A number of large insurers are laying off employees to cut costs following a drop in Medicare Advantage star ratings, which can cost insurers a pretty penny.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) phased out “disaster” provisions enacted during the Covid-19 pandemic to help insurers stay afloat, and this led to fewer plans earning the four- or five-star ratings needed to qualify for Medicare bonus payments, Healthcare Brew previously reported. The lack of added revenue can lead to steep pay cuts for insurers; CVS-owned Aetna expects to lose a maximum of $1 billion due to lower bonus payments, for example.

In response, insurers are conducting layoffs because they prefer “to find ways to take costs out of their own cost structure, including reducing headcount, and not really take much value away from their offerings as it relates to consumers,” Scott Fidel, managing director of healthcare services at investment bank Stephens, told Modern Healthcare.

Keep reading here.—MA

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Maia at [email protected]. For confidential conversations, ask Maia for her number on Signal.

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Mayo Clinic is planning a $5 billion expansion of its flagship campus in Rochester, Minnesota, and health system leaders claim it will “reimagine” how patient care is delivered.

Leaders from Mayo Clinic—which consistently ranks as the top US hospital—announced on November 28 plans to design a hospital with technology like artificial intelligence (AI) “infused” into it, which execs say will improve care delivery.

The expansion will “enable transformation by blurring the lines across hospital, clinic, and digital care to help our teams anticipate our patients’ needs, accelerate more cures, and greater connections to our patients,” Mayo Clinic President and CEO Gianrico Farrugia said in a statement.

Keep reading here.—MA

On Fridays, we schedule our rounds with Healthcare Brew readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

This week’s Making Rounds spotlights Roberto Garcia-Ibáñez, an allergist and the founder and CEO of Potens Allergy. The company offers his proprietary Circava System Therapy, an immunotherapy protocol that uses custom-mixed serums to treat a patient’s unique general allergies, allergy-related asthma, and atopic dermatitis, among other conditions.

Garcia-Ibáñez discussed the importance of innovating in the allergy treatment space—a specialty that he noted has seen little advancement or change in the last century.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about your background and work at Potens Allergy.

I am a physician, I’m an allergist and immunologist. For the last 20 years I’ve been toying with allergen immunotherapy because allergy shots are essentially, in my opinion, an archaic method.

Keep reading here.—SY

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Shannon at [email protected]. For confidential conversations, ask Shannon for her number on Signal.

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: About three in 10 adults (34%) in the US have confidence in the American medical system, according to a poll conducted this summer. (Gallup)

Quote: “I was ready to cry. I’ve got a hungry 13-year-old kid.”—Shelly Brost, a woman in Montana who has struggled to receive recertification for food aid amid bureaucratic problems related to Medicaid unwinding (KFF Health News)

Read: Powerful anti-abortion groups are allegedly pushing Republican politicians to support abortion bans, even if the lawmakers disagree. (ProPublica)

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