CEO Sam Hazen says the for-profit hospital chain is 'encouraged by our performance.'
HCA Healthcare, Inc. credited robust patient volume growth in Q1 2024 for revenues of $17.3 billion, an 11% increase over the $15.5 billion booked in Q1 2023, the company says.
The Nashville-based for-profit health system reported a year-over-year 6.2% increase in same-hospital admissions and same facility equivalent admissions grew 5.2%.
As a result, adjusted EBITDA totaled $3.35 billion, up from $3.1 billion in Q1 2023, cash flow totaled $2.4 billion, and net income totaled more than $1.5 billion, or $5.93 per diluted share.
The HCA board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.66 per share on common stock, which will be paid to stockholders on June 28.
"The strong fundamentals we saw in our business this past year continued into the first quarter of 2024," HCA CEO Same Hazen said during a conference call on Friday. "This momentum generated strong financial results that were driven primarily by broad-based volume growth."
"As we look to the rest of the year, we remain encouraged by our performance, the overall backdrop of growing demand for our services and our enhanced stability across our networks to serve our communities," Hazen said.
The Q1 report also booked $201 million ($0.57 per diluted share) from the sale to UCLA Health of the 260-bed West Hills Hospital and Medical Center in West Hills, CA.
HCA's balance sheet finished the quarter with $1.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents, total debt of $41 billion, and total assets of $57 billion. Capital expenditures totaled $1.1 billion, excluding acquisitions. Cash flows provided by operating activities totaled $2.4 billion, compared to $1.8 billion in Q1 2023. HCA also repurchased 3.9 million shares of common stock for $1.2 billion.
HCA operates 188 hospitals and some 2,400 ambulatory care venues in 20 states and the United Kingdon, including surgery centers, freestanding emergency rooms, urgent care centers and clinics.
Spending on weight-loss drugs will continue to climb in 2024 and beyond as drug makers catch up with the huge global demand.
Eric Tichy, PharmD, MBA, division chair, supply chain management at Mayo Clinic, is lead author of a new study detailing how and where the U.S. spent $772 billion on drug in 2023, up 13.5% from 2022, and what's in store for 2024.
In this HealthLeaders interview, Tichy explains how weight-loss drugs pushed double-digit increases in drug expenditures last year, even as drug price increases were relatively modest.
Tichy projects that spending on weight-loss drugs will continue to climb in 2024 and beyond as suppliers catch up with the huge global demand. That growth will continue as new and similar drugs come to market and as the FDA approves the medications for more conditions.
HL: What are some of the big take-aways from your report?
Tichy: It was very impressive how much the diabetes medications that are used for weight loss have grown over the last year. Last year, we had seen that they were growing at a very high rate, and this year they continued to grow at a very high rate. It was just very impressive. And now those are the number one expenditure drugs in the U.S.
People are sensitive to prices of drugs and there's like this public perception that drug prices are driving our expenditures, but prices have been below inflation. It's more about utilization. We have this whole category of weight-loss drugs that we didn't have a couple of years ago. The drug industry is very good at innovating and developing new areas of care that grow our drug expenses.
HL: Is the public conflating drug spending and drug costs?
Tichy: Yes. In our, in our report there are three categories of spending. There's the price, there's brand new drugs that didn't exist last year, and there's utilization. Those get all conflated into price but price is just one driver of expenditures. It's not so much price, at least in the recent five years or so. It's more about utilization and utilization of new drugs.
People are sensitive to prices of drugs and there's a public perception that drug prices are driving expenditures, but prices have been below inflation. It's more about utilization. The pharmaceutical companies would like this to be more widely known, but it takes a long time to shift that narrative. Think about patients spending so much on insulin, but that's a five-years-ago problem. Insulin expenditures have decreased over the last couple of years. Now it's the GLP-1s that have taken off, so it takes society time to catch up.
HL: Have these weight-loss drugs sufficiently demonstrated ROI to the point where private insurers would include them in their formularies?
Tichy: We know people have struggled for years with weight have now dropped weight and they're doing great. But it takes years to accrue health benefits would influence an insurance plan. It's yet to be determined if GLP-1s are "cost effective" from that standpoint. But there's more evidence every day showing that these drugs help with sleep apnea, cardiovascular diseases, joint replacements and other chronic conditions.
HL: Do you think the cost of weight-loss drugs will go down? Would any savings be offset by volume expenditures?
