Hims & Hers Adds Cancer Screening; CMO Shares the Details

This is a preview of the February 5 edition of Access Health—Tap here to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox on Thursday mornings.

Imagine a world where you don’t have to get that biennial mammogram or ring in your 45^t^h birthday with colonoscopy prep.

Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in. But it is the world that some of your patients might think we live in—especially as direct-to-consumer screening tests become more accessible.

It’s been a big week for multi-cancer early detection tests, or MCEDs for short (a few physicians told me that they’d drop the “early,” since these screenings can identify cancers in the later stages, too).

GRAIL announced that it submitted its Galleri test for FDA approval, a blood test that screens for a signal shared by more than 50 types of cancer, according to the company. Their timing was impeccable, because on Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed the Nancy Gardner Sewell Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act into law—outlining a pathway for Medicare coverage once MCEDs are approved by the FDA. None have received that green light so far.

And yesterday, Hims & Hers unveiled a partnership with GRAIL that will allow their Labs customers to add on the Galleri test at a discounted price. (Check out my exclusive on the company’s Labs offering, if you missed it last fall.)

I spoke with Dr. Pat Carroll, chief medical officer at Hims & Hers, ahead of Wednesday’s announcement. He said that as a primary care physician, he understands the need for earlier cancer diagnoses that can potentially lead to better treatment outcomes. (Read on to the Pulse Check section for more of his perspective.)

“We really felt there was a need for some type of early detection offering on Labs,” Carroll told me. “It’s not that we’re going to be treating or actually doing a further workup for folks who come up with positive signals, but we can actually make an impact in terms of earlier diagnoses [and] referring them to appropriate providers who actually can do further work ups.”

I spoke with a few practicing physicians about MCEDs like the Galleri test, and how they feel about the possibility of expanded access. While all of them expressed excitement about the technology’s potential, some shared common concerns: will patients take a negative Galleri test signal as a sign to forego recommended cancer screenings? Will the costs of these tests exclude certain patient populations from participating, widening existing care gaps? If the test locates a signal for a cancer without an established diagnostic pathway, will physicians be equipped to respond? How often will patients need to retake the test?

And, the big existential question: if payers don’t take MCEDs as sufficient evidence to cover further diagnostic tests and specialist visits, could patients find themselves in a heap of unexpected medical bills?

Dr. Carmen Guerra—a primary care physician at UPenn Medicine, and a professor of medicine, biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania—told me that payers take official industry guidelines and Medicare decisions into account when deciding whether to reimburse for a test. In that case, Tuesday’s law is a positive signal.

But there are exceptions, Guerra said: “In Pennsylvania, where I live, there was no law saying that insurers should pay for colon cancer screening starting at age 45, even though the guidelines began to change back in 2018. There were some payers who were giving patients and doctors a hard time for having a colonoscopy at age 45, even though that’s what the guidelines say.”

According to guidelines for PCPs from the American Cancer Society, physicians should wait to bring up MCEDs to their patients until there is more evidence to support their effectiveness. But if patients do seek out the tests on their own, Guerra recommends encouraging them to join a randomized control trial “so that they can be watched incredibly carefully.”

Physicians tended to agree, though, that they could always benefit from additional information and earlier insight into patients’ disease risks. As Dr. Mark Fendrick, an internal medicine doctor at Michigan Medicine (and a self-disclosed advisor for GRAIL and Exact Sciences, another leader in MCED tests) put it, “to screen for and detect early cancers that are more treatable and have better survival is certainly something that we should all be very encouraged about.”

Read on to the Pulse Check section for more on Hims & Hers’ partnership with GRAIL. And, as always, send me your thoughts at a.kayser@newsweek.com.

