CVS launches platform for digital products for PBM clients

CVS Health is introducing digital products for its pharmacy benefit management clients to help them better manage third-party health and wellness benefit solutions.

The new services from CVS Health give clients access to negotiated pricing, standardized member eligibility in real-time, simplified billing and payment processing and standardized result measures across multiple vendors.

The service, called Vendor Benefit Management, is an open-platform service to help clients manage relationships with digital and non-digital health and wellness vendors with which they wish to contract. The intent is to help health plans easily contract, implement and manage choices in third-party health and wellness benefit solutions.

“As healthcare continues to evolve, plan sponsors have begun looking beyond the standard medical, pharmacy, dental and vision health benefits and are considering supplemental benefits to improve outcomes and reduce overall medical spend,” explains Derica Rice, president of CVS Caremark, the pharmacy benefit management business of CVS.

The new proprietary service enables the company to leverage its infrastructure, technologies and processes to benefit employers and other clients, and their members.

New services could include smoking cessation and substance abuse support, care management tools, medication optimization and adherence, and tools enabling members to handle their benefits.

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The first third-party vendor that CVS Health intends to offer to CVS Caremark clients is Big Health, which offers Sleepio, an automated and personalized digital sleep improvement program. Sleepio, available via an app or the web, uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help individuals make changes to improve their sleep, with the therapy individualized to the person’s specific sleep challenges.

“The scientific evidence is overwhelming that improving sleep represents a destigmatized way to improve wider mental health,” says Colin Espie, Big Health co-founder and its chief medical officer. “It is exciting to see a leader in healthcare like CVS commit to bringing our digital therapeutic for sleep to their clients and members.”

“Millions of Americans suffer from chronic physical and mental health conditions for which there are proven solutions,” says Peter Hames, co-founder and CEO at Big Health. “These interventions were previously not available at scale until the advent of digital therapeutics. We are proud to be working with CVS Health as they help make solutions, such as Sleepio, available at scale for the first time.”