A central aspiration of health tech is that technology will make getting care easier and less expensive, allowing for more people (and especially disadvantaged people) to use it.
But new research looking at what unfolded during the pandemic calls into question whether health tech is living up to that pledge. In fact, a trioofstudies (the latest of which was published Wednesday) suggests that the shift to online therapy deepened the disparities that exist in mental healthcare. There was a 30% increase in the number of people receiving therapy thanks to telemedicine, The New York Timesreports, but that increasewas driven mainly by those who were socioeconomically advantaged.
The bottom line? Instead of ensuring access for groups like lower-income families, online therapy benefited wealthier families with private insurance. Those doing video therapy visits, the study found, tended to live in more urban areas, and were more likely to be white — patterns that "confirm previously raised concerns over equity in access to internet-delivered telemental health care," the latest study noted.
"What we find is that it does appear to be just exacerbating existing disparities,"Mark Olfson, lead author on the studies and professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, told The Times. "I think there’s a real need to try to address
that."
It seems that moving care online won’t alone make it easier for all groups of people to access it. So what will it take? And are health tech companies serious about making it happen?
Since the killing of UnitedHealth’s top insurance executive and the outpouring of public frustration with delayed and denied care that followed, a major question has circled the healthcare giant: Will it change how it does business?
The Drug Enforcement Administration on Wednesday issued a long-awaited proposed rule that would create a permanent process for clinicians to more easily prescribe controlled drugs online.
The top three pharmacy benefit managers hiked the prices of dozens of "specialty" generic drugs, some by more than 1,000% of their acquisition cost, the FTC said Tuesday in a new report.
Quote of the week
"While these things run at real scale, they generate very little revenue because at the present moment, at least in the US, we haven't yet really figured out how to pay for AI in healthcare."
Tempus AI CEO Eric Lefkofsky said during the company’s presentation at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference
This week in health Тech
Teladoc CEO Chuck Divita took the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference stage on Monday to update investors about the telehealth giant’s turnaround. He justified plans to hold onto the company’s weakest unit, BetterHelp. “That's an opportunity and an asset for our shareholders that we certainly wouldn't want to make hasty decisions on,” Divita said, according to a transcript from AlphaSense. He reiterated plans to grow BetterHelp’s international customers and shift it from a purely direct-to-consumer mental health service to one covered by insurance.
CFO Mala Murthy said the company has made progress on the insurance front building back-end capabilities and is now talking with payers, but it’s “going to take some time.” Separately, the company announced that Amazon members can now find certain Teladoc services through the Amazon site, alongside other digital health offerings like Omada and Talkspace.
Despite losing a major client last year, Progyny CEO Peter Anevski sought to reassure investors on Tuesday. Anevskisaid that the fertility company’s client retention rate is 99%, and that it lost only five customers in the past year, its lowest number of losses since 2021. Anevski said Progyny beat competition — “including VC-backed competitors” — to every jumbo client it worked on landing. The company said it found early success selling new
programs in maternity, postpartum and menopause care to new and existing clients.
GoodRx CEO Wendy Barnes, who started in January, laid out her priorities for the year during her presentation. Barnes said her plan was to continue building the health tech company’s relationships with retail pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies and PBMs, but also start to work more with regulators and trade groups. She said she also wants to add a virtual pharmacy partner to what GoodRx offers, especially one that can do same or next-day delivery.
Talkspace is looking at potential acquisitions, particularly smaller deals for products that can help with its IT and technology side, executives told investors on Wednesday.
