Union Healthcare Insight

In our latest post on key players in healthcare vertical consolidation, we delve into Elevance Health. As a later player to the vertical consolidation game, Elevance remains primarily an insurance business. But it has been making major investments across the past two years to bolster its non-insurance offerings. Read on to get our take on how successful they've been to-date—and what we're watching for moving forward: https://lnkd.in/gkhck86D

Our first webinar of the year is coming up next week! Join our team as we talk about where the smart money in healthcare is going. We will: ?? Reflect on what we learned from 2024 dealmaking activity ?? Discuss how investor priorities are (or aren't) shifting for 2025 ??? Talk about potential implications of the change in administration Interested in joining? ??? Thursday, February 27th, from 1-2 PM ET ?? Register now: https://lnkd.in/gxtPXW5V #healthcare #healthcarestrategy #healthcareinvestment

While it is often pointed to as the preeminent example of a platform approach in healthcare, the reality is that Kaiser Permanente's model varies by market. In California, a fully-owned and integrated plan-provider model has flourished, while Kaiser has yet to fully replicate this success in markets where it has a less dominant provider presence. The recent establishment of Risant Health (and subsequent acquisitions of Geisinger and Cone Health) appears to be a new attempt to replicate the company’s California platform approach—but it remains to be seen whether the organization can successfully transition mature, legacy systems to this model. In today's post (the latest in our ongoing series of profiles on key players in healthcare vertical consolidation), we break down Kaiser's historical approach in more detail—and share our take on Risant. Read more at the link below! https://lnkd.in/g_xHrekJ #healthcare #healthcarestrategy

Epic is a major force in today's healthcare industry, creating opportunities, threats, and constraints for a wide variety of healthcare players. At this point, all healthcare executives need to be conversant on Epic and related EHR market dynamics—including the non-technologists among us whose bailiwick this typically isn’t. Today's blog post is drawn from a recent webinar we did on Epic and the EHR landscape. We made this for Union's Strategy Bootcamp series; it's designed as a '102' for healthcare execs who may not be as familiar as they would like with this topic. Take a look to learn: - Why Epic is the player everyone has to be cognizant of (not always easy to do because it's an 'off the record only' topic for many insiders) - Some of the reasons why Epic is coming to dominate the market - The fact that integration with Epic is a must-have capability for third-party tech/service vendors—and how 'integration' can mean many different things - An overview of some of the controversies simmering about Epic's role in healthcare, especially the fact that it has become a de facto gate for any player looking to participate in healthcare delivery. Union members, you can download the whole webconference from the site - and, don't forget to sign up for the next webinars in the Strategy Bootcamp series! https://lnkd.in/eZmPHp-2

New Mountain Capital is excited to announce the acquisition of Union Healthcare Insight. Together with healthcare executive and New Mountain Executive Advisory Council member, Robert Musslewhite, Union’s next phase of growth will be supported to expand both its research platform and product capabilities. Please see the press release for additional details: https://lnkd.in/d9aNWksz

As Donald Trump begins his second term, we're sharing our predictions for what this transition means for healthcare rulemaking and regulation. Our latest post covers: ?? Finalized rules that may be subject to reversal ? Proposed rules that the new administration can tweak before finalizing ?? Ongoing payment and innovation models the new administration is inheriting ?? The principles that will guide new rulemaking in the future Get up to speed now: https://wix.to/uG23gFV #Healthcare #HealthcareStrategy #HealthPolicy #PolicyAnalysis

Just after the new year, in one of the first healthcare deals of 2025, drug distributor Cencora announced that it had completed its planned acquisition of Retina Consultants of America—an MSO of almost 300 retina specialists. But this isn't the company's first foray into the physician sector. This week's post talks about Cencora's approach to vertical integration, and what to make of their increasing interest in the specialty market. Read more here: https://wix.to/OBPsmyy #healthcare #healthcarestrategy #HealthcareLeadership #Cencora #VerticalIntegration

Exciting news from Union Healthcare Insight out this morning! We are thrilled to be partnering with New Mountain Capital for the next phase of our growth journey as we look to expand our membership, research, and resources to leaders across the healthcare industry. Looking forward to what's next!

The latest flurry of employer survey data is out. The verdict? Employer healthcare spending growth for 2024 was higher than normal—and surpassed employers' expectations. It is, however, what we at Union predicted would happen, for two primary reasons: ?? Rapidly growing pharmacy costs (and a tendency among employers to underestimate just quickly those costs were—and are—growing) ??? The lag time between rising provider costs and medical price inflation (due to the years-long nature of provider contracts) And in fact, these are two of the biggest reasons why employer healthcare spending in 2025 is expected to accelerate even further. In this week's post, we dig deeper into these cost drivers, and talk about how employers are responding. Read now: https://lnkd.in/ggpb6A9G #healthcare #healthcarestrategy #strategy #healthcarespending

From our family to yours, wishing you all a safe, happy, healthy holiday season!