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Troy W. Williams serves as vice president of Health System Partnerships for 

Developing a direct-to-employer product means fully understanding the market. What gaps in care or access can be filled? Is the health system brand and reputation recognized in the employer community?

The Case for Direct-to-Employer Healthcare Solutions

By 2050, it's estimated that 139 million people worldwide will have dementia, but by today's standards, 60% will be undiagnosed. It's clear that there's a significant gap in dementia detection and care, but what can your organization do about it?

Get perspectives from clinical leaders and neuroscience experts about the underlying causes and consequences of these gaps, practical opportunities to address them, and a proven roadmap that shows how leading health systems have successfully transformed their dementia screening and care processes.

Closing the Dementia Care Gap: Expert Insights and Proven Strategies for Health Systems

Dr. Brandon Smith says he has seen more people skeptical or resistant to vaccines in recent years.

Smith, the associate medical director of the Harriet Lane Clinic at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, says he has seen more vaccine hesitancy since the COVID-19 pandemic. But now, he’s seeing it more frequently.

“Definitely over the past year, I feel like, anecdotally, in our clinic, we've had more conversations,” Smith tells Chief Healthcare Executive®. “We've had more conversations, but also longer conversations too. I do want to say these conversations for providers aren't easy, and they do take longer time in the room to have.”

Vaccine hesitancy has been a growing concern of doctors, healthcare leaders and infectious disease experts, and it’s only magnified at the start of another school year. Doctors have been troubled by the uptick in families opting against vaccines, including typical childhood vaccines, as well as vaccines for Covid and the flu.

 on declines in vaccination. In the 2024-25 school year, 39 states had MMR vaccination rates below the target of 95%, a significant change from five years earlier, when 28 states fell below that benchmark. Last year, 16 states had MMR vaccination rates below 90%.

Dr. Gary Price, president of The Physicians Foundation, says the rising reluctance to get vaccinated is alarming, and healthcare leaders need to rethink their strategies of reaching patients.

“We've seen a tremendous erosion in vaccination rates, just as a simple matter of public health metric,” Price tells Chief Healthcare Executive®. “That's very clear, and it's unprecedented. We now take for granted the diseases we had declared had been eradicated just a decade ago, we're now having outbreaks of them. So something clearly has changed.”

Experts say doctors and health systems need new strategies to counter misinformation

Vaccine hesitancy and the need for different approaches

Addressing vaccine skepticism, without alienating patients

Doctors say they are encountering more misinformation - and disinformation - from patients

. Six out of 10 doctors (61%) say they met with patients who were influenced by misinformation or disinformation, according to a survey released last week by The Physicians Foundation.

Most doctors say they feel well-equipped to overcome misinformation from patients, but Price says some of that confidence may be misplaced.

“If we feel so confident in our ability to deal with this,” he asks, “why have vaccination rates eroded?”

Providers need to understand where patients are and engage patients in a constructive way, Smith says.

“For every parent who comes in, they might fall on a spectrum of accepting to hesitancy, to refusing vaccines,” Smith says. “And I think for us as providers, understanding where they are in that can really help us to then navigate some of these conversations and fully dig into really what some of the concerns may be, and to speak directly to misinformation.”

Doctors need to remember that virtually all parents want what is best for their kids. Some parents may not be going to reliable sources of medical information, but the fact that they’re looking for guidance anywhere is an indicator of how much parents are invested in the welfare of their children.

Physicians need to recognize that in their conversations with their patients, and their families.

“Even for families who are accepting of vaccines, I also want to say that there are legitimate questions about vaccines that can give a healthy conversation  ... And we as healthcare providers are educators to families, so we should be sharing about why the timing of vaccines are this way, or the importance of certain vaccines at this point in the child's life," Smith says.

Healthcare leaders say the federal government’s changes in vaccine guidance aren’t helping matters. With 

, a longtime vaccine skeptic, leading the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, critics say he’s creating more confusion and skepticism.

Kennedy has said on multiple occasions that he wants vaccines available for all who want them, but he wants to be sure they are safe.

But Kennedy has also changed guidance on the coronavirus vaccine. The government is no longer advising pregnant women and healthy children to get the coronavirus vaccine, and 

healthcare groups have sharply criticized that change

. The CDC says healthy kids can get vaccinated after a consultation with a doctor.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, says 

Kennedy has fallen short of providing unambiguous support of the measles vaccine

, even with the biggest measles outbreak in decades.

