Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.

Healthcare Brew

Maia Anderson

Healthcare Brew delivers the latest news and trends in healthcare.

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A yellow piggy bank wearing a stethoscope

How Greycoft VC decides to invest in a healthcare startup

Sharla Grass, a health tech VC at Greycroft, walked us through her process.

How does a VC decide to fund a healthcare startup?

Shannon Young

A female nurse takes care of an elderly male patient

Debate over nurse-patient ratios heats up

Here’s what you need to know about so-called safe staffing policies.

An illustration of two hands, one holding a coin with a dollar sign and the other holding a heart with a plus sign

Hospital operating margins up slightly in November 2022

Lower expenses and increased outpatient revenue helped buoy facility performances.

Hospital finances fared better in November 2022, but they’re still down

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Healthcare Economics

 to be bought by private equity firm Sycamore Partners, and pharmacy experts are worried it’ll bring with it layoffs and pharmacy closures.

 last December, and Walgreens executives 

 in March they had signed a definitive agreement with Sycamore. As part of the deal, Walgreens and its subsidiaries are to be split into five separate, privately owned companies: retail pharmacy chain Walgreens, pharmaceutical wholesaler the Boots Group, specialty pharmacy company Shields Health Solutions, post-acute care company CareCentrix, and primary care clinic chain VillageMD.

Under Sycamore’s ownership, Walgreens will be led by CEO Mike Motz, who previously worked as CEO of Staples US Retail, a company the private equity firm acquired in 2017. Former Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth will continue to serve as a director, company execs said in an Aug. 28 press release.

Shane Jerominski, co-founder of the Pharmacy Guild, a pharmacy workers union 

 in late 2023 that represents employees at some Walgreens and CVS locations, told Healthcare Brew in an emailed statement the deal “raises serious concerns for pharmacy professionals and the patients we serve.”

“When private equity firms take over, patients and communities are too often left paying the price through store closures, reduced staffing, and prescription errors—all of which jeopardize safe patient care,” Jerominski said, also highlighting that Sycamore has no background in healthcare or retail pharmacy.

Sycamore’s restructuring of Walgreens “must not come at the expense of patient safety or the dignity of the professionals who keep our pharmacies running,” Jerominski added.

Cherokee Layson-Wolf, a professor in the department of practice, sciences, and health outcomes research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, told Healthcare Brew her biggest concern is how the deal will affect patient access to pharmacies.

For example, Sycamore may choose to consolidate pharmacy locations and rely more on central fill locations, Layson-Wolf said, which are facilities that fill and transfer prescriptions to pharmacies.

Walgreens has 11 such locations—the company calls them micro-fulfillment centers—that send prescriptions to more than 4,500 stores, Wentworth said in the company’s Q1 2025 earnings call in January. At the time, Wentworth said he wanted to get that closer to 6,000 stores this year.

More central fill locations could mean fewer pharmacies, which may affect patients’ ability to see their pharmacist, Layson-Wolf said.

In a statement released following the announcement, Jim Baker, executive director of nonprofit Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP), said the deal puts “patients, workers, and entire communities at risk” because of Sycamore’s record of 

, and cost cutting, which could lead to fewer pharmacies and “thousands of workers” losing their jobs.

 to close 1,200 stores, and PESP warned “store closures could accelerate under Sycamore Partners’s ownership,” adding closures tend to “disproportionately impact low-income, rural, and minority communities and can create ‘

’ where patients lose access to essential medicines and services,” according to the statement.

Since Sycamore acquired Staples, the company has shut nearly one-third of its stores in the US, according to PESP. If the same number of Walgreens stores close, that would mean more than 70,000 layoffs, the nonprofit estimated.

 in 2024, including 145 “mostly corporate” employees in January, 646 employees in March, an undisclosed number of roles in April, and 256 employees in December, we previously reported.

Healthcare Brew reached out to both Walgreens and Sycamore Partners for comment on the potential for layoffs or store closures, but did not hear back by publication. 

Walgreens private equity takeover may bring layoffs, pharmacy closures, experts warn

Some worry private equity’s business model may jeopardize patient access to pharmacies. 

Cassie McGrath

 to rise 9% in 2026, it seems employers and patients alike can’t expect a slowdown in spending anytime soon.

 have been proposed to establish price transparency about healthcare costs, so patients can know what they’re expected to pay up front.

Now, Trillium Health is giving a look into the numbers.