Tichy: Because the use is growing so fast, even if the price comes down, it's not going to show up because the utilization is just so large. In fact, the demand for these products is so strong that manufacturers can't even make them fast enough. They’re doing everything they can to meet that demand because it’s a permission slip to print money.
HL: What about the opportunities for cheaper, generic weight-loss drugs?
Tichy: We're aways off from that because of the patents. These drugs are relatively new so we're not going to see a meaningful generic competition in the next couple of years. What could happen is that there's more and more of these other drugs in development that do similar things. That'll create competition. Wegovy competes with Zepbound; different companies making a drug that has the same mechanism. We will see if there's another drug that's approved that does the same thing. So, we might see some competition in that way.
But that doesn't show up in the expenditures because a lot of times the discounts or rebates go to the PBMs. HUMIRA is the No. 2 drug spend and it has biosimilar competition, but the expenditures are still very high because there's a lot of rebates. We use purchase data, so it does get inflated with rebates that show those discounts.
HL: What effect did 340B have on hospital drug expenditures?
Tichy: 340B was a big factor that kept hospital expenditures almost flat, unlike some of the other sectors. Another factor is that the pandemic is very much over and we're no longer using the drugs that we were spending a lot of money on in the hospitals to treat COVID. And that's because people aren't ending up in the hospital with COVID and now we have oral medications and vaccines. So that has totally changed, and it's really impressive how in just a short couple of years that has shifted.
HL: We’re hearing about widespread drug shortages. Why is this happening?
Tichy: With the GLP-1s it's the insatiable demand. But most of the shortages are generic injectable drugs. A big part of the cause for that is there's just not a lot of money in those for manufacturers and there's a lot of regulatory burdens and a lot of competition. They run into quality issues that lead to recalls so there are a lot of market forces at play.
HL: What is the effect of this ongoing drug shortage on drug spending or costs?
Tichy: With the GLP-1s, if there weren't shortages this spending would have been even higher. The manufacturers are doing everything they can to make those products. It's in their best interest but the demand is so insatiable that they can't meet it. Eventually, maybe this year, they'll get to where they're meeting market demand. We did factor that in because we think that expenditures for GLP-1 are going to continue to increase at a high rate because the demand is very strong, and we know that they'll ramp up supplies.
But with generic drugs, we don't think that that has much of an impact because generic drugs are such a small percentage of our expenditures and they're just using a different drug if they can't get the drug they’d would prefer to use.
HL: What’s the next blockbuster drug?
Tichy: Alzheimer's was one of those drugs that we thought was going to take off and it has not yet, but they have the potential to be a very big market and an expensive drug. A lot of our spending growth has been with cancer drugs, and we expect that to continue. One of the hot areas of study in cancer is vaccines, whether they're therapeutic or preventative. They’re in clinical trials at this point. Nothing's FDA approved yet.
Prescription drug spending grew by 13.5% in 2023, but drug cost inflation was lower than the CPI.
The United States spent $772.5 billion on prescription drugs in 2023, a 13.5% increase from 2022, driven largely by the proliferation and popularity of blockbuster weight-loss drugs, a new report today shows.
Spending for semaglutide doubled in 2023, making it the top-selling drug in the nation, replacing the autoimmune disease drug adalimumab, which also saw sales growth despite the availability of cheaper biosimilars. Spending on the diabetes drug tizepatide grew 373% even though Food and Drug Administration approval for weight loss came in November, 2023, the report says.
Retail pharmacies accounted for $307.8 billion (42.6%) of total expenditures, mail-order pharmacies accounted for $206.6 billion (28.6%), clinics $135.7 billion (18.8%), and nonfederal hospitals $37.1 billion (5.1%).
Study lead author Eric Tichy, PharmD, MBA, division chair, supply chain management at Mayo Clinic, projects that spending on weight-loss drugs will continue to climb in 2024 and beyond as supplies catch up with the huge global demand. That growth will continue as new and similar drugs come to market and as the FDA approves the medications for more conditions.
In sharp contrast, hospitals' drug spending fell by 1.1%, continuing a steady period of falling expenditures that was interrupted during the COVID pandemic. This ongoing decline was credited to the transition from expensive COVID medications such as Remdesivir to cheaper oral treatments, the increased use of biosimilars, and the growth of the 340B program allowing hospitals to buy drugs at a discount.
