Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
In Rapidly Evolving Health Care Landscape, Traditional Borders Are Blurring
The Wall Street Journal: How Hospitals’ Woes Are Making Health Lines Blur
Hospital chains are responding to continued health-care consolidation with some vertical integration of their own. It is the latest sign that traditional industry borders are starting to break down. Four large systems, comprising about 300 hospitals in total, said this week that they are banding together to create a nonprofit generic-drug company. The goal is to curb shortages of commonly used medicines in hospitals as well as to pre-empt financial damage from sudden price increases on them. (Grant, 1/19)
The Star Tribune: UnitedHealth And Walgreens Are Mixing Urgent Care With Pharmacy
The tiny suburb of Hilltop, located just north of Minneapolis, is hosting an experimental mash-up of health care services that’s helping to generate buzz on Wall Street. Hilltop is one of more than a dozen locations across the country where pharmacy giant Walgreens has carved out space in its stores for urgent care clinics from MedExpress, a company that Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group acquired in 2015. (Snowbeck, 1/20)