“If you look at the measles outbreak as one example, eventually he finally said, ‘Yeah, you should get vaccinated,’” Benjamin says. But he says Kennedy undercut that message by still advising people to talk to their doctors about whether it’s needed.

“He gave a degree of hesitancy about whether or not you should accept those recommendations,” Benjamin says. “And so that's created a great deal of confusion.”

Physicians and healthcare organizations also expressed alarm when 

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced plans for new research to see if any tie exists between vaccines and autism

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota is working to try and reduce confusion. Dr. Michael Osterholm, the center’s director, is leading an initiative known as the Vaccine Integrity Project.

 last week affirming the safety and effectiveness of the flu, RSV, and COVID-19 vaccines. In its review, 24 experts examined nearly 600 papers over recent years.

Osterholm told Chief Healthcare Executive® earlier this month that the center is looking to provide medical societies and payers with reliable data.

“We're doing the hard lift of understanding all the data that has been generated in the last several years,” he says.

 also issued recommendations on COVID-19 vaccines that differ from federal guidance. The academy advises that all children 6-23 months get the COVID-19 vaccine, along with kids between 2 and 18 years if they have certain risk factors. The group also says all parents and guardians who want their children to have the COVID-19 vaccine should have access to it.

 and is urging insurers to cover those vaccines.

Still, healthcare leaders acknowledge that they need to try different approaches to reach Americans who aren’t getting their information from reliable news sources. And most members of the public aren’t reading medical journals.

Osterholm says everyone in the healthcare ecosystem is wrestling with how to reach people.

“I think that the collective medical community and public health communities need to come together and strategize about what can be done,” he says.

Hospitals and health systems need to take different approaches to reach people in their communities. Price suggests hospitals can use social media to post information, but more importantly, establish a relationship with those in their communities, including some who may not be engaging with the health system.

“I think we need to understand that the fundamental way to communicate this information has changed if we want to be effective,” Price says. “And I think that same idea has to be applied to our public health messaging and communications. And I think doctors in their offices need help with resources like that.”

Health systems and public health agencies may need to look at helping offer guidance to the public on healthy social media viewing, and advice on how they can check AI-generated answers with reliable sources of information, Smith suggests.

Johns Hopkins is partnering with community groups and schools to do more proactive outreach. The system is also developing magnets for parents of newborns, he says. The magnets will spell out the recommended vaccine schedule for the child’s first four years. 

“We’re finding new ways to be proactive about misinformation and specifically about vaccines,” Smith says.

our conversation about misinformation with Dr. Gary Price,

 president of The Physicians Foundation, in the latest episode of “Healthy Bottom Line,” a podcast by Chief Healthcare Executive®.

Providers say they’re facing more misinformation and reluctance from patients about vaccines. Reaching those patients will require new approaches. 

Topic

Vaccine hesitancy: Doctors and health systems face more skepticism, and they need new strategies

The Supreme Court on Thursday tossed a lawsuit that once again threatened the Affordable Care Act (ACA), ruling 7-2 that Republican-led states who brought the case lacked legal standing to challenge the law.

For the third time, an increasingly conservative court left intact the law’s protections that require coverage for preexisting conditions, created Medicaid expansion, promote health screenings and preventive care, and launched novel, value-based payment strategies within the agency that manages Medicare and Medicaid.

The ruling comes as President Joe Biden has tried to build on the ACA and create new incentives for states that have not expanded Medicaid to do so, amid mounting evidence that having health coverage reduces mortality.

 and was joined by Justices Elana Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, as well Chief Justice John Roberts and two appointees of President Donald Trump, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The opinion focused on the fact that individual states governed by Republicans, along with individual plaintiffs, had failed to show “a concrete, particularized injury fairly traceable to the defendants,” and thus could not challenge the law on constitutional merits.

The latest challenge, led by Texas, began after Trump’s 2017 tax law eliminated the enforcement mechanism for the ACA’s individual mandate. On those grounds, the Republican-led states tried to assert that the entire law must fall, even provisions unrelated to the requirement that all Americans have health insurance.

Today, the Supreme Court’s majority found that the states failed to make their case that the de facto end of the mandate would cause them harm, which would create grounds to challenge the entire ACA.

