Medco CEO: Healthcare Innovation is Essential for Sustainable Reform and a Core Component of Any Plan for Long-Term U.S. Financial Solvency

CLEVELAND, Oct. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- A year and a half into healthcare reform, a pivotal question remains: Can the law achieve genuine, sustainable reform?  Medco Chairman and CEO David B. Snow Jr. offered an answer today in an address at the Cleveland Clinic: "The law as written," he said, lays solid groundwork toward expanded healthcare access.  "But it must be augmented by an intensive commitment to improving quality, and controlling escalating costs."

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Building the "three legged stool" of sustainable healthcare – one in which access, cost and quality are in equal balance – requires the concerted and comprehensive implementation of innovative tools and approaches, the foundational element of which, Snow stressed, "will be innovative systems that allow healthcare providers to convert the huge amount of health data we have at our disposal into actionable patient-care information."

Snow pointed out a number of promising measures that have taken shape over the last few years.  These include provisions supporting the development of comparative effectiveness research, Accountable Care Organizations, the establishment of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and the $19.2 billion allocated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to develop standards on which to establish a nationwide Healthcare Information Technology platform.

Sustainable healthcare, Snow maintained, depends on the extent to which we follow through on the promise of these measures and implement a truly "wired" system - networks and processes that can integrate healthcare data across all major institutions.  Pharmacy, which is already fully wired, provides an instructive example of the way in which technology can reduce waste and create efficiencies that drive out costs while significantly improving the clinical quality of patient care.

Placing his vision within the context of strained budgets nationwide, Snow pointed out that annual national health expenditures are about $2.5 trillion and account for more than 17.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  The model of wired pharmacy, he emphasized, offers solutions for the healthcare system as a whole, beginning with the simple ability to access and apply the extraordinary patient and scientific data that is now available.  

"There's been an explosive increase in the availability of patient data and medical knowledge over the past two decades," he said.  "Unfortunately, outside of the realm of pharmacy, the current level of success in converting these tremendous amounts of data into meaningful and actionable healthcare information is unsatisfactory.  Wiring the system throughout presents the possibility of dramatic advances in medicine and human health."  

The positive impact of a fully wired system would be profound.  "Gaps in care," largely the result of medications that are underprescribed, misprescribed or not taken as directed by a physician, lead to unnecessary hospitalization, emergency room visits, and extended illnesses.  A fully wired system, Snow argued, ensures the most appropriate, targeted information is available to both physicians and patients

The results of such enhanced physician and patient insight would be substantial: significantly increased safety, improved outcomes and hundreds of billions in annual savings.  Indeed, the poor management of chronic and complex disease alone costs the U.S. an estimated $350 billion a year.  

Snow pointed out that in combination with other reforms – including medical malpractice reform; restoring the financial solvency of Medicare; and the systematic promotion and incentivizing of healthy lifestyles – the U.S. could achieve as much as $1 trillion a year in healthcare cost reduction.

Snow, who has more than 30 years of experience managing hospitals and healthcare systems and himself comes from a family of physicians, went on to make a detailed case that integrating all facets of medical/scientific knowledge through a wired platform could finally realize the oft-cited healthcare ideal: getting the right treatment to the right patient at the right time – all the time.  

Medco's specialized expertise in the practice of pharmacy, combined with evidence-based research gathered through its Medco Research Institute, provides the knowledge, precision and efficiency that, applied system-wide, could move U.S. healthcare practice from what amounts to "shotgun medicine" today to precision medicine tomorrow, improving patient outcomes and bending down the cost curve.  

However, ultimate success will hinge, Snow cautioned, on the extent to which the effort is underpinned by an enlightened public-private partnership in which the government drives strategic foundational policies and regulations and the private sector, fueled by fair competition, is motivated to innovate.

"In its present form, the precise course of the healthcare reform law is an open question," concluded Snow.  "Many of its rules remain to be spelled out and the contours of its underlying institutions are not yet clear."  

But while that poses challenges for business planning and injects uncertainty into markets, he concluded, the very fluidity of the situation is promising.  "The possibility that wide-ranging healthcare innovation can still be brought to bear across the system means that the vision of broad access, improved clinical quality and a sustainable cost structure is attainable.  If we act with urgency - and if we act together - the goal is still very much within reach."

About Medco

Medco Health Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: MHS) is pioneering The world's most advanced pharmacy® and its clinical research and innovations are part of Medco making medicine smarter™ for approximately 65 million members.

With more than 20,000 employees worldwide dedicated to improving patient health and reducing costs for a wide range of public and private sector clients, and 2010 revenues of $66 billion, Medco ranks 34th on the 2011 Fortune 500 list and is named among the world's most innovative, most admired and most trustworthy companies. 

For more information, go to http://www.medcohealth.com.

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause results to differ materially from those set forth in the statements. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed, and actual results may differ materially from those projected. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Forward-looking statements in this press release should be evaluated together with the risks and uncertainties that affect our business, particularly those mentioned in the Risk Factors section of the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE Medco Health Solutions, Inc.