An official who works for the largest health maintenance organization operating in OC recently visited an unusual forum to talk health trends: an investment bank that covers some of its for-profit competitors.
Bill Caswell, senior vice president of operations and chief operating officer of Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente’s Southern California region, met with Boston-based investment bank Leerink Swann LLC to discuss various topics, such as usage trends, insurance exchanges, and how healthcare delivery is being transformed under healthcare reform.
Kaiser has 470,000 Orange County members, according to the Business Journal’s 2013 HMO list. Its hospitals are on La Palma Avenue in Anaheim and Sand Canyon Avenue in Irvine.
Leerink managed care analyst Ana Gupte shared highlights of Caswell’s talk in a report.
Among the findings:
• Kaiser hasn’t observed upticks in the volume of its members’ healthcare usage directly resulting from the economic recovery.
“This is an especially interesting dynamic given [Kaiser’s] high degree of vertical integration, as its captive provider network offers earlier visibility into any such upticks as compared to other health insurers that must wait for lagging claims data to reveal such indication.”
• Consolidation is accelerating as a strategic response to healthcare delivery system reform, which is an “unintended consequence” of the Affordable Care Act.
Caswell told Gupte he expects smaller providers and health plans “could combine to create a larger footprint … over time, likely to look for ways to deliver value to small, medium and large employers.”
Some of that has already taken place in Orange County among Kaiser competitors. One example is the creation of St. Joseph Hoag Health, an alliance of Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian and St. Joseph Health. Other alliances include MemorialCare Health System working with UC Irvine Medical Center.
Company Takes Incubator Space
TechPortal Orange, which incubates medical device makers, recently leased laboratory space at its UC Irvine Medical Center location to Santa Ana-based Abbott Medical Optics Inc.
Abbott Medical researchers will work with ophthalmologists from the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute at UCI to conduct preclinical research on new vision-care products.
Abbott Medical, formerly Advanced Medical Optics, offers a range of cataract, refractive and eye-care products, including laser vision correction.
The device maker is taking 900 square feet at TechPortal Orange, which opened in 2011 and is modeled after TechPortal, an incubator in UCI’s California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.
“The biomedical research facilities available are among the best in Orange County. This partnership allows Abbott to work closely with the UC Irvine department of ophthalmology to accelerate ophthalmic research and product development to deliver new innovations that preserve or restore sight,” Dr. M.K. Raheja, Abbott Medical’s global head of cataract research and development, said in a news release.
Masimo Introduces Monitor
Irvine-based Masimo Corp. received Food and Drug Administration clearance for its new Root patient monitor in late June.
Root includes features such as connectivity with devices such as intravenous pumps, ventilators, hospital beds and other patient monitors. It also includes a module for the measurement of concentration or of partial pressure of carbon dioxide in lung gases.
Masimo said in a news release that Root is also designed to allow other companies to implement their own measurements. The company is known for its work with other patient monitoring companies as an original equipment manufacturer.
Bits & Pieces
NextGen Healthcare Information Systems LLC and Mirth LLC, subsidiaries of Irvine-based Quality Systems Inc., introduced NextGen Share, software that allows clients to connect with other healthcare providers who don’t use NextGen products. … Alpharetta, Ga.-based Medicast, which makes an iPhone application allowing users to request doctor house calls, launched in Orange County. … Anaheim-based CleanCut Technologies LLC received a bronze medal in the medical product packaging, graphic instruction and labeling system category of the 2014 Medical Design Excellence Awards presented by UBM Canon and trade publication Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry. It received the medal for its dispenser integrated system kit.
