Retailer Walgreens introduced Tuesday that it’s partnering with know-how firm Pearl Well being to assist main care suppliers interact in value-based care.
Deerfield, Illinois-based Walgreens is a part of the U.S. Retail Pharmacy and U.S. Healthcare segments of Walgreens Boots Alliance. It has practically 9,000 retail places throughout the U.S. New York Metropolis-based Pearl Well being works with suppliers to assist them shift from fee-for-service fee fashions to value-based care through the use of its know-how to determine the sufferers who want probably the most consideration. It then gives insights on the way to enhance care and decrease value.
By way of the partnership, Pearl Well being will work with main care suppliers by providing its know-how and information insights to assist them higher their care. Walgreens is then offering prescription success, medicine adherence, immunization and diagnostic testing providers. As well as, Walgreens presents care transitions to the house by its possession of CareCentrix.
To start out, the businesses are specializing in suppliers caring for members within the ACO REACH program, based on Steve Wogen, vp and chief development officer at Walgreens Boots Alliance. This system is an alternate fee mannequin from CMS that helps main care physicians transition to value-based care.
The partnership with Pearl Well being is supposed to enrich Walgreens’ majority possession of VillageMD, a value-based main care firm.
“VillageMD right now buys doctor practices after which runs and manages these practices,” Wogen stated in an interview. “What Pearl will likely be doing is extending in communities the place VillageMD doesn’t exist right now and as a substitute of really buying physicians, we’ll simply companion with main care physicians in new geographies that VillageMD just isn’t in in order that we are able to attain extra physicians and extra sufferers sooner.”
A part of why Pearl Well being selected to work with Walgreens is due to its Rx capabilities, stated Mike Kopko, CEO of Pearl Well being.
“To have one of many largest drug distributors on this planet as your companion, it’s tantamount to a dream come true whenever you’re beginning in value-based care,” Kopko stated.
Wogen added that the businesses’ providers work nicely collectively.
“[Pearl’s] focus is tech, our focus is on healthcare providers,” he stated. “They’re not within the healthcare providers enterprise. They depend on the doctor to behave on their insights. So having the doctor plus Walgreens appearing on these insights can drive decrease prices and higher outcomes sooner.”
Wogen declined to share the enterprise mannequin of the partnership.
One business knowledgeable stated the transfer has some severe advantages for Walgreens. It helps the corporate “diversify into various fee fashions which in return reduces their general reliance on fee-for-service quantity,” stated Kate Festle, director of healthcare and life sciences at consulting agency West Monroe.
“Pearl has seen plenty of development in its supplier and affected person panels,” Festle added in an electronic mail. “Pair that momentum with Pearl’s analytical skill to determine sufferers who can profit most from care administration interventions, and it’s a no brainer why Walgreens needs to companion: Pearl brings the affected person inhabitants and care administration platform and Walgreens brings the medicine administration infrastructure to assist shut care gaps.”
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