PharmaSmart and Giant Eagle Supermarkets ink major deal
ROCHESTER, N.Y — PharmaSmart® International Inc., a prominent Rochester, NY manufacturer of health screening kiosks, and developer of Health IT and health management solutions, announces their partnership with Giant Eagle Supermarkets. PharmaSmart will deploy its clinically validated blood pressure Kiosk and cloud based Health IT platform across 217 Giant Eagle Supermarkets. This includes Giant Eagle, Market District, and Market District Express locations in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland and West Virginia. All kiosks will be manufactured and distributed out of PharmaSmart's Rochester, NY manufacturing facility.
The Giant Eagle partnership follows a string of important announcements for PharmaSmart®. Most notably, PharmaSmart became a member of the American Heart Association's "Check. Change. Control TM" leadership community, where it will contribute its expertise and technology toward the goal of reducing deaths from heart disease and stroke by 20% by the year 2020 (http://hbpleaders.heart.org/pharmasmart-aha). In addition, the World Hypertension League joined the American Society of Hypertension by publishing clinical guidance recognizing PharmaSmart's unique qualifications as a validated, trustworthy solution for public-use, kiosk based blood pressure measurement.
This clinical recognition and key opinion leader support means pharmacies utilizing PharmaSmart® are in a stronger position to engage in collaborative practice agreements with regional providers and ACO's. Giant Eagle intends to leverage PharmaSmart's clinical-grade program to drive Medicare Star Ratings objectives, specifically measures D-14 (Medication Adherence for Hypertension), and C-19 (Controlling Blood Pressure), both of which are triple- weighted measures of high interest to national and regional insurers.
Mark Doer, SVP Pharmacy/Health & Wellness at Giant Eagle, said, "We agree with the CDC, which recently announced that controlling blood pressure is the single most important thing Americans can do to improve their health outcomes." Doer continued, "For us this is more than just deploying new kiosks. With the PharmaSmart program, Giant Eagle now offers our patients a clinically valid solution for blood pressure management, including full integration into our Rx Software, and consumer website. PharmaSmart's software allows us to easily intervene in cases where blood pressure control is not achieved, and we have the data to demonstrate our impact on blood pressure control rates over a managed population."