploy these tools in the least risky way possible. A panel of experts explained how they think health systems can do this during MedCity's INVEST conference — some of their advice included starting with deployment in nonclinical settings and partnering with incumbent vendors rather than startups.