A Medical Device Daily

CVS Caremark (Woonsocket, Rhode Island) and Inverness Medical Innovations (Waltham, Massachusetts) through its Alere health management business, reported a strategic alliance to enhance the companies' ability to deliver more timely, highly coordinated and personalized health management services.

The deal is expected to improve participants' healthcare outcomes while helping payers and employers to more efficiently manage costs. This can be achieved as participants are engaged through multiple delivery channels, including convenient and less costly venues like retail clinics.

The alliance means chronically ill patients served by CVS Caremark's Accordant Common disease management programs will be managed and have access to expanded offerings provided by Alere, a leader in health services for wellness, disease management, oncology and complex case management.

Alere customers will gain access to direct service by MinuteClinic retail health clinic nurse practitioners and CVS pharmacists. Customers of both companies will have access to a broad array of services ranging from those provided through the high touch, in-home monitoring, telephonic and web-based offerings of Alere, to the face-to-face counseling provided at about 500 MinuteClinics and nearly 7,000 CVS/pharmacy locations around the country.

"This alliance strengthens the clinical options we offer our customers," said Troyen Brennan, MD, executive VP and chief medical officer of CVS Caremark. "Our patients gain access to Alere's expanded suite of services, such as wellness, prevention and health management programs. These also include programs tailored to meet the needs of women and children. Alere's customers will benefit from direct access to our nurse practitioners at MinuteClinic and CVS pharmacists at our retail stores."

Recent studies have shown participants benefit from management of more serious illnesses through face-to-face interaction with healthcare providers. CVS Caremark has integrated retail pharmacy, pharmacy benefit management and the retail clinic businesses and developed Proactive Pharmacy Care to take advantage of the unmatched consumer touch points provided through its stores and clinics.

In other agreements/contracts news, Becton, Dickinson (BD; Franklin Lakes, New Jersey) and Direct Relief International (Santa Barbara, California) have launched a new nationwide program to help people with insulin-dependent diagnosed diabetes that have been affected by the current economic crisis to manage the disease. BD has pledged to donate five million insulin syringes and pen needles through Direct Relief to more than 1,000 community health center and free clinic partners nationwide.

"To avoid the debilitating and costly complications of diabetes, patients must effectively manage their conditions," said Linda Tharby, president, BD Medical Diabetes Care. "Insulin injections often play a vital role in this daily effort, and BD believes that patients who have fallen on tough times should not forego this critical part of their treatment regimen. Direct Relief is a natural partner for BD to help ensure that these patients have access to insulin injection products."

The rise in unemployment has caused many people to lose their health insurance and thus their means to pay for insulin injection products. Direct Relief will work with the National Association of Community Health Centers (Bethesda, Maryland) and the National Association of Free Clinics (Washington) to assist those who are struggling from the current economic crisis.