Since acquiring Aetna, CVS Health Corp. has touted its HealthHUB stores — which include expanded clinics, labs for health screening and space for wellness pursuits — as the linchpin of its plan to stand out among other large, diversified firms that include a health insurer. Yet as one analyst pointed out during CVS’s first-quarter 2020 earnings call on May 6, that strategy could face new challenges amid the COVID-19 pandemic when many people are reluctant to venture outside their homes.

CVS executives said that while the company is indeed seeing less foot traffic at its brick-and-mortar locations, it is still leveraging the power of having a vast retail footprint by offering testing for the new coronavirus, AIS Health reported.

Newly released data from Express Scripts shows that the number of prescriptions filled per week for antidepressants, anti-anxiety and anti-insomnia medications combined jumped 21% between mid-February and mid-March — reaching a zenith during the week ending March 15, when the COVID-19 outbreak officially reached pandemic status. And analytics from UnitedHealth Group's OptumRx showed prescription increases of 15% for anti-anxiety medications, 14% for antidepressants and 5% for anti-insomnia medications during the month of March.

Industry consultants tell AIS Health that they're not at all surprised that the use of such medications is spiking. And they say that situation creates an urgent opportunity for companies that combine a health insurer with a PBM — like Express Scripts parent company Cigna Corp. and its peers — to leverage their unique insights into members' health.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to dominate the news cycle, headlines related to rising unemployment often underscore the impact to Medicaid, but what about the Medicaid managed care organizations that will absorb the newly jobless and uninsured?

"I think that Medicaid MCOs are clearly in the best position to handle the influx of folks," remarks Jerry Vitti, founder and CEO of Healthcare Financial, Inc. While onboarding a wave of new members may put some initial stress on plans, the real "strain" will come from covering new members who have unmet health care needs, he tells AIS Health.

With the Trump administration anxious to "reopen" the U.S. economy and ease the social-distancing measures meant to slow the spread of COVID-19, officials have pointed to antibody testing as a critical tool to accomplish those goals. To that end, the administration on April 11 issued a document clarifying that most private health plans must cover such tests, which detect antibodies against the new coronavirus found in the blood of people who have been infected and now may be immune.

"It's not exactly a surprise, [but] I don’t know that it was 100% expected," Jason Karcher, a Milliman Inc. actuary, tells AIS Health regarding the requirement. "It seems like as much a point of clarification rather than a 'hey, we're going to require something totally out of the blue.'"

As efforts to contain the outbreak of COVID-19 continue to evolve, the Trump administration on March 30 issued a series of new flexibilities aimed at increasing hospital and provider capacity. At the same time, CMS in a March 30 memo provided some respite to Medicare Advantage and Part D plans dealing with the crisis by suspending audit and quality reporting activities so that plans and states can focus on providing care to the increasing number of beneficiaries affected by the new coronavirus, AIS Health reported.

As physicians cater to patients who are or may be infected with COVID-19, and as the federal government advises adults to delay elective surgeries and nonessential procedures during the outbreak, plans are likely to face issues with reporting quality data used to determine future star ratings.