Akili Interactive, a digital medicine company that created the first FDA-authorized prescription video game designed to treat ADHD in kids, is ditching its current business model to directly sell its product to consumers, the company announced on September 13.

Akili has struggled to find success with its prescription model, reporting just $114,000 in revenue and $15.3 million in expenses in its August Q2 2023 earnings report. The company said in a statement that the new business model will reduce its reliance on payers “that stand in the way of patients trying to access treatment.”

The company has had trouble convincing payers to cover its product, EndeavorRx, which is the same issue that led Pear Therapeutics to declare bankruptcy earlier this year. Marissa Moore, an early-stage tech investor at Omers Ventures, told Healthcare Brew at the time of the filing that Pear’s situation was “emblematic of a lot of challenges that other digital therapeutics companies are gonna face.”

Keep reading here.—MA

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People enrolled in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans—or Medicare-approved private health insurance—are less likely to have emergency doctor visits or inpatient hospital stays than traditional fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare beneficiaries, researchers have found.

A newly released study from health software provider Inovalon and Harvard Medical School researchers compared healthcare utilization and expenditures, or the use and costs of services, between traditional FFS Medicare and MA enrollees.

Researchers found that MA beneficiaries—who account for just over half of Medicare enrollees and $450+ billion in total federal spending—had significantly lower health utilization and expenditures than their FFS counterparts. FFS Medicare enrollees also had higher utilization and spending than people with standard commercial insurance.

The study’s findings—which tracked MA and FFS utilization trends from two years prior to Medicare enrollment to two years after—offer new insights to health plan companies and policymakers and could “drive both quality and cost improvements,” researchers noted in a white paper.

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.

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 Gary Duncan, president and CEO emeritus of Joplin, Missouri-based Freeman Health System. The not-for-profit health system has three hospitals and 460 beds, and serves an area that covers more than 450,000 patients across Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

Duncan discussed some of the lessons he learned during his 15-year tenure as Freeman’s president and CEO—and his thoughts on why CEOs need to learn crisis management.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What were some of the things you accomplished during your time at Freeman Health System?

We started a heart program including open heart surgery that went from the ground floor to being the strongest heart program in the region. I think one of the most important things we did was put together the technical resources so that we could do deep dives into where there were opportunities or where there were problems. For example, someone says, “We have a lot of urinary tract infections in the hospital.” In the old days, it was kind of anecdotal. But now we can look and see, yes, in this area of the hospital, we have abnormally high urinary tract infections among patients.

And more importantly, the solutions are all there online. You don’t have to think up how you’re going to treat the patient. I think that was one of the things I took a lot of pride in—that we were able to tackle those problems and improve the patient care.

Keep reading here.—KW

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

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: Sixty-one percent of voters support an age limit for presidential candidates, with 30% saying age 70 should be the max. (Quinnipiac University Poll)

Quote: “We hope insurers will change their behavior going forward without the sticks, but we will continue to fully enforce the parity law.”—Neera Tanden, director of the US Domestic Policy Council, on new proposed rules that would force insurers to treat mental health care the same as physical (Politico)

Read: Neurosurgeons at a few hospitals are putting acrylic windows into the skulls of patients who have had a piece removed, allowing doctors to look at their brains without an ultrasound. (the New York Times)