Health systems, including hospitals, physician practices, skilled nursing facilities, and more, play an important role in the health care ecosystem. It’s within these health systems that patients are treated by doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care professionals every day.
Today, health systems are facing a variety of challenges, among them, staffing shortages, rapidly increasing patient demand, and rising costs.
We recently sat down with Earl English, senior vice president of Health System Services at Evernorth, to get a better understanding of the health systems landscape, the challenges health systems are facing, and the ways Evernorth is designing services and solutions to enable health systems to better deliver patient care.
Earl English
Can you tell us about your role as the leader of Health System Services at Evernorth?
I lead a team that is dedicated to helping providers and health systems deliver the best possible patient care. We do this through businesses that support providers and health systems with pharmacy-based solutions, including complex pharmaceutical distribution, technology and software support, in-house specialty pharmacy and infusion management services, and more. I love my job and am inspired every day by our team’s passion for helping enable better patient care.
What are some of the biggest challenges that health systems are facing today?
It’s easy to lump hospitals, physician groups, and other health systems into one big category, but it’s important for us to think about their unique needs and challenges. For example, health systems vary greatly in size and scope, ranging from large academic medical centers to very small rural hospitals and clinics.
That said, some of the top challenges that we’re helping many of these different organizations solve include procurement and inventory management, site-of-care shifts, and labor shortages. No two health systems are exactly the same, and we work with each partner individually to ensure customized support.
How is Evernorth helping health systems solve these challenges?
Within Evernorth, we have a robust set of capabilities spanning multiple businesses. This enables us to simplify the process for health systems and help drive value. We can partner with health systems to help solve one challenge they are navigating, or several.
For example, when it comes to navigating the complexity of inventory management and access to medications, our pharmaceutical distributor, CuraScript SD, serves more than 12,000 providers dispensing some of the most complex and critical medications available today. CuraScript SD is uniquely focused on specialty medications, which almost always require special handling and treat patients living with long-term, chronic, and complex conditions. These products are also often quite expensive. The health systems that CuraScript SD supports aren’t typically holding a lot of these medications, given their cost and complexity. They rely on us to seamlessly deliver them based on the needs of individual patients.
Additionally, many health systems today are navigating staffing shortages. This is particularly evident in rural areas, where access to qualified clinicians tends to be even more difficult. Through the telepharmacy capability offered through CarepathRx, which is a company Evernorth recently made a significant investment in, we are able to help hospitals utilize remote pharmacists, who can provide supplemental support during off-peak hours – in the middle of the night, for example – when finding a pharmacist to work can be difficult.
How do you think the needs of health systems will evolve in the years ahead?
I think many of the challenges that health systems are facing today will continue to grow larger in size. For example, when it comes to navigating staffing shortages, the need for this will only increase as the population ages and more people are seeking care. Additionally, health systems will undoubtedly continue to face cost pressures. Having a partner like Evernorth, which has capabilities across the spectrum of health care services, can help alleviate these pressures and maximize value. Lastly, as the use of technology such as AI becomes more common and available, this provides a significant opportunity for health systems. It’s imperative that they understand the tools that will be available to them, to best enable them to treat patients.
What separates Evernorth from competitors in the health system services space?
First and foremost is our exceptional service and personalized touch. We’re not a one-trick pony. We have a diverse set of offerings that have been built to help solve the unique needs of all the different categories of health systems. There’s not a competitor out there that has these diverse capabilities and a truly end-to-end offering.
Our culture of innovation is another important differentiator. We are constantly seeking new and different ways to support our clients and partners to help them deliver the best possible care to their patients.
This article was created with the assistance of AI tools. It was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by Evernorth's editorial team.
