This is a solid article about rising benefits costs, but we think the comments about “Delayed and Deferred Care” should be a wake-up call for all employers . Anyone keeping track of worker’s true out-of-pocket cost to engage with the health care system knows these costs keep workers from accessing care until health issues are serious. By that point, workers are missing work, losing wages, and no-one wins. In our own research, 50% of workers polled called this issue out. Read the Included Health article here.

Solid research from our friends at GEM Sleep about the very real costs of Obstructive Sleep Apnea. Remarkable that a condition that affects nearly 20% of working American men and women gets so little attention. Yet the ROI on treating this condition should make sleep therapy a must-have option for Employer health care benefits plans. Read more of GEM Sleep’s research here.

Self-driving cars are now common across major US cities, why not Ai-enhanced healthcare pods? Are we ready to walk into an automated cube for a check-up? Forward and their impressive roster of investors think we are. Read about it here.

Sometimes it’s what you don’t know that leads to a significant breakthrough.  The journey from “it’s just not done that way” to “this makes just too much sense to do it any other way” can be a rocky one.

Virtual Care Insights is meant to assist in this journey by highlighting ideas and initiatives that  “bend the curve” in favor of lower healthcare costs and better health services access.  Some of the content posted here will be highly practical, some conceptual, and some provocative. Our goal is that all of the content you find here will be useful.

We’ve been through our share of innovation cycles both inside and outside of healthcare to understand that some “innovations” are just not very good ideas to begin with.  The hype-cycle in virtual healthcare is alive and well, and we hope the radar we’ve developed regarding innovation’s essential trade-offs will be of some value here.

No endorsements or criticisms of the people or companies or ideas we highlight should be assumed.  We’re just pointing out things that to us, as operators and technologists, seem to be worth knowing for those working in an around the virtual care sector.

Each posting will be introduced with some brief commentary intended to provide context and, occasionally, our point of view.  

Thanks for reading.