Happy Monday Hospitalogists!

I'm sending today due to the holiday, and you won't be hearing from me on the 26. I hope you all have a restful holiday season.

One quick request: send me your favorite piece of healthcare content from the year. It can be anything - a longform, study, tweet, video...I think it would be cool to highlight different mediums and folks doing content creation / analysis in healthcare. PR people, sit this one out unless it's genuine. I can always tell when it's you :)

Hospitalogy's Greatest Hits from 2024

Blake’s Business Breakdowns

• Oscar Health’s pirate ship
• Tenet’s multi-year bet on ASCs and how it’s leading to outperformance for the for-profit health system.
• Commons Clinic: how to kill a health system in 5 easy steps.
• agilon’s no good, very bad start to 2024
• Sword Health’s $3B journey to becoming an AI care company
• The Ardent Health breakdown
• Ascension’s wild 2024: how Ascension is redefining itself in 2024 and beyond
• Reimagining Women’s health: Maven’s 10 year, $1.7B journey.
• From LifeStance to Zarminali: breaking down Danish Qureshi’s new venture in pediatrics with $40M in seed funding.
• CVS breakdowns:
  • Oak Street Health growth analysis
  • The CVS struggle: why it can’t get out of its own way in 2024

Sponsored deep dives: every month or so I partner with a company to write about their business model and the problems they’re trying to solve. They range from case study breakdowns to company visions. I really enjoy these because while they’re sponsored, I get to work on a 1-1 basis with passionate founders of companies and get an ‘inside’ look at how they view the world:

• PEP Health: Redefining care quality
• Care Continuity: the air traffic control for your health system and how they’re transforming patient navigation with AI
• Paylocity and their one-stop healthcare HR shop
• NeuroFlow’s supercharged behavioral health platform and how they’re working hard to prevent suicide.
• Medallion and how they’re partners for the long-term

Hospitals & Health Systems

• JP Morgan 2024 health system strategy breakdown
• The new, NEW utilization normal in 2024
• Breaking down the Northwell-Nuvance merger
• 113 of the largest health systems by 2023 revenue
• Jefferson Health - Lehigh Valley Health Network merger analysis
• HATCo - a marketing ploy or a serious health system transformation vehicle?
• Key emerging themes for hospitals in 2H 2024
• Mercy Health 2024 financial breakdown
• CommonSpirit 2024 financial and operating breakdown

Trend Analysis & Commentary

• Discussing the pros, cons, and controversy with private equity’s involvement in healthcare, including comments from Hospitalogists.
• Diving into health insurance revenue growth over the past 13 years.
• Return of the healthcare IPO in 2024
• My story on Done and Ruthia He’s overseas operations to create a pill mill and exploit ADHD
• Why healthcare is human, and always will be.
• Hims & Hers and the brewing GLP-1 compounding controversy
• The current state of value-based care enablement
• Diving into the Astrana - Awell partnership, how they’re forging a new category called CareOps, and how Astrana thinks about build/buy decisions.
• My HLTH 2024 recap
• 340B Breakdown
• On the UnitedHealth Group assassination
• Parth Desai and my predictions for 2025

Consider joining my community in the new year!

If you've missed my recent Hospitalogy emails and announcements, I recently revamped my community offering - including new pricing tiers and better benefits. I'm gathering a great group of folks and if you're working in health system strategy, corporate development or similar functions, the content and events are purpose-built for you to get and stay ahead.

MISCELLANEOUS MADDENINGS

Random personal anecdotes and musings from me

What a scene down in Austin for round 1 games. Kudos to Clemson and Cade Klubnik for battling back, but to be honest Texas controlled the trenches from start to finish. It was a Jaydon Blue legacy game with the 77 yard TD in the fourth, followed by yet another Texas D goal line stand. When will teams learn not to run up the middle on 4th and 1 against us?

Anyway, college football rivalries aside, I hope you all have a great Christmas. I have one more send in 2024 - my Hospitalogy 'wrapped' and then we'll hit the ground running with a 2024 healthcare recap in January. Stay safe, fam.

Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email.

— Blake