Demand for McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions grows; also expanded AccessHealth services for pharmacies

The Patient Relationship Solutions (MPRS) unit of McKesson will open a second call center, building off its longstanding activity in Scottsdale, AZ, where it is headquartered. Beyond routine reminder calls and the like, MPRS says it is having success with its Behavioral Call Campaign, which “leverages interactive behavioral conversations with patients to help increase engagement and improve medication adherence.” The call center also supports MPRS copay savings programs.

“The significant growth of our Contact Center capabilities this year demonstrates that pharmaceutical and medical device brands increasingly value a two-way dialogue that is integrated with their patient support strategy,” said Derek Rago, Vice President/General Manager, MPRS. “Leveraging both our co-pay support programs and our proven behavioral coaching platform provides our clients with an integrated brand experience and allows us to support the patient holistically, addressing behavioral as well as cost-related barriers to adherence.”

In a related announcement, another division of McKesson, AccessHealth, has announced a partnership with a health-IT company, PrescribeWellness (Irvine, CA), to add PrescribeWellness’ services to AccessHealth’s support programs for independent pharmacies. PrescribeWellness offers a cloud-based IT solution for collecting patient or customer data, and integrating it with adherence programs and other interactions that could occur between community pharmacists and their customers. One such interaction is “medication synchronization,” to schedule medication deliveries in both internal workflows and external patient outreach.

AccessHealth, in turn, is one of McKesson’s support programs for independent pharmacies that it serves as drug supplier. Lately, it is emphasizing its ability to connect independent pharmacies with so-called narrow networks, in cases where a specialty pharmaceutical is available only from a limited number of distributors, and to be dispensed by a limited number of pharmacies.