The healthcare analytics company published last month a 

 (2,659 hospitals and 3,491 ambulatory surgery centers across the nation) that provides some insight into these rising costs.

The report used data provided through the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) 

, a 2020 regulation that requires health plans to share out-of-pocket cost information and negotiated rates. The idea was to give patients information about how much they’re expected to pay before care is delivered.

But when payers started reporting this information in July 2022, the data was hard to sort through due to the “complexity and extremely large” files, 

, which monitors health spending, reported in February. Trillium Health sorted through the data, and ultimately found great variation in what hospitals, payers, and patients spend on the same care.

While patients who are publicly insured pay rates set by CMS, commercially insured patients’ rates are individually negotiated between insurance companies and providers. As a result, patients with different health plans get billed different amounts for the same procedure.

For example, the report looked at negotiated rates for six inpatient treatments like coronary bypass, bowel movement procedures, and hip, knee, and ankle surgeries. Among 101 hospitals in Pennsylvania, UnitedHealthcare’s negotiated rates for a bowel procedure involving a complication or comorbidity could cost anywhere from $18,066 to $87,457.

There was even price variation within some hospitals, the report found. At Tufts Medical Center in Boston, the negotiated rates for a coronary bypass involving major complications or comorbidities were $95,989 with Aetna and $144,204 with United, according to the report.

The report also found care largely costs less at ambulatory surgery centers compared to outpatient hospital departments (e.g., $1,179 compared to $3,633, respectively, for a colonoscopy). This difference in price presents an annual $4.5 billion in “potential savings” for colonoscopies at ambulatory centers, according to the researchers.

Here are a few other things worth noting:

US health spending in 2023 was $4.9 trillion, or $14,570 per person.

Spend in the US is 139% higher than Switzerland, which has the next-highest spend per person.

The report found “no observable correlation” between cost and quality of care at 10 providers featured on three 

Large scale pill with a price tag attached lays on top of the US map. (Credit: Anna Kim)

Report: Healthcare costs could vary greatly depending on the health plan

Trillium Health pored over CMS data and found great variation in what patients pay for care, depending on their insurer. 

Welcome back to Signed and Scrubbed, a monthly roundup of hospital deals, developments, and bankruptcies.

This month, UnitedHealth Group officially acquired home health company Amedisys, while Franklin, Tennessee-based health system Community Health Systems (CHS) sold off more hospitals after selling or looking to sell nearly 40 hospitals in the last five years.

We pulled together a list of provider transactions from August. Here’s the rundown.

On Aug. 20, Memphis, Tennessee-based Baptist Memorial Health Care signed a definitive agreement to purchase 96-bed OCH Regional Medical Center in Starkville, Mississippi, from the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors for $55 million. The sale would mark Baptist Memorial’s 25th hospital.

CHS signed a letter of intent on Aug. 6 to sell three of its for-profit Pennsylvania hospitals valued at $120 million to nonprofit Tenor Health Foundation, which helps distressed hospitals. CHS seems to be on a selling streak, announcing the sale, or shedding, of 39 hospitals since 2020, Becker’s 

Based in Flint, Michigan, Insight has walked away from a proposed deal with Hollister, California-based Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital on Aug. 13 due to “unprecedented uncertainty stemming from the recently signed One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” the system said in a statement.

The 143-bed St. Luke’s Des Peres Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, closed on Aug. 1 due to “pressures, making continued operation as an acute care facility no longer sustainable,” 

. The facility had treated patients in the area for more than 50 years.

Health giant UnitedHealth Group officially completed its acquisition of home care provider Amedisys on Aug. 14. The $3.3 billion deal faced a Department of Justice probe, and the two companies had to sell assets (164 home health and hospice facilities in 19 states) for the deal to go through.

Hospital building split in half collaged with briefcase and $100 bill. Credit: Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Adobe Stock.

Signed and Scrubbed: August 2025 hospital M&A

UnitedHealth officially closed its acquisition of Amedisys this month after a federal probe, plus other updates.

One of the most expensive problems facing the healthcare industry is drug shortages. They cost US hospitals roughly $900 million and 20 million hours of labor annually, according to a June 2025 survey from healthcare services firm Vizient.

A Florida-based nonprofit, Angels for Change, is trying to solve that problem.

