How Hospitals Win
Entering such partnerships can make sense for a hospital system, too. For instance, if different providers communicate well, they help reduce how often the chronically ill need to go to the hospital.

“It’s a way of being able to provide more care to more people, more conveniently and ideally at a lower cost,” Kearns added.

By reducing admissions and readmissions, for instance, hospitals can address one of their major budget challenges. In addition to paying for patient care itself – which can be costly if those patients have lower incomes and are uninsured – hospitals with high readmission rates can face financial penalties from the government through reductions in Medicare payments -- as much as 3 percent of each Medicare payment per patient for an entire year starting in October. Across all penalized hospitals in the country, those reductions are expected to total around $330 million annually.

Retail clinics say they offer routine health services in a cheaper and more convenient setting than doctors’ offices, urgent care or emergency facilities. In ads, CVS boasts that the clinics are open seven days a week, with nurse practitioners giving physicals, vaccines, strep tests and other basic services. Most services cost less than $100. Clinics are often separated from pharmacies by a privacy screen.

“It really goes back to today’s health care consumers looking for care when they want it,” Gilbert said.
 
Much of the arrangement might remain invisible for a MedStar patient, said Patrick Gilligan, CVS’ senior vice president for system alliances.

But even if patients don’t see it directly, a stronger network between physicians, pharmacists and retail clinics is valuable, said Christine Alexander, 66, a MedStar patient who frequently gets basic health services and medication from her local Minute Clinic and CVS in Washington, D.C.

About 10 years ago, she said, health problems meant she had to take multiple kinds of medication, but “there wasn’t good communication, and I ended up taking way too many drugs that were interacting with each other.”

[See also: MinuteClinic taps Epic for EMR.]

For patients with chronic conditions, “long term adherence is a big issue,” Gilligan.

But with this type of arrangement, pharmacists and nurse practitioners can more easily share information with doctors, providers can work in concert to encourage patients to stay on medication, Gilligan added.  “You tend to have a lot higher compliance rate,” Gilbert said.

In addition, because pharmacists see a patient’s entire drug regimen, they often notice the potential for drug interactions and other risks. When records are integrated, that information can more easily be transmitted to doctors, too.

“A lack of adherence and a problem of mixing the wrong medications is one of the leading causes of adverse events – it’s one of the leading causes of readmissions,” Kerns said.