CVS Health Bets Big on HIT

CVS Health has upped the ante in its bid to become a major player in the healthcare provider field by investing heavily in two digital innovation facilities.

With about 7,600 pharmacies nationwide equipped with nearly 1,000 walk-in MinuteClinics, Woonsocket, RI-based CVS Health is now building up the company's health IT muscle.

Brian Tilzer, chief digital officer at CVS, says a Digital Experience Center recently opened in Woonsocket and a Digital Innovation Lab set to open this winter in Boston are developing a range of health IT capabilities.

"CVS Health sits at the crossroads between retail and healthcare, so this space is a natural fit for us," he said last week. "We have been laser-focused on digital innovation for years. We are uniquely positioned as a pharmacy innovation company that is integrating pharmacy and retail store experiences… We're hearing directly from our customers that they're looking to leverage digital technology as an extension of the in-store experiences as well as to help manage their health."

Behind the CVS Health Rebranding Strategy

He cites a couple a health IT innovations CVS recently introduced at its pharmacies as examples. "[One] of our latest tools [is] our Drug Interaction Checker, which allows users to simply scan over-the-counter product bar codes to check for potential negative interactions with the prescriptions and medications they are taking.

CVS has technological experience and a trove of data, Tilzer says.

"We're constantly working to invent things… We have a unique set of assets that no other company in the healthcare or retail space has, given we are the only player that has a national retail pharmacy, retail clinics, a mail-order pharmacy and pharmacy benefits manager division, and specialty pharmacy services all under one corporation… We also have 17 years of experience and data from our ExtraCare program, the gold standard in the industry, which means we know our customers."

HIT Talent Recruiting
"As we continue to grow the digital team, recruiting remains a top area of focus for us," Tilzer says. "We believe that by having a strong presence in both Boston and at our headquarters in Woonsocket, we can attract top talent in both healthcare and technology throughout New England."

"Our team at CVS Health is continuing to grow, both through the opening of the Digital Innovation Lab in Boston, which can seat 100 and will be made up of 90% new hires, as well as at our headquarters in Woonsocket, where we have a wide variety of job openings as well."

HIT is generating benefits for CVS and its customers Tilzer says.

"We approach digital innovation with an eye toward creating tools that help… customers manage their medications, adhere to prescribed therapies and take care of their health more easily. We are making a real impact and also transforming the role a retail pharmacy like ours can play."

Timely HIT Infusion
A technology infusion is timely for MinuteClinic, says Thomas Charland, who worked as SVP of business and development at the Minnesota-based retail clinics before CVS acquired the franchise in 2006. CVS has since established dozens of MinuteClinic affiliation pacts with hospitals and health systems across the country, and establishing digital communication with these new partners is a top priority, he says.

A primary goal is gaining the ability to "pass records back-and-forth in a secure manner," Charland says. "It's a major initiative. MinuteClinic, in particular, is working really hard on this."

MinuteClinic took a major digital step earlier this year, adopting Verona, WI-based Epic as the electronic medical record system for the retail clinics. "That's a big hospital EMR. It's not flexible or nimble," he says. "It has a lot to do with Big Data… They are measuring pretty much about everything they can."

MinuteClinic and its walk-in retail clinic competitors at Walgreens, Target and Walmart are ripe for health IT innovation, says Charland, who turned to building urgent care clinics in 2007, founding and leading Minneapolis-based Merchant Medicine.

For example, retail clinics could benefit greatly from using telemedicine for "load-balancing of providers," he says, citing the seasonality of most walk-in clinics, which are busiest during the cold- and influenza-heavy months of the year.

He cites the Boston area, where MinuteClinic has facilities in three dozen pharmacies, as the kind of market ripe for load-balancing. "They could lower staff in some locations and connect to the clinics that have nurse practitioners," Charland says. "We're going to see that in urgent care and the retail clinics."

Queue management such as sending time-sensitive text alerts to patients is another hotbed of digital innovation for retail clinics, he says. "You know exactly where you are and when to show up."

A 'Technology-Enabled Healthcare Ecosystem'
Jerry Kolosky, a health IT consultant and former VP at Salt Lake City-based 3M Health Information Solutions, says CVS is poised to become a major healthcare provider player.

"Major retail pharmacy chains such as CVS are well-positioned to leverage ubiquitous national networks of established retail locations; deep, positive customer relationships; and gold-standard brand equity in the health and wellness space to accelerate a fundamental movement, already well under way, in the direction of innovative new modes of primary care delivery," he says.

Kolosky says CVS appears to be carving out a niche in the health IT sector.

"Well-established retail organizations such as CVS can provide a physical platform for new modes of care delivery, beginning with primary care and evolving over time to chronic care management, and to support a network that enables the secure delivery of relevant, actionable healthcare information across settings of care," he says.

"Meanwhile, tiny innovators, supported as required by public and private funding sources, are free to create the edge devices, such as wearable monitors, communications devices, and analytical algorithms that facilitate the optimization of the user experience and power the analytic engines."

CVS is riding a digital wave in healthcare, Kolosky says. "The future of care delivery will be based upon the creation and continuous evolution of a technology-enabled healthcare ecosystem. Such an ecosystem, or 'platform,' will potentiate new, innovative modes of care delivery supported by secure, networked technologies, user experience optimization, and technical-workflow interoperability across the continuum of care."

"Retail health clinics and other physical locations such as senior centers have begun to emerge as physical nodes of care in this embryonic connected care ecosystem," he says.