OREANDA-NEWS. September 12, 2013. McKesson announces the launch of the McKesson VITAL Identification and Stratification service, designed to help payers identify and engage the individuals who will benefit the most from care management programs.

Building on 13 years of experience performing identification and stratification on behalf of payers that McKesson delivers care management services for, the new VITAL Identification and Stratification service gives actionable insights to payers who are performing care management services themselves.

"At McKesson, we deliver disease and case management services on behalf of many of our payer customers. To identify and target the at risk and high risk individuals who are most likely to see positive health outcomes from participating in these programs, we've developed a proprietary predictive model," said Gregory Berg, Ph.D., Associate Vice President of Business Insight for McKesson Care Management. "Now our customers who use the McKesson VITAL Platform to deliver care management services themselves can leverage our robust identification and stratification service. This allows payers to reach the right members at the right time, and use their care management resources most effectively."

The data output from the VITAL Identification and Stratification service is integrated with the VITAL Platform 7.2. Based on rules established by the Care Continuum Alliance and McKesson, the service evaluates claims to identify members with one or more of 90 chronic conditions and over 60 clinical gaps in care, and identifies the member's most problematic condition so it can be managed first. McKesson then applies a proprietary predictive modeling solution that calculates prospective risk scores (total risk, chronic risk, and behavioral health risk) as well as a predicted impact score for each member. This process stratifies members to prioritize workflow and assure the right level of support for optimal health outcomes.

"Unlike other predictive modeling software on the market today, McKesson's approach takes into account the amount by which a care management intervention is likely to have an impact on the member. Our solution also gives payers flexibility, because we can modify our identification rules to fit client specifications and calibrate our predictive model to each client," said Dr. Berg.

With the VITAL Identification and Stratification service from McKesson, payers can gain the business intelligence they need to help them positively impact their disease and care management programs, and ultimately improve the quality of care delivered to members and reduce medical and administrative costs.