For patients living in rural areas, it can be hard to find a primary care doctor, let alone a specialty care provider like a cardiologist or obstetrician.

Roughly 77% of rural counties are considered care deserts, and about 46 million people in the US live in rural areas, according to the National Rural Health Association (NRHA). Rural residents tend to travel farther to access care, with a 2022 study showing that these patients travel an average of 120% more miles per trip—nearly 10 miles more—than urban residents.

But experts say certain measures, such as incentivizing physicians to work in these areas and simplifying the specialty referral process, could help reduce disparities.

“Rural residents face more barriers to accessing specialty care of nearly every type,” Carrie Henning-Smith, co-director of the University of Minnesota’s rural health program and deputy director of the university’s Rural Health Research Center, told Healthcare Brew. “If you look at the workforce data, there are fewer specialists per capita in rural areas than there are in urban areas, and that’s true for pretty much every healthcare specialty you might be looking at.”

Keep reading here.—MA

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Epic Healthcare is being sued for “monopolist” practices, defamation, and libel.

Health data startup Particle Health filed an 81-page antitrust lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against the provider on September 23. Particle accused Epic—a growing electronic health record (EHR) and payer platform that holds more than 35% market share—of having monopoly power and trying to become the only payer platform available to hospitals and doctors’ offices by crushing the competition.

Payer platforms like Particle Health’s allow health insurance providers to access patient medical records directly from a healthcare provider’s EHR platform and run analytics on their customers’ health trends. Particle’s website says its platform contains more than 320 million patient records.

Epic, which stores medical records for more than 325 million patients, according to its website, created a payer platform of its own called Epic Payer Platform in 2021.

“The impact on Particle of Epic’s anticompetitive conduct has been severe and threatens its very existence,” the startup claimed in the suit. “If left unfettered, Epic’s conduct will snuff out meaningful competition in the still-fledgling payer platform market.”

Keep reading here.—CC

Medication prices are often cited as the main reason healthcare is so expensive, with an August study predicting that costs will rise another 3.8% within the next year.

If you zoom in on in vitro fertilization (IVF) medications, the numbers are even worse. In fact, a new report from drug discount company GoodRx has found that drug prices overall have risen 37% and the cost of IVF meds has jumped 84% in the last 10 years.

In 2014, the average cost for IVF medications was $696.85. Today, the average cost is $1,279.20, Tori Marsh, director of research at GoodRx, told Healthcare Brew.

“A lot of these medications are not covered by insurance,” Marsh told Healthcare Brew. “What that means is [IVF patients are] going to be exposed to these really high list prices, and so that’s why we wanted to zoom in on IVF. We wanted to see how much prices were climbing, really, as a proxy, to understand how impacted those who are going through this process are in terms of affordability.”

Keep reading here.—CM

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