Home > News > Top Stories > Allina Health and Owens & Minor Expand Partnership and Announce New Strategic Collaboration

Future of Healthcare

Allina Health and Owens & Minor Expand Partnership and Announce New Strategic Collaboration

Allina Health

Owens & Minor, Inc. a leading global healthcare solutions company, and Allina Health, a not-for-profit healthcare system dedicated to enhancing the health of individuals, families and communities throughout Minnesota and western Wisconsin, today announced their renewed partnership and a new strategic collaboration to create a unique integrated service model for supply chain resiliency.

The integrated service model is an evolution of the 20-year partnership between Allina Health and Owens & Minor. At the heart of the model is an integrated service center that will serve as the hub and central command for supply chain operations, combining communications, fulfillment, inventory management and distribution into an end-to-end solution built specifically for the needs of Allina Health’s hospital and clinical care network, including its 6,000 associated and employed physicians.

“Allina Health believes that deepening our successful relationship with Owens & Minor will elevate our ability to ensure that our providers and clinical staff have the products they need, when they need them. Further combining our collective strengths is key to our vision for exploring creative, innovative ways to improve our supply chain operations. We are excited by what this new phase of our 20-year strategic partnership with Owens & Minor will bring.”

Thomas M. Lubotsky, Vice President of Supply Chain, Allina Health

Owens & Minor’s 140 years of supply chain expertise and innovative approach will serve as the backbone of Allina Heath’s supply chain operations, merging the company’s proprietary product portfolio, robust logistics capabilities, distribution, and technology services into a shared bespoke solution with improved data transparency, communication and inventory management capabilities that lower inventory costs.

“We welcome the opportunity to work more closely with a partner as forward-thinking as Allina Health to not only drive greater efficiencies, but also to collaborate on new ways to support the continued health of their supply chain operations,” commented Jeff Jochims, EVP, Chief Operating Officer and President, Products and Healthcare Services, Owens & Minor. “We look forward to continuing and growing our long and successful partnership.”

About Allina Health
Allina Health is dedicated to the prevention and treatment of illness and enhancing the greater health of individuals, families and communities throughout Minnesota and western Wisconsin. A not-for-profit health care system, Allina Health cares for patients from beginning to end-of-life through its 90+ clinics, 10 hospitals, 15 retail pharmacies, specialty care centers and specialty medical services, home care, and emergency medical transportation services.

About Owens & Minor
Owens & Minor, Inc. is a Fortune 500 global healthcare solutions company integrating product manufacturing and delivery, home health supply, and perioperative services to support care through the hospital and into the home. Owens & Minor drives visibility, control and efficiency for patients, providers and healthcare professionals across the supply chain with proprietary technology and solutions, an extensive product portfolio, an Americas-based manufacturing footprint for personal protective equipment (PPE) and surgical products, as well as a robust portfolio of products and services for patients managing chronic and acute conditions in the home setting. Operating continuously since 1882 from its headquarters in Richmond, Va., Owens & Minor is a 140-year-old company powered by more than 20,000 global teammates. 

Spotlight

More featured news

Spotlight

Related News

Health Technology, Digital Healthcare

Best Buy Health and Geisinger Enhance Home Chronic Disease Management

Geisinger | September 13, 2023

Collaborating with Best Buy's Geek Squad ensures faster care, better adherence, and superior outcomes for chronic care patients. In 2021, Geisinger launched ConnectedCare365, enrolling over 1,100 patients in remote monitoring for various chronic conditions via Best Buy Health's Current Health platform. In July 2022, Best Buy Health and Geisinger began a program with Geek Squad Agents to deliver and activate remote care management devices. Best Buy Health and Geisinger have announced their commitment to expand their collaborative efforts to enhance the quality of care for a broader patient population within the Geisinger network. This expansion builds upon their successful delivery of in-home care to patients with chronic conditions through Geek Squad. This initiative currently encompasses 300 Geisinger patients. During their home visits, these agents critically educate patients about the technology integral to their care plan. They offer detailed explanations about the devices, instruct patients on proper usage, and ensure seamless data transmission to the patient's care team. Additionally, agents are available to help with troubleshooting as needed, and they oversee the collection and processing of all devices after a patient leaves the program, following the care team's instructions. The program has achieved a remarkable 50% reduction in the time it takes for a patient to go from admission into the chronic care at-home program to the completion of device setup. This pivotal shift has seen the period shrink from an average of 96 hours to just 48 hours. Furthermore, patients' adherence to their care plans has improved by a commendable 19%, evident in their consistent use of remote technology equipment. Additionally, there has been an 18% decline in reported technical issues, and when replacements were necessary, Geek Squad agents swiftly provided new devices within 24 hours of receiving reports. These exceptional results have garnered positive patient feedback, with a net promoter score of 89 when asked about their experience with Geek Squad's home visits for chronic care program setup. Deborah Di Sanzo, President of Best Buy Health, stated, The results of our program show that when we combine what Best Buy is known for—technology support and expertise—with Geisinger's best-in-class care teams and network of clinics and hospitals, we can make a meaningful difference in the patient and caregiver experience. [Source: Business Wire] Additionally, she emphasized Geisinger's outstanding performance on this initiative. She expressed strong enthusiasm for expanding these capabilities nationwide, in alignment with Best Buy Health's mission to promote accessible at-home care for everyone. Karen Murphy, EVP, Chief Innovation Officer and Founding Director of the Steele Institute for Health Innovation at Geisinger, emphasized the dynamic changes in healthcare. She highlighted the organization's heightened dedication to bringing care closer to patients and members while striving to establish higher care quality standards. The collaboration with Best Buy Health has enabled Geisinger to reshape the healthcare experience, ushering in positive transformations in care delivery and reception. Best Buy aims to enhance lives through technology by providing customers with expert guidance, a diverse product range, and comprehensive in-store and online services. Meanwhile, Geisinger dedicates itself to simplifying the journey to improved health for its extensive community of over one million individuals.

