Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day twenty one
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today, in a
Speaker 1: lockdown world, doctors need to help patients without seeing them
Speaker 1: in person. It's opening up a whole new chapter for
Speaker 1: companies who specialize in remote medicine. But first today's news.
Speaker 1: The White House and Congressional Democrats are preparing for a
Speaker 1: fourth round of economic stimulus to get the US through
Speaker 1: its coronavirus outbreak. This comes after Congress past a two
Speaker 1: trillion dollar bill last Friday. White House officials have compiled
Speaker 1: requests from government agencies totaling roughly six hundred billion dollars,
Speaker 1: according to people familiar with the matter. The proposals include
Speaker 1: more state aid, as well as financial assistance for mortgage
Speaker 1: markets and travel industries. Trump said in a tweet on
Speaker 1: Tuesday that timing is good for a massive infrastructure bill
Speaker 1: because interest rates are close to zero. Nancy Pelosi had
Speaker 1: said last week infrastructure should be part of the next
Speaker 1: stimulus bill. The economy is going to be hit even
Speaker 1: harder by this outbreak than expected, says Goldman Sachs. The
Speaker 1: firm came out with a report today saying GDP will
Speaker 1: shrink by over a third in the second quarter they
Speaker 1: had previously estimated and already staggering twent contraction. Goldman said
Speaker 1: unemployment would hit fift percent by the middle of the year.
Speaker 1: The good news. They also think the economy will come
Speaker 1: back faster than expected in the third quarter, predicting growth
Speaker 1: of Anthony Fauci, the US government's top infectious disease x
Speaker 1: said on CNN that he's starting to see glimmers that
Speaker 1: social distancing might be slowing the spread of the pathogen,
Speaker 1: but he warned that the situation is still very dangerous.
Speaker 1: You're starting to see that the daily increases are not
Speaker 1: in that steep incline. They're starting to be able to
Speaker 1: possibly flatten out. I mean again, you you look at
Speaker 1: it carefully, hope it's going in the right direction. But
Speaker 1: that's what we really are trying to attain. Despite that
Speaker 1: careful optimism, the numbers still look bad, both in the
Speaker 1: US and around the world. In Europe, most places are
Speaker 1: still seeing alarming numbers of cases and deaths. Spain suffered
Speaker 1: its deadliest day of the pandemic, and European governments doubled
Speaker 1: down on efforts to maintain rigid lockdowns amid tentative signs
Speaker 1: that the infection rate was slowing. Italy and the Netherlands
Speaker 1: are discussing prolonging measures to limit personal contact, and German
Speaker 1: officials warned that it's too soon to ease restrictions because
Speaker 1: things could still get worse. And now today's main story
Speaker 1: the doctors we can't see around the country and the world.
Speaker 1: More and more people are locked in their homes, but
Speaker 1: people still need to see the doctor. That has made
Speaker 1: telehealth companies businesses that let doctors treat patients remotely, the
Speaker 1: new stars of the COVID nineteen economy. And I'm not
Speaker 1: just talking about companies that offer an alternative to an
Speaker 1: urgent care clinic if you've got the flu. Companies that
Speaker 1: until now have mainly offered prescriptions for birth control or
Speaker 1: hair loss pills are pivoting to provide services related to
Speaker 1: the pandemic. Telehealth has been trying to become a mainstream
Speaker 1: alternative to brick and mortar doctor's offices for years. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Health reporter Kristen V. Brown words that these companies hope
Speaker 1: this moment will be their chance. About two weeks ago,
Speaker 1: an email that struck me as really kind of funny
Speaker 1: landed in my inbox. Ne Rex, the San Francisco startup
Speaker 1: best known for selling birth control online, was launching their
Speaker 1: own coronavirus test. Ne Rex is one of a bunch
Speaker 1: of Silicon Valley funded healthcare startups that promised really fast,
Speaker 1: really cheap healthcare online. You basically text with a doctor
Speaker 1: and then a few days later your prescription shows up.
