The Department of Defense (DoD) and the Defense Health Agency (DHA) have awarded McKesson with a $139 million, five-year contract for its RelayHealth patient engagement and interoperable secure messaging solutions.
"Our military families and clinical teams often face relocation, deployment, and as a result, potential disruption in their health care delivery," Pat Blake, president of McKesson Technology Solutions, said in a statement. “Our solutions serve as a thread of technical continuity for patients to maintain access to their physicians and care teams.”
The RelayHealth solutions will be used by the Military Health System's (MHS) patients, physicians, physician assistants, nurse case managers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, dentists and others.
RelayHealth's patient portal software allows for secure messaging between patients and physicians so that patient can request an appointment or medication refill. In addition, the physicians can send them diagnostic results, preventive care advice and other health care information.
“[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.
The solutions will help physicians improve access to care for DoD beneficiaries. They will also help to improve coordination between care teams and enhance patient engagement with the secure messaging, education content and care management tools.
The contract was a sole-source acquisition and includes account management services, training resources and nonstandard report preparation.
