CVS Caremark MinuteClinic President Discusses Primary Care Innovation at London Healthcare Conferences

WOONSOCKET, R.I., March 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Andrew Sussman, M.D., President, MinuteClinic and Senior Vice President/Associate Chief Medical Officer of CVS Caremark (NYSE:CVS), travelled to London this week to discuss how MinuteClinic, CVS Caremark's provider of retail-based medical clinics, is improving care and access at substantially lower cost.

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On Tuesday, March 12, Sussman participated in the Innovation in Primary Care panel at the Improving the Quality of Primary Care: An International Perspective Conference. The event was hosted by Lord Ara Darzi, Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London's Centre for Health Policy, and Sir David Nicholson, Chief Executive of the National Health Service in England. The following day, Sussman took part in the Innovation Goes Global panel at the 2013 Healthcare Innovation Expo, an event that features some of the world's most inspiring healthcare innovations and discussions with national and international healthcare experts.

"The innovations we are employing at MinuteClinic to deliver easily accessible, low cost, evidence-based care are applicable to health systems outside the United States," said Sussman.

MinuteClinic is the largest retail medical clinic provider in the United States, with 640 locations in 25 states. The clinics provide convenient, high-quality care for both acute needs, as well as services like sports and camp physicals, vaccinations and chronic disease monitoring. MinuteClinic has been adding locations and increasing its scope of services to accommodate the increasing need for care.

With a growing shortage of primary care physicians, an increase in obesity and chronic disease, an aging population and an influx of newly-insured Americans, MinuteClinic is playing an important role in patient care in the United States. MinuteClinic has also been forging strategic clinical affiliations with some of the largest and most prominent healthcare systems across the United States, creating opportunities for a variety of collaborative programs.

"By establishing affiliations with health systems, we are ensuring the quality of care patients receive at our MinuteClinic locations is top-notch. These relationships include development of joint clinical programs and electronic medical records integration. Most importantly, they lay the groundwork for MinuteClinic's participation in accountable care organizations (ACOs), patient-centered medical homes and other integrated networks of care, all of which are growing rapidly nationwide."

About CVS Caremark
CVS Caremark is dedicated to helping people on their path to better health as the largest integrated pharmacy company in the United States. Through the company's more than 7,400 CVS/pharmacy stores; its leading pharmacy benefit manager serving more than 60 million plan members; and its retail health clinic system, the largest in the nation with more than 600 MinuteClinic locations, it is a market leader in mail order, retail and specialty pharmacy, retail clinics, and Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plans.  As a pharmacy innovation company with an unmatched breadth of capabilities, CVS Caremark continually strives to improve health and lower costs by developing new approaches such as its unique Pharmacy Advisor program that helps people with chronic diseases such as diabetes obtain and stay on their medications.  Find more information about how CVS Caremark is reinventing pharmacy for better health at info.cvscaremark.com.

Contacts:

Carolyn Castel
Corporate Communications
(401) 770-5717
Carolyn.Castel@cvscaremark.com

Amy Lanctot
Corporate Communications
(401) 770-2931
Amy.Lanctot@cvscaremark.com

SOURCE CVS Caremark