A $139 million five-year contract for RelayHealth’s patient engagement and interoperable secure messaging solutions has been awarded by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Defense Health Agency (DHA), McKesson announced on Wednesday.

Patients, physicians, physician assistants, nurse case managers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, dentists, and other members of the care team of the Military Health System’s (MHS)  would be served by the messaging solution, said the announcement.

RelayHealth’s solutions  would seek to enhance patient engagement through secure messaging, educational content and care management tools that improve access to care team members and health data. The solutions would also help providers to improve their access to care for DoD beneficiaries and coordination for the advance care teams across provider care settings.

“[Secure Messaging] is a critical access tool that allows the MHS to increase capacity to meet enrollee demand for care by supporting delivery of virtual care through patient-to-provider and provider-to-provider communications before and after actual appointments,” the DoD stated in its announcement.

“Secure messaging facilitates delegation-of-care tasks to providers with the expertise to deal with them without escalating all messages to the physician level,” said the DoD’s announcement.

Account management services, training resources, and non-standard report preparation are included in the sole-source acquisition contract.

“We are honored to continue supporting the DHA in their readiness mission, which is to ensure a medically ready force and ready medical force. RelayHealth is helping to improve access to care, care coordination, care quality, and the responsible management of cost, while the DHA continues to evolve towards a more patient-centered and connected model of care,” said Ken Tarkoff, senior vice president and general manager of RelayHealth.

“We also fully understand the need for secure health data. RelayHealth’s ability to meet the increasing security demands in the healthcare industry, as demonstrated, for example, by our role as the service provider for CommonWell Health Alliance, has strongly positioned us to meet the DoD requirements,” Tarkoff added.

The DoD’s ongoing efforts to innovate its health IT infrastructure is complemented by the RelayHealth’s expertise in interoperability and vendor-neutral focus, said Pat Blake, president of McKesson Technology Solutions. The solutions would also support the unique needs of the military health community, Blake added.

“The DoD is undertaking a significant technological change in its approach to the management of electronic health records. Our military families and clinical teams often face relocation, deployment and as a result, potential disruption in their healthcare delivery. Our solutions serve as a thread of technical continuity for patients to maintain access to their physicians and care teams,” said Blake.

(Source:www.streetinsider.com)

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