Laura Bray, a former business professor, founded the organization in 2019 after being told that a life-saving medicine her young daughter undergoing cancer treatment needed was unavailable. Though she was eventually able to get it, Bray made it her goal to help prevent other families from going through a similar scenario.

“Our mission is to end drug shortages through advocacy, awareness, and a resilient supply chain,” Bray told Healthcare Brew. “Nobody was prioritizing it because of lack of awareness, and nobody was providing solutions like they were in every other supply chain, so we have to build that solution.”

In April, the Government Accountability Office 

 a report stating drug shortages are “a serious public health problem” and recommended the Department of Health and Human Services collaborate with other federal agencies to mitigate the issue.

Angels for Change is funded by various grassroots efforts, including an annual gala, grants, and donations, as well as partnerships with healthcare companies including Pfizer, Fresenius Kabi, and McKesson.

Angels for Change comprises four employees, including Bray, plus volunteers. Since 2022, the nonprofit has worked on more than 100 drug shortages—including for insulin, growth hormone, and the chemotherapy drug carboplatin—and has helped patients access more than 750,000 medicines, according to the organization’s 2024 impact report.

Angels for Change operates a “drug shortage hotline,” which anyone can contact for assistance navigating shortages.

The nonprofit typically hears from about 10 patients per week, Bray said, though it varies. For instance, in late 2024 when 

 wiped out a Baxter manufacturing plant that made IV fluids and caused a 

, Angels for Change received 60 to 100 calls every day at that time, Bray said, adding that they respond to everyone.

By the time a patient calls, Bray is usually already aware of the shortage, she said. But “if they’re the first one to notify me, the very first thing I do is I tell them that they deserve better, and I also validate that this is real,” she added.

Angels for Change staff and volunteers at a red table with pill bottles and pamphlets explaining their mission

Sometimes the process of getting a patient connected to their medication takes just minutes while others can take hours, Bray said. When a shortage is more complex, she spends time educating the patient on the circumstances of the shortage and gives them steps they can take to ensure they’re still getting treatment.

For instance, sometimes only one dosage or formulation of a drug is in short supply, so Bray advises the patient to ask their doctor if they can switch to an available option.

“There might be a shortage, but that doesn’t mean there’s an outage, and that is a big difference,” she said. “I’m showing them where they can find real-time, government-approved data that they can share with their physicians and pharmacists to advocate for themselves.”

The nonprofit has been successful at getting patients back on treatment 98% of the time, according to Bray.

In addition to helping patients access medicines already in low supply, Angels for Change tries to prevent shortages from happening in the first place.

Marta Wosińska, a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings Center on Health Policy, told Healthcare Brew that much of the work Angels for Change does centers on building buffer inventory of critical medicines in case a supply chain disruption occurs and setting up systems to allocate medicines to patients who need them most.

“I think that’s a niche place that Laura has been very effective in getting industry to collaborate on,” Wosińska said.

Hospitals reach out to Angels for Change to alert them of a supply disruption, and the organization works with various stakeholders to try to mitigate the problem before a shortage reaches patients, according to Bray. The nonprofit works on about three disruptions in an average week, she said.

Angels for Change also runs two programs, called Project Protect and Project GOLD (Generic Oncology Lifesaving Drugs), focused on tackling some of the biggest challenges in the drug supply chain.

Project Protect provides grants to US-based manufacturers to help them build flexible capacities related to drugs vulnerable to shortage, according to Bray. That way, when a shortage does happen, the manufacturer can start producing those drugs onshore and get them to hospitals, she said. The organization has so far given out 13 such grants totaling $434,599.

Project GOLD works with manufacturers to create buffer stock of medicines. So far, three drug companies (Cencora, McKesson, and Fresenius Kabi) have created additional supplies of six oncology drugs via the project, according to Bray, who said she hopes this kind of proactive work will put her drug shortage hotline “out of business.”

“One of the six [oncology drugs] has gone short, and so far there’s been zero interruptions during this shortage and zero patient impact because we were able to engage, and we had additional time and flexibility for that medicine,” she said.

Employees and volunteers from Angels for Change

How nonprofit Angels for Change is working to end drug shortages 

After her daughter was unable to find a life-saving drug, founder Laura Bray made it her mission to mend the pharmaceutical supply chain. 

How a nonprofit is working to end drug shortages 

Now that the Supreme Court officially ruled last week the Trump administration 

 in research grants as part of its defunding of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that started in February, universities and hospitals across the country are left scrambling to remain stable.