"Hospitals and health systems are doing a commendable job using available tools to manage drug expenditures, which typically represent about 10% of their budgets," Tichy says. "Pharmacy and health-system leaders should persist in their proactive management and continue to anticipate disruptions that may affect drug spending."
The Inflation Reduction Act had a modest effect on drug spending in 2023, but the full effect of its savings won't be felt until 2026 for retail and mail order pharmacy and 2028 for hospitals and clinics. Tichy says Medicare drug price negotiations mandated by the IRA will reduce prices on some drugs but could also drive up spending on some drugs as more people use them.
The report also found that:
Drug expenditures in clinics grew 15%, driven by high-cost injectable medications for cancer, immunology, and neurology.
Biosimilar use in hospitals and clinics remains strong and helps contain total expenditures. However, biosimilar uptake in retail and mail-order pharmacies was more limited.
The top 25 drugs by expenditures in the U.S. in 2023 were Semaglutide ($38.6 billion), adalimumab ($35.3 billion) and apixiban ($22.1 billion).
Strong growth was booked for tirzepatide (373.1%), risankizumab (106.3%), semaglutide (100.1%), dupilumab (44.9%), dapagliflozin (41.8%), and empagliflozin (34.0%).
Sitagliptin (–9.4%), insulin glargine (–4.6%), insulin aspart (–3.5%) and insulin lispro (–1.8%) were the drugs in the top 25 with lower expenditures in 2023 than in 2022.
HealthyCompetition.gov is the latest effort by federal regulators to monitor the ongoing consolidation of the healthcare sector.
The federal government wants the public to join its campaign against anticompetitive practices in healthcare.
The Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday launched HealthyCompetition.gov, an "easily accessible online portal" that allows the public "to report healthcare practices that may harm competition."
"All too often, we hear how unfair methods of competition and monopolistic practices may be depriving Americans of access to affordable, high-quality healthcare," FTC Chair Lina M. Khan says. "This joint initiative between, FTC, DOJ, and HHS will provide a crucial channel for the agencies to hear from the public, bolstering our work to check illegal business practices that harm consumers and workers alike."
The confidential complaints will be reviewed by staff at the FTC and Justice Department, Antitrust Division, and if they have merit they will be subjected to further investigation. Ultimately, the actions could lead to formal investigations.
The portal is the latest initiative advanced by the FTC, DOJ and HHS, which in December 2023 issued a joint request for information to seek input on how private-equity and corporate control of healthcare is affecting the public.
The ongoing consolidation of payers, providers and drugmakers in healthcare sector and the role of private equity have gained the attention of state and federal regulators, employers – and the public – in the wake of high-profile debacles, including the Change Healthcare breach and the financial troubles of for-profit Steward Health Care.
At a hearing this week on the Change breach, House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) warned that "as our healthcare system becomes more consolidated, the impacts of cyberattacks – if successful – may be more widespread."
Even with the growing wariness by regulators, hospitals and health systems are increasingly pursuing mergers and acquisitions to stabilize their finances. Oftentimes, the smaller hospitals and systems are cash-strapped and have few alternatives to keep the doors open. The consulting firm Kaufman Hall reports that 28% of hospital mergers in 2023 involved a financially distressed partner, which was nearly double the amount in 2022 (15%) and the highest percentage since the data started being tracked.
Nonetheless, dozens of studies have shown that healthcare consolidations ultimately result in reduced services, lower care quality, and higher cost for consumers. Federal regulators have been criticized for their lack of action on the issue.
The nonprofit Washington Center for Equitable Growth this week called the federal response to healthcare consolidation "limited," even as "a wealth of evidence underscoring the severity of this issue and its profound financial and health implications for patients and local economies."
"The modest steps taken thus far fall short of addressing the breadth and depth of the problem," the research organization says.
The mega-payer reports a $1.41 billion loss in the first quarter, but still surpasses analysts' expectations.
UnitedHealth Group says the Feb. 21 cyberattack on its Change Healthcare unit that continues to disrupt wide swaths of the healthcare sector could cost its shareholders about $1.5 billion this year.
The breach cost UnitedHealth about $872 million in Q1, as the payer on Tuesday reported a $1.41 billion loss for the quarter.
Otherwise, UnitedHealth’s Q1 financials were better than expected, with $99.8 billion in revenues booked, nearly $8 billion more year over year, stoked by strong enrollment growth at Optum and UnitedHealthcare.
