The largest inpatient and outpatient health services provider in New Jersey, Hackensack University Health Network, is affiliating with CVS Caremark's MinuteClinic, making healthcare services more convenient and affordable, the health system announced last week.
Under the new affiliation, Hackensack University Medical Center and MinuteClinic will have a mutual referral arrangement, in which the hospital will accept patients who need more care than the clinic offers, while the clinic will provide walk-in services for common illnesses, as well as wellness and prevention services. Moreover, Hackensack physicians will serve as medical directors for six MinuteClinic walk-in clinics, according to the announcement.
The organizations also will integrate electronic medical record systems, sharing medical histories and visit summaries with patient permission.
"We look forward to having Hackensack physicians collaborate with our nurse practitioners to provide quality oversight, teaching and backup so we can provide the best care at the lowest overall cost," Andrew Sussman, M.D., president of MinuteClinic and senior vice president/associate chief medical officer of CVS Caremark, said in the announcement.
In addition to Hackensack, MinuteClinic has similar relationships with the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Allina Health in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Arizona's Catholic HealthCare West and St. Vincent's Hospital in Florida, among others.
"We work together on clinical programs and we work to integrate electronic records so we can send notes from our electronic record to the physician's record in the health system and vice-versa," Sussman told FierceHealthcare in a previous interview. "That allows us to make sure that all of the clinical information circles back to the physicians who might be taking care of those patients when we're not seeing them," he said.
For more information:
- read the Hackensack announcement