Worcester Business Journal

www.wbjournal.com • Worcester Business Journal • 2021 Economic Forecast 21 H E A LT H C A R E Ravi Ika Founder & CEO RxAdvance, in Southborough Ika runs a company taking on giants in a fast-changing and technological- ly complicated industry. RxAdvance is a pharmacy benefits manager that has already lured some of Amazon's workers from Express Scripts, and counts Walgreens and the health plan manager Centene among its biggest investors. RxAdvance, which is expanding its presence on Route 9, isn't so much a household name – few so-called PBMs are – but the industry is on the rise, and RxAdvance, which has 2 million pharmacy patients using its man- agement service, has low administrative costs including a largely automated management program. Ika has also found similar success before, with ikaSystems, a pharmaceutical payer platform company he sold to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan in 2015. Ava Collins CEO MetroWest Medical Center, in Framingham & Natick Collins was appointed to lead MetroWest Medical Center in December, though she's not new to running a hospital and has roughly 25 years of experience in the field. Collins, the chief operating officer at MetroWest's sibling hospital, Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, was Saint Vincent's interim CEO until a permanent executive, Carolyn Jackson, was named in 2019. Collins takes over at MetroWest during not only a critical time for hospitals in general because of the coronavirus pandemic, but for the hospital's Framingham and Natick campuses in particular. MetroWest is planning to remake Natick's Leonard Morse Hospital into a specialized behavioral healthcare campus. Its more perennial challenge, like a lot of hospitals near Boston's orbit, remains keeping patients close to home for the care they need. Parth Chakrabarti Executive vice chancellor for innovation and business development UMass Medical School, in Worcester Chakrabarti is new to the role, having started in early December, but the potential he gives UMass Medical School for new innovation and business development is clear. Chakrabarti held leadership roles with some major industry firms, including Amgen, Johnson & Johnson Innovation and Sanofi Genzyme. Partnerships, especially with higher education, are more central to how these companies like to operate. And the Worcester school should have more potential than ever in that realm, particularly with life science firms looking to expand westward from Boston. Three people in health care to meet in 2021 Health care will face new & old challenges e coronavirus pandemic will continue to rage in 2021, as the fallout creates financial crisis BY GRANT WELKER Worcester Business Journal News Editor I t's no hyperbole to say the healthcare industry had a year in 2020 no nurses or doctors have experienced before. e coming year won't be too different in one regard: the coronavirus pan- demic will remain a major struggle for at least the early months of 2021, depending on how quickly vaccines can be rolled out and how effective they are in providing enough immunization to the public. A continuing crisis e early months of 2021 might seem like deja vu compared to a year prior: packed intensive care units and emergency departments, and startlingly high coronavirus numbers. ere's reason for worry, with record-high case numbers before the winter even begins. But there's also reason for optimism: healthcare experts have been able to better treat virus patients, including through the help of remdesivir, an antiviral medica- tion, or convalescent plasma, which comes from the blood of recovered patients and helps those fighting the virus. Hospitalization rates have also so far not risen late in the year as the same rate as total cases, at least partially thanks to a younger demographic tak- ing up a bigger share of cases these days but less likely to have major health risks. The non-pandemic fight Coronavirus is rightfully taking up all the attention in health care. But there's a lot more else going on that worries industry leaders. Far fewer people were going to hospitals or doctor's offices for check-ups or screenings, or even emergency needs. e pandemic has caused major concerns with rising anxiety and depression levels due to worries about the pandemic, job concerns or people generally not being able to spend as much time with friends, family or co-workers. Among even other challenges, school-based health centers are having to scramble to provide care to students who need it at a time when public schools in Worcester and elsewhere are having to conduct classes remotely. Financial crunch Hospitals and health systems haven't just been in a public health crisis but also a financial one. Federal pandemic aid has brought more than $1 billion to Massachusetts hospitals to help them stay solvent. But that still wasn't enough to bring most hospitals to a break-even point, with facilities le without many of the appointments and procedures that bring in a bulk of their revenue. Many of those appointments may take place aer the pandemic ends, but in the meantime, healthcare workers – who've already carried so much of the burden of the pandem- ic – could be in danger of job loss. W W UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester set up a coronavirus testing tent at its University Campus early in the pandemic. PHOTO/EDD COTE

• Cover