As a result, the company's adjusted earnings of $6.91 per share exceeded analysts' estimates of $6.59 a share. Shares were up more than 3% in Wednesday morning trading.
"The core story at UnitedHealth Group remains our colleagues delivering improved experiences for the people we serve and driving balanced growth even while swiftly and effectively addressing the attack on Change Healthcare," UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty CEO says.
Witty says Change is making "significant progress" restoring billing and collection services and has doled out $6 billion in advance funding and interest-free loans for providers.
The cyberattacks dinged UnitedHealth investors for $0.74 per share in Q1, including $0.49 cents to support direct response efforts, and $0.25 in business disruptions. UnitedHealth says the full year 2024 effects could reach $1.15 to $1.35 per share.
The biggest drag on Q1 financials for UnitedHealth was a $7 billion charge for selling a Brazilian health benefits and care provider it bought more than a decade ago.
First quarter earnings from operations were $7.9 billion, including the $872 million in Change losses. Adjusted earnings from operations were $8.5 billion and include the Change business disruptions but exclude the cyberattack direct response costs.
New York's largest health system has refunded $400,000 to more than 2,000 patients, and will pay $650,000 in penalties to the state.
Northwell Health will pay $1 million in penalties and refunds to patients for "misleading New Yorkers seeking COVID-19 testing during the height of the pandemic," New York Attorney General Letitia James said Friday.
Under an agreement reached with Northwell, the health system has issued more than $400,164 in refunds to 2,048 patients, will pay a $650,000 penalty, and must notify future patients seeking COVID-19 testing at emergency rooms that they will be billed for emergency department charges, the AG said.
"During a time of great stress at the height of the pandemic, Northwell Health caused more worry and frustration for New Yorkers who were sent emergency room bills for simply taking a COVID-19 test," James said in a media release.
"Today we are putting money back in New Yorkers' pockets after Northwell Health misled them. New York patients should not get surprise fees," she said. "I encourage anyone who thinks they've been taken advantage of through deceptive advertising to file a complaint with my office."
Northwell issued a statement saying that it "cooperated fully" with the AG's investigation and "voluntarily entered an agreement to settle the matter without admitting to any wrongdoing."
The OAG launched an investigation after hearing complaints from patients about bills they got for emergency department visits after they took a COVID-19 test. Investigators found that emergency departments at Northwell's Lenox Hill Hospital, Lenox Health Greenwich, and Huntington Hospital posted signs between March 2020 and March 2021 advertising emergency departments as COVID-19 testing locations.
State and federal laws prohibited health plans from charging any type of cost sharing for COVID-19 tests and related services. However, investigators found that thousands of people who tested for COVID-19 at one of these three locations were billed standard emergency room charges, including patients who tested at Huntington's drive-through site.
Investigators found that Northwell collected $81,761.46 in out-of-pocket payments from 559 people for COVID-19 tests at emergency departments. People who visited the emergency department for other medical care were also charged when COVID-19 tests were given.
Northwell Responds
Northwell Health issued this statement:
"In the first year of the pandemic, when patients often faced challenges obtaining COVID-19 testing, three of Northwell's emergency departments posted public-facing signs indicating the availability of COVID-19 testing services. At each of these three locations, patients were able to receive emergency department services above and beyond those offered at standalone COVID-19 testing sites, including triage services and medical evaluation by a licensed emergency department clinician. These locations also posted signage, written consent forms and other messaging intended to advise patients upfront that they would receive services as emergency department patients."
"Northwell also implemented broad billing controls that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, succeeded in preventing patients from being billed for COVID-19 testing and related services, including patients for whom Northwell was entitled to collect out-of-pocket payments because they received additional services unrelated to COVID-19 testing and evaluation. This resulted in Northwell foregoing collection of payments from patients to which it would have been entitled in numerous instances."
"In the extremely limited instances when patients who sought COVID-19 testing at these three locations did make out-of-pocket payments, all those amounts, totaling $81,761.46, were voluntarily refunded. Out of an abundance of caution, Northwell also voluntarily issued refunds to many patients who received additional services unrelated to COVID-19 testing and evaluation, from whom Northwell was entitled to collect payment, totaling $318,402.83."
"Northwell is proud of our unwavering commitment to the communities we have served throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, starting with the heroic efforts of our front-line providers in responding to the unprecedented demands placed on hospitals during this global crisis."
