In recent years, direct-to-consumer (DTC) healthcare startups have disrupted the status quo by allowing patients to pay for same-day prescriptions in cash rather than going through insurance.

Now, some are teaming up with traditional healthcare providers.

On June 9, New York-based health system Mount Sinai and digital women’s and sexual health company Wisp announced a joint program, covered by most private insurances, that aims to prescribe HIV prevention drug PrEP fully via telehealth.

This is Wisp’s first large-scale partnership with a health system and the first time it will offer a program that’s covered by insurance, Wisp CEO Monica Cepak told Healthcare Brew. But the DTC company hopes to do more of both in the future, she added, because Wisp customers have told the company they’d prefer an “ecosystem of care with a single sign-on experience.”

Read more about the partnership here.—CC

Signing in to your Facebook or your email? Even a MyChart account? You’re likely not simply typing in just a username and password anymore. You’re probably also getting a text or email to confirm it’s really you.

This process is pretty standard nowadays, as multi-factor authentication (MFA) has become a baseline cybersecurity protection. But surprise, surprise, the federal government—specifically the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)—is only just catching up

The HIPAA Security Rule, established in 2005, is expected to be updated any day now to require MFA, encryption, continuous monitoring of systems for “anomalous activity,” and regular testing following all the cyberattacks of 2015.

In an industry with access to sensitive patient information that’s often targeted by hackers (an estimated 700 breaches affecting at least 500 people get reported each year, according to the HIPAA Journal), experts told Healthcare Brew they’re happy HIPAA is finally catching on but say it still has a long way to go to meet modern security standards, especially in the AI age.

Privacy measures are catching up, but is it too late?—CM

Affordable drugs can be a game changer for hospital budgets (see the ongoing fight over 340B). But for rural hospitals, which tend to have less financial wiggle room, saving on drugs can be even more significant.

The Civica Foundation, the nonprofit arm of generic drug company Civica Rx, and family philanthropy organization the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust are teaming up to make medications more affordable for these critical providers. On May 7, with a $3.2 million grant from the trust, they launched the Civica Rural Hospital Program, a pilot that will pool rural hospitals’ purchasing power to connect them with cheaper generics, according to a press release.

“We hope to demonstrate that this works within our nine-state footprint…so hopefully the rest of rural America [has a] viable process to purchase these generic drugs,” Walter Panzirer, a trustee and grandson of Leona Helmsley, told Healthcare Brew.

See more on the grant here.—CM

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