McKesson Announces Formation of New Medication Adherence Business Unit: McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions

Boston, MA — NACDS Conference — August 13, 2007 — McKesson Corporation, the world’s leading healthcare services company, today announced the creation of a new business unit, McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions. By bringing together the industry’s most comprehensive, integrated portfolio of medication adherence programs and solutions, McKesson is positioned to help lead the industry in addressing today’s critical and complex issue of medication adherence. Stefan Linn, SVP of Marketing for McKesson U.S. Pharmaceutical, will lead the new business unit. 

According to a report recently released by the National Council on Patient Information and Education (NCPIE), “Poor medicine adherence has reached crisis proportions in the U.S. and around the world, leading to unnecessary disease progression, disease complications, reduced functional abilities, a lower quality of life, and even death.” The report also found that only 50 percent of American patients typically take their medicines as prescribed, resulting in approximately $177 billion in annual costs to the U.S. economy, $47 billion each year in drug-related hospitalizations, 40 percent of admissions to nursing homes, and an additional $2,000 in medical costs each year per patient for physician visits.1

Leading the Way to Improved Patient Outcomes

To address the mounting problem of poor medication adherence, the new McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions unit brings together a variety of programs and solutions that enable pharmaceutical manufacturers, pharmacists, and other healthcare providers to improve patient outcomes by increasing adherence to prescribed drug regimens. The result of bringing together McKesson’s entire portfolio of programs and solutions under the McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions business unit is the industry’s most robust, end-to-end approach for improving adherence. Currently, McKesson delivers more than 225 adherence and patient loyalty programs that have been adopted by nearly 50 pharmaceutical manufacturers and 100 unique brands. To further extend McKesson’s depth and breadth in this area, a key focus of the new business unit is to continue to develop and offer innovative new adherence solutions.

Today’s adherence programs and solutions not only help manufacturers strengthen and expand consumer relationships, but they also provide new revenue opportunities for pharmacists who can realize incremental revenue for the adherence services they provide to their patients. McKesson adherence programs serve to reinforce the value of pharmacy in the overall healthcare delivery network.

“The creation of McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions significantly underscores McKesson’s ongoing commitment to improving patient outcomes,” said Stefan Linn, head of McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions and Senior Vice President of Marketing, McKesson U.S. Pharmaceutical. “So many chronic conditions can be better treated and managed through appropriate medication therapy, and I have no doubt that we will play a critical role in helping the industry address this challenge. By leveraging the depth and breadth of McKesson’s experience in adherence, McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions represents today’s most complete and dedicated resource for solving one of healthcare’s most complex and perplexing issues.”

“The McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions unit extends McKesson’s focus on driving positive change in healthcare to an important new level,” added John Figueroa, President, McKesson U.S. Pharmaceutical. “From our established history as a provider of innovative adherence solutions, to our deep industry relationships, to our market-leading technology and service assets, McKesson is ideally positioned to lead the industry in improving medication adherence nationwide.”

As part of the world’s leading healthcare services company, McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions will leverage McKesson’s broad array of industry-leading assets, including: disease management solutions, pharmacy-based therapy management programs, healthcare IT solutions, point-of-sale patient acquisition and retention solutions, and the industry’s most widely adopted provider connectivity platform, powered by the RelayHealth intelligent network. McKesson’s acquisition of Per-Se Technologies in January 2007 brought to the company an electronic network that connects more than 90% of the nation’s pharmacies to other business partners, including payors, physicians, manufacturers, and more. This network capability is becoming integral to many of McKesson’s adherence solutions. 

To date, McKesson’s adherence solutions have helped more than 40 million patients comply with their prescribed medication regimens, resulting in more than $3 billion in patient savings as well as overall improved health outcomes. These results are driven by McKesson’s focus on removing many of the barriers that typically contribute to patient non-adherence, including: self-efficacy, forgetfulness, cost, side effects, language barriers, inability to fill or pick up a prescription, confusion over usage directions, and more.

“Medication adherence is such a critically important issue within healthcare, yet until today, the industry has lacked a truly integrated and focused approach from a solutions provider to tackle this issue from all sides,” said Peggy Yelinek, Vice President and General Manager, McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions. “McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions was created to fill this role and help lead the industry to improve the quality of Americans’ lives, decrease the number of preventable deaths, and reduce healthcare costs across the industry.”

About McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions
McKesson Patient Relationship Solutions, a business unit of McKesson Corporation, is dedicated to improving health outcomes by increasing patient adherence to prescribed medication regimens and awareness of pharmaceutical therapy options. The unit’s solutions include a patient outreach network, fully integrated patient loyalty cards, call center support, automated outbound communications, in-pharmacy patient outreach programs, and much more. For more information, please contact Derek Rago at Derek.Rago@McKesson.com.

About McKesson Corporation
McKesson Corporation, currently ranked 18^th on the FORTUNE 500, is a healthcare services and information technology company dedicated to helping its customers deliver high-quality healthcare by reducing costs, streamlining processes, and improving the quality and safety of patient care. McKesson is the longest-operating company in healthcare today, and will mark 175 years of continuous operations in 2008. Over the course of its history, McKesson has grown by providing pharmaceutical and medical-surgical supply management across the spectrum of care; healthcare information technology for hospitals, physicians, homecare, hospital, and retail pharmacy automation; and services for manufacturers and payors designed to improve outcomes for patients. For more information, visit www.mckesson.com.