Payers, private equity and pharmacy chains own more physician practices (30.1%) than do hospitals (28.4%).
More than three-quarters of the nation's physicians (77.6%) are employed by hospitals, health systems or other businesses, according to a report commissioned by the Physicians Advocacy Institute.
The new data, compiled by Avalere, reaffirms a decade-long steady transferal of medical practice ownership. In 2012, 25.8% of physicians were employed by hospitals or health systems. Since then, hospitals and health systems have hired nearly 263,000 physicians.
In a five-year span between Jan. 1, 2019, and Dec. 31, 2023, more than 44,000 practices were acquired, although that number slowed in 2022 and 2023, when 8,100 practices transferred ownership.
Currently, 58.5% of physician practices are owned by non-physicians. As of Jan. 1, 2024, physician practice ownership by corporations (30.1%)—including health insurers, private equity firms and large pharmacy chains—surpassed ownership by hospitals and health systems (28.4%) for the first time.
"Corporate entities are assuming control of physician practices and changing the face of medicine in the United States with little to no scrutiny from regulators," PAI CEO Kelly Kenney says in a media release.
"Physicians have an ethical responsibility to their patients' health," Kenney says. "By contrast, corporate entities have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders and are motivated to put profits first. In some arrangements, these interests can conflict with providing the best medical care to patients."
The transition to non-physician ownership accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic as physicians contended with burnout. In 2022 and 2023, 19,100 physicians left independent practices to join hospitals, health systems or corporations. Of those, 16,000 were hired by hospitals and health systems. In the past five years more than 127,000 physicians transitioned to employees of hospitals, health systems or corporations.
"As the medical practice model continues to shift toward affiliated and owned practices, it's absolutely critical that physicians retain autonomy over medical decisions and their relationship with patients remains grounded in providing the best clinical guidance," Kenney said.
Click here for the details of Avalere's methodology.
The new technology provides a better tool to evaluate age-related macular degeneration and other retinal diseases.
Another day, another reminder that artificial intelligence in healthcare is gathering momentum.
A new study from the National Institutes of Health finds that AI takes high-resolution images of the cells in the back of the eye that are processed 100 times faster than when done manually and with a 3.5-fold improvement in image contrast.
Ultimately, researchers say, this new technology will provide a better tool to evaluate age-related macular degeneration and other retinal diseases.
"Artificial intelligence helps overcome a key limitation of imaging cells in the retina, which is time," Johnny Tam, PhD, leader of the Clinical and Translational Imaging Section at NIH's National Eye Institute, says in an NIH media release.
Tam and his team are developing adaptive optics (AO) to improve imaging using new optical coherence tomography (OCT) that is noninvasive, fast, painless, and available in most eye clinics.
"Adaptive optics takes OCT-based imaging to the next level," Tam says. "It's like moving from a balcony seat to a front row seat to image the retina. With AO, we can reveal 3D retinal structures at cellular-scale resolution, enabling us to zoom in on very early signs."
Tam's work targets the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a layer of tissue behind the retina that is of particular interest to researchers because many diseases of the retina occur when the RPE breaks down.
Overcoming the Speckle
Imaging RPE cells with AO-OCT are susceptible to a complication called speckle, which Tam says interferes with AO-OCT much like clouds interfere with aerial photography. Currently, clinicians must repeatedly take images until the speckle shifts and allows different parts of the cells to become visible. Clinicians must then piece together the images to create an image of the RPE cells that is speckle-free, a long and laborious process when done manually.
Tam and his team created an AI-based deep learning algorithm called parallel discriminator generative adverbial network (P-GAN) that processed 6,000 manually analyzed AO-OCT-acquired RPE images, each paired with its corresponding speckled original. The network was trained to identify and recover speckle-obscured cellular features.
When tested on new images, P-GAN successfully de-speckled the RPE images, recovering cellular details. With one image capture, it generated results comparable to the manual method, which required the acquisition and averaging of 120 images.
With performance metrics that assess things like cell shape and structure, P-GAN outperformed other AI techniques, and NIH researchers say P-GAN reduced the processing time 100-fold, while producing images with contrast that was 3.5 greater than before.
By integrating AI with AO-OCT, Tam believes that a major obstacle for routine clinical imaging using AO-OCT has been overcome, especially for diseases that affect the RPE, which has traditionally been difficult to image.