Speaker 1: Suffice it to say, addressing a global pandemic seemed like
Speaker 1: kind of a big leap from the pill. But with
Speaker 1: so many people encouraged to stay home, it seems like
Speaker 1: telehealth is finally poised to have its moment everybody wants in.
Speaker 1: Charles Jones is chairman and CEO of MPD Live. He
Speaker 1: says business has nearly doubled in re and weeks. People
Speaker 1: who were going to see their physician for regular medical
Speaker 1: needs are now coming to us. People who want to
Speaker 1: the emergency room are now coming to us. People who
Speaker 1: want to urgent care are now coming to us. It's
Speaker 1: not the virus itself, the quantities that we're seeing increases.
Speaker 1: It's people who I would judge want to avoid the
Speaker 1: contagion environments for for the virus. Telehealth is a young
Speaker 1: field that originally caught on is a way to bring
Speaker 1: healthcare to remote areas, but it's increasingly viewed as a
Speaker 1: way to also relieve pressure on the American healthcare system. Now,
Speaker 1: with the coronavirus straining every part of that system, companies
Speaker 1: like Ners think this might be telehealth moment to prove
Speaker 1: its worth. The argument for telehealth is that it allows
Speaker 1: people who say just have the flu, to not crowd
Speaker 1: urgent care centers and potentially get other people sick. It
Speaker 1: also lets doctors easily see hundreds of patients in a week.
Speaker 1: In many cases, doctors can figure out what's wrong and
Speaker 1: write a prescription without you ever having to leave your couch.
Speaker 1: In some cases, telehealth companies have actually even been overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by the sergeant business. Empty Live has been around for
Speaker 1: more than a decade, providing things like urgent care services online.
Speaker 1: A lot of companies, including Bloomberg, offer it as part
Speaker 1: of their health care plans. Charles says the coronavirus is
Speaker 1: going to have a long term impact that makes telehealth
Speaker 1: popular even after all of this is over. It isn't
Speaker 1: to say that medicine can't be what it used to be.
Speaker 1: It's to say medicine needs to be something different. It's
Speaker 1: just not going to be capable of handling all the demand.
Speaker 1: We also know that servicing health needs early tends to
Speaker 1: curtail the total cost of delivery and and speeds a
Speaker 1: patient to health sooner. So this is this is a
Speaker 1: perfect storm that will have consequences, but they might actually
Speaker 1: be really good for the industry. It's patients and for
Speaker 1: that matter, it's providers. Charles thinks it could even result
Speaker 1: in permanent changes to regulations. Already, the Trump administration has
Speaker 1: relaxed certain ones on an emergency basis to make virtual
Speaker 1: care more accessible, like expanding Medicare coverage. Some states have
Speaker 1: also made it easier for doctors to get licensed in
Speaker 1: order to allow them to see patients remotely. These kinds
Speaker 1: of regulatory hurdles have definitely been one thing standing in
Speaker 1: the way of industry growth. Telehealth is governed by a
Speaker 1: thicket of regulations. They're different in every state and often
Speaker 1: not very clear. It seemed like suddenly government and industry
Speaker 1: were on the same page. With so much more demand
Speaker 1: pouring in. Ner X wasn't the only venture backed company
Speaker 1: to think there might be a good opportunity here. Hymns,
Speaker 1: which is in the generic Viagra game, launched a primary
Speaker 1: care service to help relieve pressure on urgent care centers
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by COVID nineteen. One of its competitors, Roman launched
Speaker 1: an online symptom assessment tool, and everly Well, a company
Speaker 1: most well known for its food sensitivity tests, also announced
Speaker 1: plans for coronavirus tests. Chris Hall, a clinical advisor to direx,
Speaker 1: says the company's business model made it easy to meet
Speaker 1: the growing demand for test kits. I think as the
Speaker 1: initial outcry about the lack of testing became more and
Speaker 1: more pronounced, we realized that we had a solution for
Speaker 1: folks who were increasingly being asked to stay in their homes. So,
Speaker 1: just prior to the time when the shelter in place
Speaker 1: announcements in major cities uh AND and other public health
