A Medical Device Daily

Third Wave Technologies (Madison, Wisconsin) and DCL Medical Laboratories (Indianapolis) have formed a partnership in which DCL will serve as a product development partner with Third Wave.

DCL will adopt products from Third Wave’s molecular diagnostic menu and have early access to new assays and equipment developed by Third Wave. Third Wave will establish a R&D laboratory at DCL for joint product research, which will include a customer demonstration facility for Third Wave products.

Third Wave develops and markets molecular diagnostic reagents for a variety of DNA and RNA analysis applications.

DCL, founded in 1984, is a laboratory with operations across the Midwest including specialty testing in molecular diagnostics.

In other agreements:

• The Bureau of Tenncare (Chattanooga, Tennessee) and Shared Health (Chattanooga) have launched a pilot program to introduce ePrescribing capabilities to rural physicians located throughout the state.

The ePrescribing program provides technology to enable physicians to directly route prescriptions to pharmacies linked with the TennCare Pharmacy Benefits Manager. Approved pharmacies will be reimbursed the transaction fee associated with filling prescriptions by use of ePrescribing in the 13 counties.

The program is a community approach to facilitate efficient healthcare delivery. Fifty rural physician practices across 13 Tennessee counties are participating, chosen because none currently having access to, or the resources to implement, eprescription technology.

Participating physicians will receive the tools needed to get started, free of charge, including equipment, software, Internet access for prescribers, as well as training and support.

TennCare serves about 1.2 million low-income children, pregnant women and disabled Tennesseans, with a$7 billion annual budget.

Shared is a developer of information technology.

• CIGNA HealthCare (Macon, Georgia) said it has added the Medical Center of Central Georgia (MCCG; Macon), as well as 250 physicians with the Central Georgia Health Network (Macon) to its provider network.

With this new agreement, all of CIGNA HealthCare’s members can access in-patient and out-patient services at the Medical Center of Central Georgia, receiving treatment from an increased number of physicians.

CIGNA HealthCare members can now choose to receive services from 137 hospitals and 13,350 affiliated physicians across the region.