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 Today in Health it, this story is CVS Health vaccine distribution testing and interoperability. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT at channel dedicated to keeping Health IT staff current. And engaged VMware is the sponsor for today in Health it, they were one of the first sponsors for this week in Health it.

They've been committed to our mission of providing relevant content to health IT professionals since the start. They recently completed an executive study with MIT on the top Healthcare trends, shaping IT, resilience, covering how the pandemic drove unique transformation in healthcare. They're just one of many resource.

This is actually just one of many resources they have for healthcare professionals. Uh, for this and several other great content pieces, check out vmware.com/go/healthcare. Alright, today's story, CVS and actually sounds like I'm doing three stories. It's actually just one. We're just gonna talk about cvs.

CVS is one of the more impressive presentations at the JP Morgan conference. Uh, Karen Lynch is the recently named CEO. Uh, Larry Merla was the there as well, but, uh, Karen did most of the presentation. Covid has actually played out pretty well for CVS. It's not that they were rooting for Covid, but it helped to accelerate their strategy and position in healthcare.

Really, from this perspective, CVS wants to be your care navigator. They would like to insert themselves as the quarterback for your care, and they are well positioned to do just that. Covid sent people looking for testing and now for the vaccine and vaccine distribution. If the numbers continue, CVS will likely be the primary distributor of the vaccine in the nation.

Why? Well, you know, convenience, reach and marketing and digital sophistication from a convenience standpoint, they're, uh, they're, uh, within 10 miles of 85% of the US population. All right. So they are, they're literally your neighborhood pharmacy. From a marketing standpoint, they have the ability to reach the entire market.

One of the challenges that we've seen in distributing it through hospitals is, you know, they say things like, Hey, we're, we're gonna use our portal for, for scheduling. The problem is, you know, no one has a hundred percent market share in the local market, and if they don't give it to every hospital system.

and which, which was the case in the market that I live in, they gave it to a single hospital system because it was a scarce resource early on. Uh, you can't use your portal because only what, 10, 15, 20 5% of the people are actually in your portal. You're asking people to sign up for the portal and those kind of things.

The CVS portal is much broader. It takes into account, uh, consumers in that marketplace and they have a, just a broader reach. and are really designed from a marketing perspective to reach that community. And the last thing I'll say is, you know, just digital sophistication. They have a digital strategy.

They can reach the consumer. They have, uh, the tools to do that. You know, are they making a, a ton of money from vaccine testing and distribution? You know, not, not likely. Uh, but there are other benefits. This is one of the things that, uh, Karen Lynch said that again, her, the CEO, uh, we increase the number of consumers we interact with daily through our testing and soon to be our vaccine services.

Approximately 40% of our return ready clients are new to CVS Health and number 6 million people who tested for Covid I at CVS locations, uh, which are not currently CVS customers. So they, they increased their number of customers two CVS locations for the first time by 6 million people. Alright, let's get back to the vaccine distribution.

So . Um, now the way the process worked is that the, for long-term care facilities, the state selected, uh, the, uh, the locations, they activated the locations as they were going, and they selected a provider. CVS was selected to, uh, distribute to long-term care facilities across the country. In fact, it's a significant number.

I don't have it in front of me, but it, it's a significant number of, um, . Of care facilities, long-term care facilities across the country. So they mobilized, uh, took their clinics out to those locations and started, uh, to distribute the vaccine by the end of January. Uh, we will have the first round of all facilities nearly complete.

This, this is getting a quote from the, uh, JP Morgan conference. Uh, so we're making really good progress. We've completed it against the plan that was set for us today. We have done over 8,000 of these clinics in these facilities, and we've administered over 700,000 vaccines. So as of yesterday, it was about 10% of the total vaccines that were administered.

By CVS. So 10% of the total US vaccines delivered. If you think about it, all the health systems, everybody who's doing it, 10% were delivered by CVS. Alright, so what's next? They expect the federal program to open up. Shortly and they are ready to distribute the vaccine. They have over 90,000 clinicians through pharmacists, pharmacy techs, uh, nurses, nurses, practitioners that are gonna be able to administer the vaccine, and they expect they can administer from 20 to 25 million vaccines per month once the federal program opens up.

You know, here's, I mean, again, all these things are really impressive and I'm sort of making the case for why, uh, COVID accelerated their strategy to be the the care Navigator because we know where they're at. We're starting to go there. We're starting to get comfortable with the fact that CVS is a place that we go to, uh, help us make our healthcare decisions.

But the question I do have is, you know, they are a player. They're benefit benefiting from, uh, operational warp speed. They have Epic as their EHR. Uh, why don't they have an open fire endpoint? I. Right. So if you go to Epic's Open Fire Endpoint, they're not listed, they're not on there. You cannot hit them as a fire endpoint.

Um, I, I also wonder why they aren't participating in the Vaccine Credential initiative. The, the program that we talked about on Friday of last week's show, I. Where, uh, people, where these organizations, epic and Cerner and others, uh, care and Alliance and others have come together to share the, uh, the, the vaccine, uh, data that is being collected and so that we can have sort of a, a national, uh, registry of, of the people that are getting the credentials.

Or getting the, the, uh, vaccine, uh, you know, wouldn't it make sense to have one of the largest covid testing and vaccine distribution, uh, entities share that information with the rest of the healthcare community? That's my thought for today. Uh, I would like to see CVS participate, uh, not only in the, uh, in VCI, but also.

Uh, start to, to have an open fire endpoint so that, uh, so that the information can be shared and they can participate in the interoperability, uh, initiatives that are going on in this country. All right, that's all for today. If you know, if someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note.

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