In Other News

Major health care headlines from the week

Are health systems overlooking patient needs in the quest for “systemness?” Executives from Endeavor Health and Sutter Health suggested so at a Tuesday panel discussion on chronic disease management.
- “We’ve got large health systems represented on this call, and I think all of us are working towards systemness,” Dr. Lakshmi Halasyamani, chief clinical officer at Endeavor Health, said at Newsweek’s virtual event. “But the person in the community doesn’t care about the system. They care about their local experience.”
- Click here for my recap of this moment, and here for my colleague Katherine Fung’s overview of the conversation. You can watch the full panel, which also features leaders from Cleveland Clinic and Oura, at the top of either article.
Bipartisan efforts to renew expired ACA subsidies for at least two years have “effectively collapsed,” Senate negotiators told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
- Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno, a Republican, did not budge from what he called his “best and final offer,” Politico reported. Moreno’s proposal would have renewed the subsidies for a year, but wound them down over the next two years, and set an income cap that is 700 percent higher than the federal poverty level—terms that Democratic lawmakers found unacceptable.
- On a brighter note, Trump inked a two-year extension of telehealth Medicare waivers and a five-year extension for hospital-at-home coverage on Tuesday. These measures have given health systems some much-needed breathing room as they continue to invest in virtual care platforms and remote monitoring programs.
After ambulatory surgery centers were acquired by Optum, service prices rose 11 percent, according to a new study published in Health Affairs.
- The study analyzed seven procedures across two dozen ASC markets, revealing that post-acquisition price hikes led to an additional $10.1 million in annual spending. That could lead to $67 million in additional spending each year if expanded to all ASC services, per the authors’ estimates.
- This doesn’t reflect positively on Optum’s parent company, United HealthGroup, or on Optum itself. And since Optum is the largest physician employer in the nation, the consequences of these additional costs—and the consolidation that catalyzed them—have far-reaching impacts in the health care industry.
A prominent health care figure was named in the latest release of the Epstein files—and physicians are speaking out.
- Dr. Peter Attia, who reached celebrity status for his work in the longevity space, hosts the popular podcast “The Peter Attia Drive” and authored the best-selling book “Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity,” exchanged multiple emails with Jeffrey Epstein in the 2010s. In 2015, Attia wrote, “You [sic] the biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul…” In another email, Attia made a crude joke about female genitalia.
- After the news broke, Attia resigned from his role as chief science officer at the protein bar company David, NBC News confirmed. The supplement manufacturer AG1 also confirmed to NBC that Attia was no longer a scientific advisor, “as of this week.”
- The ordeal sparked outrage in the physician community, and some expressed their disappointment online.
- “Physicians are mandated reporters. We have a legal and ethical obligation to report suspected child abuse,” Dr. Sara Szal, director of precision medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, wrote on LinkedIn. “…The longevity industry is built on trust, optimization, prevention. Now it has to reckon with the fact that one of its most prominent voices failed the most basic test of medical ethics.”
- In a Monday X post, Attia expressed regret over the “embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible” emails, and denied any involvement in criminal activity or sexual exploitation.

Pulse Check

Executive perspectives on key industry issues

For this week’s Pulse Check, I connected with Dr. Pat Carroll, chief medical officer at Hims & Hers. Find a portion of our discussion on their new partnership with GRAIL below.

Editor’s Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Pat, when we last spoke in November, Hims & Hers was just launching direct-to-consumer lab testing. What sort of customer engagement have you seen with that initial offering*, and how do you expect the addition of the Galleri MCED test to affect those numbers?

We’ve seen really good adoption of the labs. It’s a very competitive market, as you know—there are many companies that are doing this [DTC lab testing] today.

The biomarkers are valuable for our customers, because unlike some of the other competitors, we can actually offer treatment in terms of weight loss and cardiac risk, with statins and then hormone treatment. So we not only identify areas that patients have abnormal labs, but we can direct them to specific treatment areas.

The reason why GRAIL fit into this is that we really felt there was a need for some type of early detection offering on Labs. It’s not that we’re going to be treating or actually doing a further workup for folks who come up with positive signals, but we can actually make an impact in terms of earlier diagnoses [and] referring them to appropriate providers who actually can do further work ups.

As a family physician, I know that if I could diagnose cancer sooner, I could impact treatments sooner and get better outcomes.

How have you prepared clinicians or care coordinators to refer to the proper sites for official diagnostic testing, if that positive signal does appear?

With GRAIL, we’ve really focused on a much smaller provider group and trained them more intentionally for every result that they get, and particularly if there’s a positive signal. It’s fairly nuanced [but] it’s a screening test. It doesn’t say you 100 percent have that cancer, but what it does say is you have a risk for that cancer, and you need referral for further evaluation.

Within about 15 hours, we’ll get the results from GRAIL. We actually contact the patient. We walk through what the result means, positive or negative. But we also inform customers, just because it’s negative today doesn’t mean in the future it’s going to be negative.

With the positive signal, we’re really intentional about giving the customer all the information they need in a package such that they can go to their primary care provider and say, “I’ve had this test through GRAIL, through Hims & Hers. Here’s all the information.”

If they can’t connect with their primary care provider, GRAIL actually has an Advocacy Network, a patient advocacy team. They’ll connect those customers who cannot access their primary care provider or don’t know where to go next to both answer their questions, but also refer them on. We feel like, end to end, we’re providing not only the testing, but also the referrals that need to happen for a positive signal.

Is access to GRAIL’s advocacy network services included with the purchase of a Galleri test through Hims & Hers?

Yeah, it is, and they’ve been really great partners to work with. For every bit of our training information, we work hand in hand with them. They’ve provided a lot of the content in terms of training. They’ve been involved with us to train this small provider group who actually does the outreach to our customers. And then they provided this Galleri patient advocacy network, so they’ve done a lot of back-end work to make this a great experience for our customers.

And you know, it’s our brand, but it’s also their brand. And when you talk about positive cancer signals, you can’t have misses on this.

One concern that I hear from patients and providers at traditional health systems is that test results often appear in patient portals well before the patient has a chance to discuss them with a clinician. How soon after receiving the results of the Galleri test can patients expect to hear from Hims & Hers about next steps?

What we’ve scoped out is less than 15 hours, and in many cases, if [the result comes in during] the daytime and such, it’s a lot less than that. These test results, if they’re positive signals, go right to the top of the queue for this small provider group, and they’re the highest priority for this provider group in terms of notification.

Are we guaranteeing that 100 percent of the time that we’re going to notify them before they get a test result? No, but we feel like we’re really dedicated to getting ahold of the customer before the result comes to them, so that we can walk through and explain it.