Healthcare and academic research rely heavily on NIH funding. 

 reported NIH funding drives the economy, bringing in $2.56 for every dollar of spent funding and supporting 400,000+ jobs across the country.

The UMass Chan Medical School laid off or furloughed an estimated 200 employees and cut its incoming fall 2025 graduate class from 70 students to 13 due to cuts, according to the institution. 

The American College of Obstetricians also 

 due to the administration’s anti-DEI push, which it said conflicted with its efforts to reduce maternal health issues.

Still, the White House is set on limiting money across federal agencies, proposing $27 billion in 

—that’s $18 billion less than before—in the Trump administration’s discretionary budget proposal.

Industry and philanthropic dollars can create a lifeline for some research. For instance, Robert Wright, ​​chair of the department of environmental medicine at New York’s Mount Sinai, 

 as an option for environmental health-related research, and the head of AI and engineering at Northwestern Medicine’s cardiovascular institute, Adrienne Kline, received $1.4 million in industry funding from Big Tech to 

. Kline called these industry partnerships a “godsend.”

Despite this, Heather Pierce, senior director for science policy and regulatory counsel at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), said there’s “no replacement” for federal government funding.

“It is hard to overstate how important NIH funding is to scientific progress,” she told us.

Philanthropic organization the Gates Foundation announced on Aug. 4 it would provide $2.5 billion through 2030 to support R&D in women’s health, specifically to address five areas: obstetric care and maternal immunization, maternal health and nutrition, gynecological and menstrual health, contraceptive innovation, and sexually transmitted infections.

Researchers at universities, hospitals, and biotech companies including health tech company Philips Innovation Center, biotech company Vedanta Biosciences, and Massachusetts General Hospital, all based in Massachusetts, will receive funds from the Gates Foundation, Rasa Izadnegahdar, director of maternal, newborn, child nutrition, and health at the nonprofit, told Healthcare Brew.

“Some of the challenges around women’s health have been longstanding. It’s been 

 for a long time,” Izadnegahdar said, noting this as one of the reasons the foundation wanted to pursue women’s health.

And that lack of research is “only exacerbated by the recent cuts in NIH,” he said.

“Our hope is that we create some enthusiasm and optimism in the space,” Izadnegahdar added, and “that others will join in as well.”

Other private contributions have also been made this year, like an $8.6 million donation from the local estate of community leader Donald Coldren to Pennsylvania-based health system WellSpan Health, where the late Coldren and his wife were once patients.

Philanthropic donations bring in an estimated 

 to health and science research, whereas NIH doled out $47.4 billion in 2024.

“It is a very complicated, very hard time in biomedical research,” she said.

Not only did researchers lose their funding but it’s been 

 released from grants that had already been awarded, and the application process for new projects has slowed down, she said. The National Cancer Institute, for example, anticipates it will only be able to fund 4% of grant applicants after October, down from 9%, 

“Our nation decided decades ago to create this relationship between academic institutions and the federal government that had a vision for advancing scientific progress,” Pierce said.

Further, she said other funding sources, like philanthropic or industry sources typically have a specific mission or a commercial end—such as the Gates Foundation’s recent efforts to fund research in specific areas of women’s health—whereas the NIH has been dedicated to improving scientific progress and health advancement broadly.

“There is no replacement for the federal government in terms of the breadth, the scope, the volume of research that it can and has and should fund,” Pierce said. 

Correction 08/29/25: This story has been updated to reflect the correct number of employees laid off or furloughed from UMass Chan Medical School in April 2025 and the correct number of incoming students.

Illustration of an open hand with a coin on the left and an open hand in a doctor's white coat with a heart that has a cross in the middle

Philanthropic, industry grants help offset missing NIH grants but cannot fully fill gaps

While the NIH is a driver of new medications, jobs, and economies, funding is still being cut. 

Nicole Ortiz

When talking about climate change-related health issues, 

And for good reason: There’s been an increased risk of illness or death from extreme heat in recent years, and heat is the leading weather-related cause of death in the US, according to the National Weather Service.

That’s why nonprofit Americares, which brings health programs and supplies to communities impacted by disaster and inequity, announced plans to expand its protection efforts for patients dealing with extreme heat.

