CVS Caremark Corporation : CVS Caremark Executive Outlines Integrated Pharmacy-Based Program At Health Affairs Forum on Diabetes

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2012/PRNewswire/ -- CVS Caremark's chief health care strategy officer today outlined how the company's integrated pharmacy-based program for chronic diseases such as diabetes, called Pharmacy Advisor™, increased medication adherence rates and physician initiation of prescriptions for concomitant medications to improve patient health.

At a forum sponsored by Health Affairs, Helena Foulkes, executive vice present and chief health care strategy and marketing officer, presented findings from a new CVS Caremark study that reviewed how Pharmacy Advisor™, through targeted outreach and patient counseling, provided an innovative way to improve plan member health outcomes while working to reduce health care costs.  

"This studyhighlights the central role pharmacists play in improving the health of their patients and how our programs leverage that expertise as we reinvent pharmacy care," Foulkes said. "The program featured counseling by pharmacists at retail stores and a dedicated pharmacist call center for those identified as having diabetes. The pharmacist interventions resulted in increased patient adherence and encouraged higher initiation rates of medications needed to best treat diabetes. The results show we are helping people on their path to better health."

Presentations at the event discussed studies published in the January issue of Health Affairs that focused on treatment and health care programs for people with diabetes. The Health Affairs January issue included a CVS Caremark study that outlined findings from an analysis of the pharmacy claims data of benefit members at a large Midwest manufacturing company that focused on interventions with diabetic patients between October 2009and April 2010. The study followed medication behavior of an intervention group of 5,123 people with diabetes who were proactively counseled by retail and call center pharmacists; and a control group of 24,124 patients with diabetes who did not receive specialized counseling. The researchers measured gains in patient adherence and medication initiation rates - of concomitant therapies for diabetes, such as statins, ACE inhibitors and ARBs.

Researchers from CVS Caremark, assisted by experts from Harvard Universityand Brigham and Women's Hospital, illustrated that contacts by pharmacists with the patients and their doctors increased therapy initiation rates by as much as 39 percent for the full sample and an even higher 68 percent for the group counseled at retail stores, and increased medication adherence rates by 2.1 percent. The researchers noted that face-to-face interventions by retail store pharmacists resulted in increasing adherence rates by 3.9 percent.

For more information, see the study press release:

About CVS Caremark

CVS Caremark is the largest pharmacy health care provider in the United Stateswith integrated offerings across the entire spectrum of pharmacy care. We are uniquely positioned to engage plan members in behaviors that improve their health and to lower overall health care costs for health plans, plan sponsors and their members. CVS Caremark is a market leader in mail order pharmacy, retail pharmacy, specialty pharmacy, and retail clinics, and is a leading provider of Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plans. As one of the country's largest pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs), we provide access to a network of approximately 65,000 pharmacies, including more than 7,300 CVS/pharmacy® stores that provide unparalleled service and capabilities. Our clinical offerings include our signature Pharmacy Advisor™program as well as innovative generic step therapy and genetic benefit management programs that promote more cost effective and healthier behaviors and improve health care outcomes.CVS Caremark.

SOURCE CVS Caremark

CONTACT: Media Contact: Jon Sandberg of CVS Caremark, [phone], [e-mail]