"Our results suggest that AI can fundamentally change how images are captured," Tam says. "Our P-GAN artificial intelligence will make AO imaging more accessible for routine clinical applications and for studies aimed at understanding the structure, function, and pathophysiology of blinding retinal diseases."
"Thinking about AI as a part of the overall imaging system, as opposed to a tool that is only applied after images have been captured, is a paradigm shift for the field of AI."
Healthcare job growth in March outpaced the sector's 60,000 monthly average over the past 12 months.
The healthcare sector grew 72,000 new jobs in March, booking another month of strong job growth and representing nearly one-in-four (23.7%) of the 303,000 jobs created in the larger U.S. economy, new federal data show.
Ambulatory care and hospitals lead in job creation within the healthcare sector in March, accounting for 28,000 and 27,000 new jobs, respectively, while nursing and residential care created 18,000 new jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics March jobs report.
The healthcare sector has created an average of 60,000 new jobs every month for the past year.
The unemployment rate in the larger U.S. economy held steady 3.8%, BLS says, with 6.4 million people reporting as unemployed in March.
Big job gains in March were also seen in government (71,000), leisure and hospitality (49,000), and construction (39,000).
The average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls in March rose by 12 cents (0.3%) to $34.69. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 4.1%. The average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose by 7 cents (0.2%) to $29.79.
February and March job numbers are considered preliminary by BLS, and subject to revisions.
A digital platform developed at UPMC helps patients prep for surgery and speeds recovery.
Linking a health coach with a smart phone app providing perioperative instructions dramatically improves post-surgery recoveries and reduces readmissions, a new study from UPMC and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine shows.
The research, published this week in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, shows that patients who used the Pip Care digital platform – an app created through UPMC Enterprises - had hospital stays that were nearly one day shorter than patients who did not, and that readmissions were cut in half in the week post-discharge.
While numerous studies have already shown that surgical outcomes are better when patients comply with perioperative instructions, the study authors note that "ensuring that adherence is easier said than done."
"Verifying that this hybrid digital-telemedicine platform is both easy for patients and clinicians to use and significantly improves patient outcomes and satisfaction with surgery is a welcome clinical advance," says senior author Aman Mahajan, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at Pitt.
Several mobile apps have been launched over the past few years with varying success. The UPMC researchers say that Pip Care is the first to couple a digital platform with one-on-one telehealth coaches who check in with patients and coordinate care.
Pip Care connects with surgery patients early in the "prehabilitation" stage a month or so before their procedures and offers advice on nutrition, physical conditioning, psychological support, and quitting smoking. The app breaks down presurgical instructions into easy-to-understand daily tasks and the care coaches answer questions and keep patients accountable. Pip Care also coaches patients post-surgery, helping them understand discharge instructions, wound care and pain management.
Study lead author Stephen Esper, MD, associate professor of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine at Pitt, director of the UPMC Center for Perioperative Care, and an advisor at UPMC Enterprises, says prepping for major surgery is like prepping for a marathon.
"If you want to perform your best, you don't just show up and run. You have to train first and get your body ready for the stress," Esper says. "It's similar with surgery – by optimizing your health beforehand, you have a better recovery."
Methodology
Researchers compared 128 Pip Care patients who were scheduled for elective abdominal, spine or total joint replacement surgery to 268 peers scheduled for the same surgeries at the same hospitals who did not use Pip Care. The Pip Care patients were enrolled about two to four weeks before surgery and continued using it through four weeks after surgery.
On average, Pip Care patients remained hospitalized after surgery for 2.4 days, while non-Pip patients stayed for 3.1 days. Pip Care patients had a 49% lower risk of being readmitted to the hospital within a week of discharge, compared to their non-Pip counterparts.
The patients who received Pip Care averaged 6.7 sessions with their digital health coach, with 82% attending sessions at least once a week. In follow-up surveys, patients reported high – 4.8 out of 5 points – scores for satisfaction with the app.
"Many health systems are facing considerable staff shortages and one of the consequences is that clinical teams, who are dedicated to their patients' success, have limited time to provide focused, patient-specific surgical optimization," says Mahajan, who is also senior vice president of health innovation at UPMC Enterprises.
"By partnering with health systems and hospitals Pip Care is providing patients a sense of connection and a better understanding of their surgical journey, prompting them to actively engage in their health and those patients have better surgical outcomes."