MHE January 2021

Eric Whitaker, M.D., credits influences in high school and medical school with his success. Now he wants to turn his new Medicare Advantage plan, Zing Health, into a training ground for Black and Latino health insurance executives — and has his sights set on unicorn status.

Managed Health Executive® editors Peter Wehrwein and Briana Contreras interviewed Kevin Ronneberg, M.D., for our “Meet the Board” podcast series. Ronneberg is vice president and associate medical director for health initiatives at HealthPartners, a nonprofit integrated healthcare delivery system headquartered in Bloomington, Minnesota. He has been on the MHE editorial advisory board since 2015.

Eli Lilly and UnitedHealth Group announced early last month that they are teaming up to conduct a “pragmatic” study of Lilly’s bamlanivimab, a monoclonal antibody developed as a treatment for COVID-19.

Collecting high-quality data is critical to addressing healthcare equity issues, according to Marcella Nunez-Smith, M.D., M.H.S., whom President-elect Joe Biden has chosen to lead a new White House task force on the issue.

Telehealth holds the promise of increasing access to care. But research findings concerning direct-to-consumer (DTC) telehealth, reported in JAMA Network Open last month, suggest that it might not be as simple as that.