Speaker 1: announcements about the importance of social distancing, that's when we realize, Hey,
Speaker 1: if patients are going to be stuck at home, then
Speaker 1: why not facilitate getting them a test hit right where
Speaker 1: they are, which is at home. But it turns out
Speaker 1: that regulators still might not move quite as fast as
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. One day after Nerk's launched its test, they
Speaker 1: were forced to pull it off the market. Regulators said
Speaker 1: they were concerned about how effective the tests were. They
Speaker 1: said that at home consumer test kits didn't get the
Speaker 1: same emergency exemptions that other ones do. To be honest,
Speaker 1: I wasn't all that surprised by this. Even as regulators
Speaker 1: have slowly embraced the idea that patients can receive certain
Speaker 1: kinds of medical treatment at home, startups like Nerk's have
Speaker 1: attracted some criticism. Some in the medical community think they're
Speaker 1: exploiting regular tory gray areas and making it perhaps too
Speaker 1: easy for customers to get their hands on prescriptions. Ner
Speaker 1: X already offers an at home HIV test, but with
Speaker 1: the home coronavirus test, it does seem like there could
Speaker 1: be a lot of things to potentially go wrong. With
Speaker 1: the disease already spreading at an alarming rate, a false
Speaker 1: negative test could have devastating consequences, But it seems likely
Speaker 1: that the FDA will approve and at home coronavirus tests
Speaker 1: and potentially soon. In the US, there is a huge
Speaker 1: shortage of tests and a need for people who aren't
Speaker 1: very sick to seek treatment at home. Chris Hall says
Speaker 1: that's a gap that telehealth was designed to fill. So
Speaker 1: the test will tell you something about the likelihood of
Speaker 1: your actually being infected with COVID nineteen, but much more
Speaker 1: is needed after that, And what our platform does is
Speaker 1: allows us to support people around things like testing and
Speaker 1: around things like provision of medications. So what's quite unique
Speaker 1: about our platform is that it's not a one off
Speaker 1: consultation with a medical provider. So they might think of
Speaker 1: a question that they have at three in the morning,
Speaker 1: they can put it in the platform and get an answer.
Speaker 1: Chris says that after all of this is over, there
Speaker 1: could be a real shift in how patients seek medical care.
Speaker 1: A big part is also just that old habits die hard.
Speaker 1: When you get sick, your first instinct isn't usually to
Speaker 1: try out some cool new website you read about. With
Speaker 1: the coronavirus, though we're now all forced to consider ways
Speaker 1: we can stay at home, we already are having dramatically
Speaker 1: increased access to our other service lines. Um so we're
Speaker 1: seeing upticks in the numbers of people who are actually
Speaker 1: seeking our birth control services and other services. I think
Speaker 1: as this COVID nineteen pandemic changes so many things fundamentally
Speaker 1: about all of our lives. It's also going to change
Speaker 1: the way people experience access to healthcare. So we want
Speaker 1: to have the opportunity to demonstrate to people that they
Speaker 1: can do so much of this from home, um that
Speaker 1: they can access that test from home, that they can
Speaker 1: have these ongoing connections with clinicians to get their questions
Speaker 1: answered no matter what they are um from home, and
Speaker 1: we think that's going to happen. Nor X says is
Speaker 1: working hard to bring its tests back on the market.
Speaker 1: And that's it for the Prognosis Daily Edition. For more
Speaker 1: on the coronavirus crisis from a hundred and twenty bureaus
Speaker 1: around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus. If
Speaker 1: you appreciate the podcast, please take a moment to rate
Speaker 1: us and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or
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Speaker 1: Prognosis Daily Edition is hosted by me Laura Carlson. The
Speaker 1: show is produced by me Tophor Forheaz, Jordan Gaspore, and
Speaker 1: Magnus Henriksen. Reporting by Kristin V. Brown. Original music by
Speaker 1: Leo Sidrin Our Editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shine.
Speaker 1: Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.