Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, and Premier Inc., a leading healthcare improvement company, have expanded their efforts to co-develop and test solutions to help improve patient care and wellness while lowering healthcare spending.
In 2016, Merck and Premier agreed to collaborate to develop and assess solutions that promote wellness and better care for specific groups of at-risk patients across the continuum. The organizations have now launched two projects under this collaboration model. One is a preventive care model that seeks to improve adolescent and adult vaccination rates. The other is a chronic disease model that includes a new focus on type 2 diabetes patients at risk of hypoglycemia, as well as osteoporosis identification and treatment (as announced in 2016).
“Our expanded collaboration allows us to more effectively support health systems and clinicians that are evolving from volume to value-based models, but lack adequate prevention and wellness solutions,” said Mimi Huizinga, MD, chief health information officer at Premier. “We’ve been working with Merck to design data-driven interventions for some of the top population health challenges facing our country, and we’re eager to start testing them in the real world.”
The vaccination and chronic care models combine the improvement expertise and technical capabilities of Premier with Merck’s education and therapeutic area expertise. The companies are now developing plans with interested health systems to test these models on the frontline, in real-world settings.
