CVS selects Epic for specialty care programs

Here is Health Data Management’s weekly roundup of health information technology contracts and implementations.

• Pharmacy chain CVS in 2015 started using the Epic electronic health records system in its Minute Clinics and now is going back to the vendor to support its specialty care management programs, including the Accordant program that manages services for patients with rare chronic diseases. With both programs on Epic, the goal is to enable immediate information sharing with other providers across a patient’s care team and better coordinate care. The connectivity will be national.

• Connecticut Children’s Medical Center is swapping out its legacy enterprise image viewing platform and putting in the platform of eUnity. The hospital considered three companies in depth before making its decision. In particular, hospital personnel were impressed with the ease of access to users inside and outside of the hospital, said Jung Park, senior director of information services. Another vendor, Client Outlook, will implement the new platform.

Also See: NYU Langone, other medical systems beef up analytics

• Memorial Hospital at Gulfport in Mississippi was a co-developer partner and the first deployment site for a new service that combines the nation’s largest health information exchange from Regenstrief Institute with the data analytics platform of Health Catalyst. “Eighty percent of clinical data is locked away in unstructured physician notes that can’t be read by an EHR, and so can’t be accessed by advanced decision support and quality improvement applications,” according to Peter Embi, M.D., president and CEO at Regenstrief. “By combining Health Catalyst’s analytics market leadership and data platform with our text analytics and expertise, we will help millions of patients benefit from the untapped potential hidden within unstructured data.”

• Becton, Dickinson and Company, known as BD, has been awarded a contract valued up to $100 million with the Defense Health Agency within the Department of Defense, which will put in the Pyxis ES System, an enterprisewide medication dispensing system. Pyxis will serve 115 military inpatient facilities and inpatient pharmacies. The contract also includes analytics capabilities.