New Offering from CVS Looks to Advance Pharmacy Benefit Management
The Vendor Benefit Management service from CVS aims to reduce the burden of using third-party health and wellness solutions for enhanced pharmacy benefit management.
Source: Xtelligent Healthcare Media
- CVS Health’s Vendor Benefit Management (VBM) will give pharmacy benefit management (PBM) companies access to a suite of vendors offering digital and non-digital solutions to supplement their health and wellness initiatives in the pursuit of value-based care, the company recently announced.
The system assists PBMs with digital and nondigital third-party vendor onboarding and management. The open platform’s goal is to help PBMs provide employees and members with better health and wellness options at a lower cost with less administrative burden.
“Plan sponsors have begun looking beyond the standard medical, pharmacy, dental and vision health benefit offerings, and are increasingly considering supplemental benefits to help improve health outcomes and reduce overall medical spend,” stated Derica Rice, president of CVS Caremark, the company’s PBM business.
"We asked our clients what they needed and are now proudly easing their administrative burden so their members can more quickly and easily access these solutions that are growing in availability and importance. Our new proprietary service enables us to leverage the sophisticated infrastructure, technologies and processes we have honed as a leading PBM to further benefit our clients and their members."
VBM is an open system. An open system is a software that “allows applications and services from multiple vendors to work together for an individual user whatever their role (e.g. clinician, patient, carer, social worker, commissioner, manager, care worker, etc.) such that there is a many-to-many substitutability between applications and services,” according to the Apperta Foundation’s definition.
The first vendor to join the open VBM platform is the digital therapeutics company Big Health. Specializing in providing behavioral and mental health solutions, the company will work with CVS Caremark to offer Sleepio, their automated, digital therapeutic for sleep and insomnia. Sleep deprivation is linked to depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, and ADHD and affects 10 to 18 percent of adults in the US, according to a study from Harvard Medical School.
"Millions of Americans suffer from chronic physical and mental health conditions for which there are proven behavioral solutions,” Peter Hames, co-founder and CEO of Big Health, stated in the press release. “These interventions were previously not available at scale, until the advent of digital therapeutics. We're proud to be working with CVS Health as they help to make solutions, such as Sleepio, available at scale for the first time"
In addition to offering sleep therapy, future Vendor Benefit Management may offer vendor solutions to address nicotine addiction, substance abuse, care management, medication optimization and adherence, fitness services, employee assistance programs (EAPs), and benefit navigation services.
The program is just one element of CVS Health’s overarching vision of “transforming the consumer health care experience,” as the company indicated in November 2018.
Another step in this direction would be the renovated HealthHUB model, which CVS Health announced last week.
HealthHUBs incorporate healthcare services, new products and a customer-facing approach that promote health and wellness, health tools, healthcare advice, and access to providers.
“With the new format more than 20 percent of the store is now dedicated to health services, including new durable medical equipment (DME) and supplies and new product and service combinations for sleep apnea and diabetes care,” the press release stated.
Because PBMs operate within pharmacies, healthcare retail companies, and insurance agencies, the VBM platform highlights the coordination required between payers, providers, and healthcare organizations to achieve the goal of value-based care. The needs expressed by CVS Health’s clients--which VBM is designed to satisfy--also reflects an interest in working with vendors that emphasize health and wellness and preventative medicine.
