0:00

This is the strategist in brief for May 8th, 2025. The Strategy Catalyst team conducted another round of secret shopping earlier this year, evaluating urgent care access at 53 health systems and four disruptors, American Family Care, carbon Health, MedExpress, and one medical. This week's key market dive summarizes the results and offers our top takeaways in our experience health systems that offer scheduling capabilities. Giving patients the ability to book a specific appointment or time window, provide a better user experience. 56% of health systems and all of the disruptors we tested offered some form of urgent care scheduling or time estimate, often in the form of a walk in wait time or position in line. Systems that partnered with specialized operators like GoHealth and Clockwise MD for their booking systems, had more streamlined interfaces that enabled our secret shopper to navigate to an appointment faster. 83% of health systems and 100% of the disruptors we tested offered cost estimates like scheduling. We see cost transparency as a competitive edge that can drive patients to competitors or retail clinics. And now our market scan a new state law in Arkansas, bans pharmacy benefit managers like CVS and Optum from owning or operating pharmacies. The law goes into effect at the beginning of next year. Okay. Arkansas could be the first of several states to take such action, and their experience could serve as a testing ground. The law creates an opening for health systems in the pharmacy space by eliminating major market players. In other News, United Health Group's stock declined by 27% following the company's first quarter earnings release, which showed higher than expected Medicare advantage utilization and a mismatch between reimbursement and costs for Optum. The company's efforts to address these imbalances. Could affect contract negotiations. United Health Group's relatively unique. Poor performance compared to other MA payers highlights the risks of partnering with a single dominant plan in your market. And now our final piece of news, A new American Hospital Association report highlights, factors, putting financial strain on hospitals including workforce shortages, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement headwinds, Medicare advantage and tariffs. The A HA is pushing back on perceptions that hospital systems are flush with cash in order to make the case that reimbursement trends are inappropriate. That concludes this week's edition. Be sure to check out the full version on the web@hmacademy.com. Thanks for listening.