New Service Lets Health Plans, Hospitals Complement Care With Patient-Guided Program

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Oct 23, 2002 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Today at the 4th Annual Disease Management Leadership Forum, McKesson Corporation announced the availability of its new CareEnhance(SM) Online Symptom Advisor, an Internet-based point-of-care advice service. Online Symptom Advisor lets healthcare consumers manage their healthcare decisions by utilizing the company's patented triage algorithms.

"McKesson's Online Symptom Advisor is a user-friendly Web site that puts many of McKesson's clinical tools into the hands of healthcare consumers who want to use the Internet to get healthcare advice," said Ray L. Gottesfeld, M.D., chief medical officer at McKesson Health Solutions, a business unit of McKesson. "Ninety-five percent of healthcare decisions are made by consumers, and we are now providing them with the information and power to help manage many of these decisions."

Online Symptom Advisor, part of the CareEnhance Online suite of triage and disease management services, is designed for health plans that want to complement CareEnhance Nurse Triage or Disease Management programs, and for hospitals that wish to purchase the program to augment their own call center services. Additionally, CareEnhance Online can be re-branded by the healthcare organization to integrate with other Web services.

"The business goal with Online Symptom Advisor, as with all our CareEnhance Online services, is to give health plans and hospitals additional cost-savings options by helping healthcare consumers oversee their own healthcare decisions and by guiding them to the most appropriate care," said Kevin Maher, vice president of Triage and Web Services at McKesson Health Solutions.

In a recent research document, Gartner Inc. found that this type of service will have significant ROI in the future. "By 2007, HCOs (healthcare organizations) that are able to expand care management to more patients through the use of guided self-care programs will see an ROI of 5-to-1," according to research authored by Cynthia Burghard, Gartner Inc. research director, "Patient Care Management Applications/Technology 2005."

Online Symptom Advisor provides care recommendations for pediatric and adult injuries, illnesses and mental health concerns relying on the symptoms described by the user. (The Web site is password-protected to ensure security, and the site's privacy policy adheres to all appropriate HIPAA regulations.) Online Symptom Advisor helps to quickly analyze more than 130 medical conditions and direct healthcare consumers to the most appropriate healthcare option.

Depending on the medical question, Online Symptom Advisor asks the user to:

-- View self-care instructions that include treatment advice and details about additional symptoms that might occur in relation to the described ailment -- Visit or call a healthcare provider within a specific timeframe -- Go to an urgent care center or emergency department -- Dial 911

The Online Symptom Advisor underwent thorough clinical testing in the emergency department and clinic of a Florida integrated delivery network to evaluate the service's efficacy, safety and patient usability. Online Symptom Advisor is the only product of its kind that has undergone such rigorous safety testing.

Through this testing, McKesson's clinical content developers have ensured that healthcare consumers can readily understand the questions and recommendations made by the Online Symptom Advisor. Written at a 6th- to 8th-grade level in easy-to-understand, non-technical language, medical questions lead the user through "yes" and "no" questions to the appropriate care option. Ninety-seven percent of people who tested the new service said that the questions were easy or very easy to understand and answer.

In addition to proving high levels of patient satisfaction, the testing demonstrated clinical safety and financial cost savings. Testing of nearly 700 patients in emergency department and urgent care settings found that nearly 40 percent of them could have been safely redirected to less acute, more appropriate levels of care. An independent clinical evaluation of each patient confirmed that by following the care recommendations provided by the Online Symptom Advisor, patients would have received appropriate, safe medical care, while reducing financial expenditures.

EDITORS/REPORTERS NOTE:
High-resolution screen shots of the CareEnhance Online Symptom Advisor are available by contacting Jordan Gruener at jordan.gruener@mckesson.com.

About McKesson Corporation

McKesson Corporation is the leading provider of supply, information and care management products and services designed to reduce costs and improve quality across healthcare. Founded in 1833, with annual revenues of more than US$50 billion, McKesson ranks as the 31st largest industrial company in the United States. The McKesson Health Solutions business unit offers integrated technologies and services for the payor, provider and pharmaceutical manufacturer markets. The CareEnhance(SM) Services division provides call center and online programs for disease management, nurse triage, early identification and referrals. The CareEnhance(TM) Products division supplies workflow technology that facilitates case, disease and utilization management; business intelligence tools for measuring, reporting, and improving clinical and financial performance; and InterQual(R) Criteria for clinical decision support. The Specialty Pharmaceutical division supplies multiple channels with services for specialty product dispensing, reimbursement, patient support and compliance, and wholesale distribution.

McKesson Health Solutions

CONTACT:
McKesson Health Solutions
Jordan Gruener, 303/664-6410