San Diego-based Equip, which was founded in 2019, previously focused on those ages 6 to 24. The startup is now expanding to serve people of all ages, it announced Tuesday.

The era of remote patient monitoring is ushering in a new era of healthcare, characterized by data-driven insights, personalized care, and efficient resource utilization.

Telehealth Academy III, a conference exploring the virtual care delivery landscape, will be one of the highlights of an inaugural week of events organized in the healthcare provider hub of Nashville, referred to as Nashville Healthcare Sessions.

This week, virtual care company Babylon Health permanently closed its U.S. operations and laid off 94 employees. The news came after the company’s rescue merger fell apart — Babylon had planned to go private through a deal with Swiss digital therapeutics firm MindMaze and Babylon creditor AlbaCore Capital.

Daybreak Health — a startup that partners with school districts to provide children with virtual mental health services — recently closed a $13 million Series B funding round. The company has partnered with more than 60 public school districts since it began providing care in 2019.

Hims & Hers can now provide treatment to men for cardiovascular issues, the company recently announced. This treatment combines sexual health and heart health together in a single pill.

Virtual care company TytoCare recently raised $49 million in growth financing, taking its total funding to date to $205 million. CEO Dedi Gilad declared that his company was founded to solve a fundamental problem with traditional telehealth services: people do not trust them, so they do not use them.

Explore the myriad benefits telehealth offers to healthcare providers and patients alike. From enhanced convenience and improved privacy to streamlined workflows and elevated patient satisfaction, find out how telehealth is reshaping the future of healthcare delivery.

HerMD recently raised $18 million in a Series A-1 funding round. The company offers in-person and virtual women’s healthcare that focuses on menopause and sexual health. It is using its new capital to open more brick-and-mortar women’s health centers across the country.

OptumRx’s Chief Clinical Officer shares his insights on the latest developments and trends he’s seen in the healthcare industry.

An Epic Research study found that 16 out of 24 specialties had higher follow-up rates within 90 days of an initial office visit than a telehealth visit. This includes mental health, physical medicine and rehabilitation and pain medicine, which all had a more than 20% higher follow-up rate after an in-person office appointment than a telehealth appointment.

The series, part of a content partnership between HLTH and MedCity News, will share insights from executives from both public and private payer organizations based on developments and trends they’ve seen in the healthcare industry and what keeps them up at night.

Tuned’s new teen-focused solution, which launches Tuesday, caters to those aged 13 to 17 and will be offered as an employer-sponsored benefit. The program sends parents headphones and an iPad, which comes with two different hearing assessments.

Providence spinout DexCare recently closed a $75 million Series C funding round, bringing its total funding to date to $146 million. The startup gives health systems a platform that helps them coordinate and manage digital care services so they can better address the modern healthcare consumer’s demands for convenience and immediacy.

A new startup named Zuri Fertility recently launched. Its platform provides resources for patients who are trying to conceive — including telehealth, at-home testing, prescriptions, mental health services, education and care coordination.

Most patients prefer in-person care to virtual, according to a recent report. This finding should drive health systems to refine their telehealth experiences — they should determine which type of visits are best-suited for the modality, and they should ensure their virtual care environments adopt a more human-centric design.

Hospitals’ digital health adoption exploded during the pandemic, leading to many vendor contracts spanning three to five years. As these contracts reach their expiration dates over this year and next, a new report predicts that telemedicine platforms and remote patient monitoring tools face the highest risk of being turned over by hospitals.

Penn Medicine recently published a study on the economics of providing telemedicine — it showed that when the health system began offering virtual urgent care services to its employees, the visits ended up being 23% less expensive to conduct than in-person appointments.

It’s clear that services like telehealth and remote patient monitoring have potential to provide value within the healthcare industry, but hospitals and digital health companies need to show payers clearer evidence of the outcomes these care modalities can produce in order to earn reimbursement, panelists argued during MedCity’s INVEST conference.

Out of the $1 billion in Medicare payments to providers for psychotherapy services in the first year of Covid-19, $580 million were improper payments, an audit by the Office of Inspector General found. This includes $348 million for telehealth services.

The Drug Enforcement Administration received 38,000 comments on its proposed rule that would roll back Covid-19 flexibilities for the prescribing of controlled substances via telemedicine. In response, the DEA chose to temporarily extend the flexibilities, a decision telehealth companies like Bicycle Health and Mindbloom are in support of.

MedCity News connected with Global Health Leader at EY, Aloha McBride, to share details on the company’s upcoming survey on what consumers are looking for in value-based care.

Eden Health will join Hint Health’s Hint Connect platform, which is a network of independent direct primary care clinics. Through the partnership, employees of Hint Connect’s employer customers will be able to choose whether they want to receive care from a local DPC provider in their area (either in-person or virtually) or a virtual provider through Eden Health.

Amwell CEO Roy Schoenberg thinks the stock market has adopted a rather simplistic view of telehealth over the past year, reducing the care modality to a pandemic-era trend in which patients are no longer interested. But Schoenberg pointed out that providers are still committed to virtual care. Because of this, he thinks his company is in a better position to raise its stock price than others because it is partnering directly with providers to evolve telehealth delivery models.

The DEA recently released proposed rules that would require an in-person visit before a patient can receive a telehealth prescription for a controlled substance. The DEA touts the change as a way to ensure patient safety, but several telehealth advocates argue it will greatly disrupt access for those who need the drugs — especially at a time when the mental health and substance use crisis is growing.

ChristianaCare, a health system with headquarters in Delaware, recently launched a direct-to-consumer virtual primary care practice. The new service, which operates on a subscription model, was rolled out to help increase access to round-the-clock, convenient primary care. It’s currently offered in six states.

Virtual care company TytoCare has received FDA clearance for its wheeze detection algorithm, allowing the company to begin commercializing the product in the U.S. The new algorithm is an expansion of Tyto Insights, the company’s AI-powered diagnosis support software.

The healthcare industry is one sector that can never grow stagnant. It’s constantly being inundated […]

The $100 million deal between Transcarent and 98point6 is expected to close March 31 and is a combination of equity and cash, said Glen Tullman, CEO of Transcarent. Through the acquisition, Transcarent will gain access to 98point6’s AI-powered text-based technology, affiliated provider group and client base.

The collaboration, which was announced last week, is between Bicycle Health, Wellpath and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It will provide virtual opioid use disorder services to those living in the Bureau’s residential reentry centers in 42 states.