“Unsurprisingly, the States have not demonstrated that an unenforceable mandate will cause their residents to enroll in valuable benefits programs that they would otherwise forgo. It would require far stronger evidence than the States have offered here to support their counterintuitive theory of standing, which rests on a ‘highly attenuated chain of possibilities.’”

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion, stating, "Although this Court has erred twice before in cases involving the Affordable Care Act, it does not err today."

An estimated 20 million people had gained coverage under the law at a peak in 2017, but there was some loss of coverage during the Trump administration. More recently, more than 1 million people signed up for coverage through the ACA under a 

 authorized by the Biden administration due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Rescue Plan reduced premiums, and additional proposals would make those premium cuts permanent.

While many legal experts had questioned the merits of the Republican states’ challenge, the addition of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett to the court raised concerns among the law’s supporters about what would happen once the case reached the highest court. Gorsuch and Justice Samuel Alito dissented, but the other Trump appointees ruled with majority on the narrower question of standing.

The latest challenge was argued in November, just after Barrett joined the court, and the defense was organized by a group of officials from Democrat-led states. Their leader was former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, recently confirmed as Biden's HHS secretary.

The ACA is now one of the most litigated pieces of legislation in history. It survived an initial challenge after its passage in 2010, although the court did reshape the law by allowing states to opt out of Medicaid expansion.

However, that decision ended up creating an environment for research comparing health outcomes between expansion and non-expansion states, and now data are pouring in that show how populations with health coverage benefit in multiple ways—those 

 who are able to manage their disease suffer fewer complications.

Veterans of the Obama administration who helped write and implement the ACA were surprised and pleased this morning, and said the decision opens the door for the Biden administration to improve the law.

“Bottom line—this is incredible,” former Obama administration policy official Kavita Patel, MD, told MSNBC. “It’s a chance for the Biden Administration to try to take back some of what the country lost when the individual mandate was taken away. … Not being a lawyer, I don’t think you could have a clearer path saying, ‘this is it.’”

“It’s not a close call in terms of the law, and not a close call in terms of who we are as a country,” said former Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt.

Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, now CMS Administrator with chief responsibility for implementing the law, recalled her work on its passage during her tenure with the House Ways and Means Committee. 

"Millions of Americans can breathe a sigh of relief following today’s Supreme Court 7-2 ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act," she said. "This victory assures access to affordable and comprehensive health insurance for patients and families across the country."

She pointed to the fact that 12 states have still not expanded Medicaid, but the Biden administration hopes that will now change.  "Through the ACA, and hand-in-hand with CMS, dozens of states have expanded Medicaid – bringing quality coverage to our family and neighbors who need it most. We will continue to partner with states because we know 4 million more Americans stand to gain access to quality health coverage in the remaining states."

Other supporters of the ACA also called for working to improve the law.

"CareFirst is pleased that the key provisions of the Affordable Care Act remain in effect and will continue to promote access to affordable health insurance for the individuals we serve and all Americans,” said Brian D. Pieninck, president and CEO of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. “CareFirst looks forward to continuing our work with federal and state policymakers to maintain and improve access to healthcare throughout our region."

Officials from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation called for an end of “meritless attacks against a milestone law. … It is time now for our nation to resume its path toward achieving universal health care coverage.”

Supreme Court Upholds ACA, Says States Lacked Standing

Hospital mergers are a prime target in President Joe Biden’s expansive executive order that calls on federal departments and agencies to reshape what he called a “booming” economy by putting workers first and ensuring consumer protections.

The order spans sectors from banking to transportation with 72 specific initiatives, including several that target healthcare, which is already undergoing upheaval amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated shortages of doctors and nurses, strained supply chains, and pushed veteran administrators into retirement.

“For decades, corporate consolidation has been accelerating,” a statement issued with the order reads. “In over 75% of U.S. industries, a smaller number of large companies now control more of the business than they did twenty years ago. This is true across healthcare, financial services, agriculture and more. That lack of competition drives up prices for consumers.”

The statement cited data claiming that mark-ups have tripled, raising costs for necessities like prescription drugs, hearing aids, and internet service—which became essential during the pandemic as telehealth became the only way to see a doctor.

