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Jasper Health and its app for people who have survived cancer won the first Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute® Innovation Challenge.

The year-old company, based in New York City, has developed an app and platform that guides people through the experience of cancer survivorship. The app has biometric, medication monitoring and other features designed to help people who have received a cancer diagnosis to deal with the medical and mental health aspects of the disease.

Tim Patno, head of growth, said the Jasper has used social media to promote the app and benefited from digital equivalent of word of mouth. “The message has just been spreading because those who are using the product find significant value in it and are happy to share their stories,” he said.

The innovation was designed to foster a patient-centric innovation community. Projects and programs were judged by practicality, impact and forward-thinking focus. More than 20 companies competed in the challenge. Jasper Health was among the five finalists voted on yesterday by virtual and in-patient attendees of the 2021 Annual National Conference of the Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute.®

The prize for winning the challenge is a six-figure marketing and education campaign on the 

® and Formulary Watch multichannel media platforms. 

Jasper has just under 20 employees, according to Patno, but no revenues yet. Patno said the company is looking to enter into partnerships with payers, provider organizations and drugmakers. Yesterday, 

, a Dallas-based company that markets to elf-insured employers, announced that it had entered into a partnership with Jasper.

Patno said Jasper is aiming to become part of employers’ healthcare offerings by benefiting employees and reducing costs by, among other things, improving medical adherence. The current version of the platform allows patients to enter their medication schedule into the app. Patno said the goal is to eventually become integrated into electronic health record systems so medication schedules would be automatically entered.

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The new company has developed an app and platform that guides cancer survivors through the experience of dealing with disease.










Jasper Health Wins 1st PBMI Innovation Challenge

Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., is slated to deliver the keynote address of the 

Annual National Conference of the Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute

® (PBMI®) on Monday in Orlando, Florida.

Gottlieb will discuss the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, where it has fallen short and steps that can be taken to deal more effectively with future pandemics. His new book, “Uncontrolled Spread, Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic” is scheduled to be published on Sept. 21.

The three-day meeting is being conducted in a hybrid format, with some in-person attendance and some virtual. A wide range of pharmacy benefit topics will be discussed: contracting and industry relations, drug benefit design, best practices in cost containment, quality improvement, among others.

Other speakers at the conference are Kerri Tanner, RPh, Pharm.D., senior vice president, specialty product, OptumRx; Kim Diehl-Boyd, vice president, industry relations and government affairs, CoverMyMeds; Javier Gonzalez, Pharm.D., chief growth officer, Abarca; Paula Bickley, vice president of market access, Biologics by McKesson; and Doug Long, MBA, vice president of industry relations at IQVIA.

® is the official journal of PBMI® and will be providing coverage of the meeting.

The former FDA commissioner's presentation on Monday will kick off three-day meeting that will cover contracting, drug benefit design, cost containment and a wide range of other pharmacy benefit topics.

Gottlieb To Deliver Keynote at PBMI Annual National Conference 

The number of people covered by employer-based insurance dipped because of COVID-19 related layoffs, but public insurers such as Medicaid kept people insured, according to a 

 released earlier this month by Urban Institute.

The Institute’s Health Monitoring Survey focused on changes in coverage across three surveys: March 2019; March/April 2020, just after the pandemic caused a steep decline in employment; and April 2021, more than one year after the secretary of health and human services declared a national public health emergency.

Between March 2019 and April 2021, the share of nonelderly adults reporting employer-sponsored insurance coverage declined from 65% to 62.3%, a decrease of about 5.5 million adults. But the national uninsured rate was steady at about 11%.

Keeping people insured was Medicaid, especially in states that expanded coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

In total, the share reporting public coverage increased from 13.6% to 17.5% percent, an increase of about 7.9 million adults. In Medicaid expansion states, the uninsurance rate was near 8% across all three study years. In nonexpansion states, the uninsurance rate was higher in 2021 (18.2%) than in 2020 (16.5%) and 2019 (17.2%). People living in states that did not expand Medicaid under the ACA were more than twice as likely as those living in expansion states to be uninsured in 2021.

Those most likely to lose employer-based insurance were those with low and moderate incomes. Among adults with incomes at or below 138% of the federal poverty level, the share reporting public coverage increased from 54.6% to 62.9% in Medicaid expansion states and from 30.4% to 37.3% in nonexpansion states between 2019 and 2021.

The growth in public coverage reflects several factors, the authors said, including expanded Medicaid eligibility under the ACA and the stopping efforts to remove people from Medicaid under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which was a 

 under the Family and Medical Leave Act to provide emergency lead during the pandemic. This law was set to expire in December 2020, but was first extended to March 31, 2021 and then further extended to September 20, 2021.

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act has provided all states with a temporary increase in federal matching funds for Medicaid beneficiaries not in the ACA Medicaid expansion population.

Public insurers such as Medicaid, especially in states that expanded coverage under the ACA, kept people insured.

Report: Healthcare Uninsurance Rate Held Steady During Pandemic

The Medicare Shared Savings Program collectively saved Medicare $4.1 billion last year and $1.9 billion after accounting for shared savings payments.

It is the highest annual savings to date for the accountable care organization model that served 10.6 million seniors in 2020.

The accountable care organizations had an average quality score of 97.8% and 60 earned a score of 100%. The results are an improvement over the $2.6 billion and $1.2 billion in gross and net savings in 2019.

“Today’s data underscore the need for policymakers to do all they can to grow the ACO model and extend the program’s benefits to more patients,” Clif Gaus, Sc.D., president and chief executive officer of the National Association of ACOs, said in a statement. “We currently have the fewest number of Shared Savings Program ACOs since 2017. That trend must be reversed, given continued debate about ways to improve our health system.”

Additionally, in 2020 there was $390 in gross savings per beneficiary. And 67% of ACOs earned shared savings. In shared saving payments, ACOs made $2.3 billion. Three-quarters of shared savings-only ACOs produced gross savings and 55% earned shared savings. What’s more, 97% of at-risk ACOs produced gross savings and 88% earned shared savings.

More data demonstrate ACOs are lowering Medicare spending by 1-2%, which can be tens of billions of dollars of reduced Medicare spending annually.

ACOs played a key role in managing patient care at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and throughout 2020. The organizations were proactive in outreach to high-risk patients to keep them healthy, and established telehealth and remote monitoring and effectively managed home visits and post-acute care to reduce transmission of the virus.

The purpose of ACOs is to provide another method besides fee-for-service by holding groups of physicians, hospitals, and other providers accountable for the cost and quality of a particular group of patients. ACOs can share with Medicare savings earned if they meet a spending and quality metrics.

This is the seventh year in a row the program increased savings.

MHE Staff

Articles

Jasper Health Wins 1st PBMI Innovation Challenge

Gottlieb To Deliver Keynote at PBMI Annual National Conference

Report: Healthcare Uninsurance Rate Held Steady During Pandemic

Medicare ACOs Saved $4.1B in 2020