In an Aug. 21 press release, the organization shared it will award grants to 13 free clinics and 

 (CHCs) so they can purchase supplies to help patients confront extreme heat, including air conditioners, ice packs, reusable water bottles, and more. The grants are part of an extension of the Climate Health Equity for Community Clinics program, which provides extreme heat and 

These are the facilities receiving funding:

Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless in New Mexico

The Broad Street Clinic in Morehead City, North Carolina

Coachella Valley Volunteers in Medicine in Indio, California

Community Health of South Florida in Miami

Miami Rescue Mission – Doral Clinic in Florida

Muncie Mission Ministries in Muncie, Indiana

Sonoma County Indian Health Project in Santa Rosa, California

St. Clair Community Health Clinic in Pell City, Alabama

Volunteers in Medicine in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

Further, in collaboration with CVS Health, Americares is planning to award an additional eight grants to healthcare facilities primarily in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, and Texas to secure supplies when there’s extreme heat in the forecast.

The 18-month-long pilot program will tap into weather data in an effort to cut down on patients needing hospital-level care for heat-related illness. According to CDC data, almost 120,000 emergency department visits were associated with health-related illness in 2023, double the record between 2018 and 2022.

“As heat waves become more frequent and intense, we’re taking action to protect those most at risk,” Americares SVP of Programs and Chief Medical Officer Julie Varughese said in a statement. “Healthcare providers at safety net clinics see firsthand how the environments where their patients live and work exacerbate existing health disparities.”

Graphic of a thermometer showing a very high temperature

Americares provides grants to help 13 clinics, community health centers combat extreme heat

As temperatures climb due to climate change, patients are at an increased risk for heat-related illness or death.

 are rapidly making their way into healthcare, Adrienne Kline is one researcher leading the way in development.

Head of AI and engineering at Illinois-based Northwestern Medicine’s Center for Artificial Intelligence at the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, Kline received $1.4 million in research grants in the last year from tech giants Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia to develop new AI technologies for both patients and healthcare administrators.

These companies regularly make investments into AI, with Microsoft pledging in January $80 billion to create AI-enabled data centers to train models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications globally.

With this funding, Kline spearheaded the creation of a medical deidentification tool called PixelGuard, which removes identifying data for safe sharing of sensitive health information. The assistant professor at Northwestern also led the creation of a multimodal cardiac platform, Project Corazon, which reads MRI slices to diagnose cardiac abnormalities.

Kline spoke with Healthcare Brew about how she’s used research grants over the past year and what she’s working on now.

While Kline was finishing her postdoctorate in the department of preventive medicine, private tech companies wanted to recruit her. She ultimately decided to stay in academia, though, because she wanted more autonomy to choose what she would work on, she said.

Since Kline was already on these companies’ radars, they contacted her with grant offers and gave her another way to collaborate on ideas she had. With National Institutes of Health funding cuts issued by the Trump administration (funding is 

 at Northwestern), industry financing provided her an opportunity to continue “really important” research, she said.

“Some of these industry partnerships are a bit of a godsend to continue to get your research pushed through and get your research published,” she said, which ultimately helps researchers try “to make a difference in the world.”

De-indeification tools, like the one she built, aren’t “sexy,” Kline said, but they are essential for protecting data sharing, including within hospitals or between industry partners.

PixelGuard does this for images, she said, meaning healthcare providers can safely share MRI slices externally, like, for example, with a health plan that wants to double-check it for billing purposes.

She worked with Amazon and IT company ScaleCapacity to develop the tool, which took about seven months from “pitch to deployment,” she said. 

Working with Nvidia, Amazon Web Services, and tech company Quantiphi, Kline also led the development of a program, Project Corazon that can read cardiac MRI scans and assess medical images “the way a radiologist would.” In other words, the tool uses AI to assist clinicians in making diagnoses.

Project Corazon is not ready to be used in hospitals yet, Kline said, but with the CDC reporting 6.7 million US residents over 20 as having heart failure, she sees the need to ease the diagnostic process.

After sitting in on a faculty meeting and hearing about scheduling challenges, Kline started drawing up plans for a new operating room scheduling tool.

When completed (she’s aiming for November or December), the tool will review items like surgeons, beds, and room availability as well as emergent patient needs to find the most efficient way to conduct procedures.

“We want high utilization, but we also want to ensure that our emergencies are handled without delay, taking into account people going on vacation or [getting] sick,” she said, “because that really ties back to hospital profit margins.”

Headshot of Northwestern's Adrienne Kline on a small blue cloud with darker blue stars nearby