New Treatments To Help Patients With Chronic Illnesses Have Become Big Business
The New York Times reports that these types of medical advances have become a multi-billion dollar opportunity.
The New York Times: Even Small Medical Advances Can Mean Big Jumps In Bills
Traditionally, insurers lost money by covering people with chronic illnesses, because they often ended up hospitalized with myriad complications as their diseases progressed. Today, the routine care costs of many chronic illnesses eclipse that of acute care because new treatments that keep patients well have become a multibillion-dollar business opportunity for device and drug makers and medical providers (Rosenthal, 4/5).
In other marketplace news --
The Washington Post: Why Walk-In Health Care Is A Fast-Growing Profit Center For Retail Chains
CVS is fast expanding its Minute Clinics, exemplifying a trend of retailers opening health-care services to supplement traditional doctors’ offices. CVS, the largest retail clinic operator in the Washington area, has 800 clinics nationwide, and it expects to add 150 more this year and to have 1,500 clinics by 2017, or almost as many as the more than 1,600 retail clinics across the country now, according to the Convenient Care Association. Retail walk-in clinics are relatively new on the health-care landscape, dating to 2000. After several years of very slow growth coinciding with the recession and its aftermath, they are taking off again (Hamilton, 4/4).
