Chapel Hill, NC – The Center for Medication Optimization (CMO) is pleased to announce that it has received a $200,000 translational grant from The Eshelman Institute for Innovation, in collaboration with UNC Health Care, AlignCare Services, LLC, and Affiliate Health Plan. These funds will support the “Predictive Analytics + Clinical Services = Value-Based Care” (PA+CS) solution, which seeks to create a new paradigm in medication optimization care delivery. This award was one of only a few competitive grants endowed this year.
Prescription medications are the primary tools used to treat both chronic and acute conditions to improve health. In fact, 75 percent of physician visits, 72 percent of outpatient hospital visits, and 80 percent of ER visits involve drug therapy. In an environment of finite resources and in light of the prominence of medication therapy, using predictive analytics to efficiently identify high-risk patients who may benefit from individualized medication management services is critical.
The PA+CS solution will utilize the prescription-driven predictive analytic platform, AlignCare PrescienceRx, to create tools that identify high-risk patients for pharmacy interventions. These tools will offer resources that better guide pharmacists in managing patients with chronic diseases by identifying those who are likely to respond to pharmacy-driven interventions. Through the use of implementation science principles, these tools will be developed and tested in a real-world health care laboratory at the UNC Health Care System. Patients are expected to benefit from this service by experiencing better health outcomes, driven by improvements in medication adherence and reductions in medication therapy problems.
Although the use of predictive analytics in healthcare is not a new concept, until now, the chasm between analytics and individualized services has remained wide. The PA+CS solution addresses this issue by providing the structure for health care providers to act on information generated by predictive analytics. The PA+CS solution also overcomes the deficiencies that many current risk stratification tools have by focusing on pharmacy claims, rather than medical claims broadly, and focusing on risk of medication therapy problems rather than global risk.
“Ultimately our goal is to put actionable information in the hands of pharmacists who can provide interventions on the right patient at the right time. Connecting real time data with clinical decision support can have a huge impact on patient care while lowering health care costs,” says CMO Director, Jon Easter.
“We are excited to play a role in providing timely and actionable information to pharmacists that will result in better health outcomes and lower costs,” says COO of AlignCare, Fred Goldwater.
In addition to Jon Easter, this award is led by Penny Defalco, Director of Managed Pharmacy Solutions, Ben Urick, CMO research assistant professor, and Melanie Livet, CMO implementation scientist.
The Eshelman Institute for Innovation supports and inspires innovators by providing resources that enable risk taking and the development of bold new ideas. Translational grants are awarded to those seeking to validate transformative discoveries and establish the commercial potential of new technologies, products or processes.
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About CMO
The Center for Medication Optimization at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy brings diverse health-care stakeholders together to create impactful real-world research, generate evidence, disseminate best practices, and advance education in order to integrate medication optimization into value-based care delivery and payment models. These collaborative efforts are directed toward raising awareness and helping implement rigorous evaluations, solutions, best practices and policies to improve patient health outcomes and health-care delivery. We believe this is one solution towards delivering high-value, effective therapies that reduce overall health-care costs.
About AlignCare
AlignCare Services is an analytics company founded on the premise that at-risk organizations require timely, accurate and actionable information for effective care coordination, medication management and revenue optimization. In collaboration with Johns Hopkins and Wolters Kluwer, it developed PrescienceRx a predictive risk platform that utilizes pharmacy data to provide highly actionable information that can be used to lower cost of care and optimize revenue under risk and quality programs.