Is there a reason that Hims & Hers didn’t wait for FDA approval on the Galleri test before launching the partnership?

We felt very comfortable with where they were at, [given] the large studies that they’ve conducted, and we were also very encouraged that they actually were going to submit for pre-market approval for the application of their testing by Galleri.

We felt that it was important to get that test out. We felt comfortable with the data that they’ve already collected, the results that we’ve seen from them, and we’re also very encouraged that they actually were submitting to the FDA.

Is there anything that you want hospitals, health systems and other care providers to know about this partnership, or about patients accessing the Galleri test through your platform?

I think the main message to providers is that we want to be part of the preventive health initiative in this country by providing accessible, affordable care. We are not the primary care provider, but we’re helping with screening, and we will refer the patient back into the primary care provider, or to a specialist if the patient prefers, for further evaluation and treatment.

We’re not displacing a primary care provider or a specialist. We’re just acting almost like a front door in terms of prevention.

The issue today, Alexis—and I saw this in my own primary care practice—sometimes in the Boston area, where I live, it takes 12 weeks to establish a primary care provider. So [are we] going to make everyone wait 12 or 16 weeks to get a primary care provider to get testing like this? On our platform, 24/7, they can actually get this cancer detection screening test, and then we’ll get them plugged back into the health system.

So we’re part of the team, we’re not the whole team on this stuff.

*Editor’s Note: Hims & Hers declined to share specific data surrounding customers’ engagement with their Labs offerings.

C-Suite Shuffles

Where health care leaders are coming and going

Banner Health has selected a longtime finance leader to lead strategy, M&A and market growth.
- Adrienne Moore is the Phoenix-based health system’s new senior vice president of strategy and growth, according to a news release shared with Newsweek. She has spent nine years in the finance and revenue cycle department at Banner Health, and served the past two as senior vice president of finance.
UT Austin’s health system and Dell Medical School snagged Lifepoint Health’s Traci Nordberg for their CHRO seat.
- Nordberg has served as chief people officer at Brentwood, Tennessee-based Lifepoint Health—one of the nation’s largest health systems—since January 2024. Her resume includes HR leadership roles at Mass General Brigham and Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Atropos Health—the real-world evidence company that sprung from Stanford Medicine—named a new CFO and an inaugural chief technology officer this morning.
- Sylvia Isler will serve as the company’s first chief technology officer, bringing experience from Dell Technologies, Cityblock Health and Google (where she worked as director of engineering, search infrastructure, for over a year until 2024). Most recently, Isler was the senior vice president and head of engineering at Better Life Partners, a New Hampshire-based virtual care company focused on addiction recovery.
- Drew Turitz joins Atropos as CFO after holding the same title at Fuze Health (the company responsible for LetsGetChecked and Truepill) and serving in business development leadership roles at Teladoc Health and Aetna.

Executive Edge

How health care execs can manage their own health

“Compassion fatigue” is a term I hear often when speaking with health care professionals. So for this week’s feature, I connected with Dr. Charles Figley—a distinguished professor within the School of Social Work at Tulane University, and a thought leader in the world of compassion fatigue—to better understand how political events could be affecting clinicians and the patients that they serve.

Below, find a portion of our interview.

Editor’s Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How have recent events in the U.S. impacted public mental well-being?

Poorly. It appears that American mental health will be under considerable duress in the U.S. until there is some degree of stability to balance the emotions of most Americans who are paying attention to recent events. I am especially hopeful due to the shifts we are seeing in the U.S. Congress, especially the U.S. House.

How might health care professionals be uniquely affected by these events?
Because they are uniquely positioned, being a source of comfort for their clients and as a natural leader and comforter at large for our community and nation. Mental health practitioners—psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, counselors, therapists—are a manifestation of universal comfort. They are a source of calm, reflection, caring in this current crisis of leadership.

This is precisely why they are so needed, like they were during the pandemic. Health care professionals since the pandemic have proven their ability to do their job, even when they have very little to give at times. They deserve our respect and support.

How would you define compassion fatigue, and how can health care workers combat this?

Because trauma is so widespread during these times, those who are responsible for caring for patients and clients who are suffering feel considerable pressure to take as many clients as they can. This is not sustainable and has led to [more health care professionals] abandoning their jobs and the clients they serve. We need them, and more [of them]!

Any additional messages or advice for health care professionals who might be struggling at this time?

If you, as a health care professional, are struggling at this time, know that you are not alone. Never before has mental health been [so] discussed by a wide range of Americans. Every American deserves to receive high quality health care, including mental health care, free [of charge]. We must make it happen.

CEO Circle

Insights from health care thought leaders around the world

Before you go, check out this thought leadership piece from Warner Thomas, CEO of Sutter Health and a member of Newsweek’s CEO Circle. He argues that the future of health care is “simple.”

“In travel, retail or banking, people can schedule, reschedule, track and get support digitally in minutes,” Thomas said. “For too long, health care has been the exception. But that gap is no longer acceptable to patients, and it shouldn’t be acceptable to us.”

Click here to read the full piece.