Merck-Medco has formed a joint venture with Medix to drive handheld adoption
Merck-Medco and Medix Resources have announced a strategic relationship to supply physicians with access to clinical information and ePrescribing services through the Cymedix PBM suite of transaction products. Medix will charge a per-prescription fee, for services including eligibility verification, formulary checks, access to medication histories and ePrescribing.
Merck-Medco has been the most active of the PBMs in its drive to deliver point of care services to physicians. Earlier this month, the company announced a strategic alliance with ePhysician to deliver formulary, generic substitution, drug interaction and other information to physicians via handheld devices. In September of this year, Merck-Medco announced a similar agreement with Cybear and in June, Allscripts’ Touchworks system was chosen for a joint venture with nearly identical goals.
The agreements illustrate Merck-Medco’s allegiance to its strategy of providing physicians with access to multiple platforms in order to accelerate the adoption of ePrescribing technology. In another move to drive physician adoption of ePrescribing, Merck-Medco, together with AdvancePCS and Express Scripts, launched RxHub in February of this year.
The other PBMs have reported much more limited activity in the pursuit of physician adoption of ePrescribing outside of RxHub. AdvancePCS launched a joint venture with Tufts Health Plan in April of this year to supply physicians with the PocketScript ePrescribing system, while Express Scripts has been even less active outside RxHub.
It seems likely that these PBMs are waiting for further information regarding the level of formulary compliance and generic substitution attainable with handheld devices and ePrescribing before investing further in this area. At this time, a few pilot studies have shown improved formulary compliance and generic substitution with the use of handheld ePrescribing systems. However, evidence regarding physician use of ePrescribing outside of controlled studies has yet to demonstrate improved formulary compliance beyond that which is attainable without ePrescribing.
