Scott & White Healthcare
and Walgreens Pharmacy:
A partnership to keep
Medicare patients healthy
reventive care and doctors’
visits are important ways to
manage health. As a matter of
convenience and sometimes cost, patients
may seek care outside the traditional
hospital and outpatient clinic settings,
such as at a pharmacy in-store health
clinic or other provider. It’s important
for Scott & White Healthcare physicians
to have the most up-to-date information
about our patients’ encounters outside
the healthcare system so we can help
to manage patients’ health proactively.
Access to such information helps to
ensure that they receive coordinated,
high-quality care.
As a way of moving in that direction,
last January Scott & White established
a new partnership with one of the
nation’s largest pharmacy retailers,
Walgreens. The new Scott & White
Healthcare Walgreens Well Network
is an accountable care organization, or
ACO. An ACO is a group of doctors
P
and other healthcare providers who agree
to work with an insurance company or
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services (CMS) to give patients the best
possible care. Our ACO is designed
to increase the quality of patient
care and decrease healthcare costs of
Medicare patients. It gives physicians
access to CMS health claims data about
patient encounters at the pharmacy,
which might include immunizations
received, sick visits at an in-store clinic,
or other health action. This additional
information can enhance physicians’
overall efforts to keep patients as healthy
as possible.
Michael D. Reis, MD, a Scott &
White Healthcare family medicine
physician and chairman of the ACO
board says, “Walgreens shares Scott &
White’s goal to keep people healthy.
The pharmacy plays an important role