Key items in Biden’s executive order include:

Empowering antitrust agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission, to address problems surrounding consolidation in certain industries, including healthcare, where mergers have left some rural areas with no hospital.

Making it easier to change jobs, including between states, by reducing occupational licensing requirements and limiting non-compete agreements.

Reducing prescription drug prices by allowing programs run by states and tribes that import drugs from Canada.

Promoting more procurement opportunities for small business with federal agencies.

The order creates a White House Competition Council the track progress on the initiatives and agencies’ response.

Consolidation in healthcare over the past decade—mergers of hospitals into larger systems, acquisition of practices, and vertical integration of health plans and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs)—has drawn fire from consumer and antitrust advocates who say the trend works against keeping down costs, especially when one looks at some individual markets.

The order directs the Justice Department and the FTC to examine guidelines on hospital mergers to ensure that patients are not harmed.

Recent trends also work against reining in the price of prescription drugs, because powerful PBMs can dictate which drugs appear on formularies, demand rebates, or impose fees. Just this week, a study by authors at USC’s Schaeffer Center found that Medicare overspent by $2.6 billion in 2018 on commonly prescribed generic drugs compared with prices charged by Costco.

Biden’s order directs HHS to do the following:

Support hospital price transparency rules and to finish implementing bipartisan federal legislation to address surprise hospital billing. This is significant, because many wondered the fact of the transparency rules imposed at the very end of the Trump administration.

Restore a rule from the Obama era that insurers selling plans under the federal marketplace, created by the Affordable Care Act, must have at least one standard design to serve as a benchmark for consumers to compare with other companies. This concept was scrapped under the Trump administration.

Directs the FDA, which is part of HHS, to work with states and tribes on safe import practices under the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003.

Increases support for generic and biosimilar drugs and allows 45 days for a comprehensive plan to combat high prescription prices.

Empowers FTC to ban “pay for delay” and similar practices that keep low cost drug or biosimilar options off the market.

Hospital Mergers Targeted in Biden Executive Order

People who are given opioids in the hospital for pain relief sometimes develop respiratory depression, a condition that occurs when the lungs fail to properly exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide, causing a buildup of carbon dioxide that can lead to a host of other health problems, from rapid heart rate to seizures; untreated, the condition can cause respiratory arrest, brain damage or even death.

Previously, the PRODIGY study found that opioid-induced respiratory depression is a problem in medical and surgical wards, and that patient monitoring is needed to prevent these cases when patients receive opioids after surgery—however, using tramadol or epidural opioids may reduce the risk.

 of the PRODIGY data has quantified just how costly the phenomenon can be in the United States. Published in 

and led by Ashish K. Khanna, MD, of Wake Forest School of Medicine, the study examined cost data collected from 420 of the 769 U.S. patients enrolled in the original study. The research team looked at the differences in the amount of health care use and costs for patients with and without at least one respiratory depression episode.

Patients who had at least one respiratory episode during their hospitalization ended up with longer stays—6.4 days on average for those with an episode, compared with 5.0 days for those without one. Costs were higher for those with an episode, too; $21,892 on average, compared with $18,206 on average.

In the earlier study, researchers had used a risk prediction tool to evaluate which patients were most likely to have respiratory depression during their stay. Those at high risk, as predicted by the tool and had at least one episode had higher costs compared with high risk patients without respiratory depression: $21,948 vs. $18,474.

The longer a patient stayed in the hospital, the more the stay drove up costs, “with the cost increasing exponentially” for patients with at least one respiratory depression episode as length of stay increased.

The study drilled down on individual factors that contributed to length of stay and, in turn, higher cost. “Use of multiple opioids; longer, high risk, or open surgery; respiratory depression; and medical conditions including chronic heart failure, hypertension, and sepsis, all contributed to increased length of stay,” the authors wrote.

The calculation method used in the study accounted for heart failure and a patient’s history of opioid use, and found that that both respiratory depression and length of stay continued to cost. Authors suggested their findings would be of use to payers and would point to areas where hospitals needed to implement quality metrics to reduce costs. Notably, the analysis excluded extremely high cost outlier patients; thus, the study reflects the differences “between typical general care floor patients with and without respiratory depression.”

The calculation method used in the study accounted for heart failure and a patient’s history of opioid use, and found that that both respiratory depression and length of stay continued to cost. 

Troy W. Williams

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