Pharmacy giant CVS Health announced Thursday it has forged clinical partnerships with another four healthcare systems across the country: John Muir Health in California; University of Chicago Medical Center in Illinois; Novant Health, serving the Winston-Salem area in North Carolina; and University of Michigan Health System.

This past June, CVS partnered with four health systems: Sutter Health in California, Millennium Physician Group in Florida, Bryan Health Connect in Nebraska and Mount Kisco Medical Group in New York.

The new affiliations bring the total number of clinical collaborations for CVS Health and MinuteClinic to nearly 70 major health systems and healthcare providers across the country, according to CVS.

[Also: MinuteClinic taps Epic for EMR]

CVS operates 7,800 pharmacies and more than 1,000 walk-in medical clinics across the country.

The partnerships are designed to enable CVS to provide prescription and visit information to the participating healthcare organizations through its Epic EHR system. The goal is to afford both CVS and the partnering healthcare providers a better view of their patients, which can help caregivers make better decisions and help ensure patients adhere to important medications for chronic diseases, officials said.

In 2015, CVS partnered with IBM to combine Watson’s cognitive capability with CVS' vast stores of healthcare data, which include medical health records, pharmacy and medical claims information. The goal is to focus on chronic diseases before they take hold.

MinuteClinic, CVS/pharmacy and the four new participating healthcare providers will begin to work toward streamlining and enabling communication through their EHR systems.

[Also: CVS connects with providers via Epic]

This will include the electronic sharing of messages and alerts from CVS/pharmacy to affiliates' physicians regarding medication non-adherence issues. MinuteClinic will electronically share patient visit summaries with the patient's primary care physician when they are part of an affiliate organization and with the patient's consent. MinuteClinic will continue its standard practice of sending patient visit summaries to primary care providers who are not affiliated with these participating healthcare organizations via fax or mail, with patient consent.

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