Read More

Healthtech Security, Digital Healthcare

CommonSpirit Health Sets Up National Value-Based Care Organization

CommonSpirit Health | September 22, 2023

Population Health Services Organization strives to enhance access to equitable healthcare, elevate quality, reduce costs, and benefit millions of patients. Half of CommonSpirit's value-based providers are external, paving the way for PHSO's network expansion. PHSO leverages CommonSpirit's value-based healthcare expertise, including successful risk-bearing organizations and ten accountable care organizations covering over 2.6 million lives. CommonSpirit Health has unveiled a nationwide value-based services platform named Population Health Services Organization (PHSO). This initiative primarily aims to enhance access to equitable healthcare, elevate care quality and outcomes, and reduce the overall cost of healthcare delivery. PHSO will deliver various services, including advanced population health analytics, network administration, care coordination, data management and analytics, technological infrastructure support, reporting, and additional support to empower healthcare providers and provider networks to excel in value-based care. Wright Lassiter III, CEO of CommonSpirit Health, stated, The PHSO is a natural extension of our mission and longstanding commitment to providing high-quality, equitable care and addressing social determinants of health. [Source – Business Wire] He added that by harnessing CommonSpirit's national scale and expertise in value-based care, the company's goal is to elevate the standard of healthcare in the United States and assist providers in succeeding in value-based care within diverse community-based health system environments. CommonSpirit Health extends its services to urban and rural communities across 24 states, establishing itself as one of the United States' most prominent providers of Medicare and Medicaid services. Consequently, its PHSO will cater to an even more diverse payer portfolio. Thomas McGinn, MD, MPH, Executive Vice President, Physician Enterprise at CommonSpirit Health, highlighted the organization's unique advantage in serving diverse communities encompassing Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial insurance, making their data more representative of the American population compared to models primarily focused on commercial insurance. He added that CommonSpirit's presence in 24 states provides them with the data, tools, and access to a broad patient demographic, allowing them to tackle crucial national health challenges that require their size, scale, and expertise. For example, they can utilize data insights to understand testing, referral, and treatment patterns, enabling interventions that reduce viral infections like Hepatitis C, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. Value-based care emphasizes the quality of healthcare over its quantity, promoting comprehensive and coordinated care to enhance health outcomes, quality, and equity. This model relies on contractual incentives for providers to achieve superior results, improve quality, enhance patient experiences, and curb healthcare expenses. Notably, the demand for such agreements is rising, exemplified by the company's goal to transition most Medicaid and all Medicare beneficiaries into value-based care relationships by 2030.

Read More

Health Technology, Digital Healthcare

HARMAN Launches New Private Large Language Model for Healthcare Industry- HARMAN HealthGPT

Business Wire | October 16, 2023

HARMAN, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. focused on connected technologies for automotive, consumer, and enterprise markets, announced that its Digital Transformation Solutions business unit has launched the groundbreaking Healthcare Private Language Model (LLM), known as HealthGPT. HealthGPT represents a leap in healthcare solutions by leveraging generative AI to empower healthcare professionals, researchers, and institutions through advanced patient care, medical research, and decision-making. HealthGPT brings forward all the benefits of a LLM like natural language interaction and learnability, with a strong knowledge base established from a variety of healthcare data sets. The model, built using the key principles of responsible AI, has additionally been tested for accuracy and hallucinations using HARMAN’s own automated LLM testing framework and the results were further validated by the healthcare subject matter experts. HARMAN HealthGPT is a private LLM, providing enterprises with more control over roadmap, privacy, compliance and security issues at optimized cost. Key advantages of working with HARMAN HealthGPT include Enhanced Clinical Insights: Provides real-time, context-aware clinical insights, aiding in decision making. End-to-end LLM Fine tuning framework: A comprehensive framework for fine-tuning Language Model (LLM) to achieve optimal performance. Data generation framework: A framework for creating high quality customized datasets to further fine-tune Language Model (LLM) for enhanced performance. Automated LLM evaluation framework: Completely automated solution to validate fine-tuned LLMs for quality of outputs, factual correctness, hallucinations, and toxicity. Cost Optimization: Advanced deployment techniques using quantization to significantly reduce model size and thereby processing costs by up to one-tenth. Drug Discovery and Research: Accelerate drug discovery and development by extracting valuable insights from clinical trial data. Nick Parrotta, President – Digital Transformation Solutions & Chief Digital and Information officer at HARMAN said, The business value of generative AI cannot be overstated. Organizations that scale and implement swiftly will see significant competitive advantages, productivity gains and more – but only if they can unlock their data and move from general purpose applications to more specialized, domain-specific applications. At HARMAN, it is our mission to help our clients navigate this hurdle and create a competitive advantage long-term. HARMAN HealthGPT is an example of our capabilities that will help organizations utilize specific industry trained models to better solve unique problems and add value for customers. With our long-standing AI expertise and ability to develop effective LLMs, we’re equipped to help our clients move past challenging roadblocks and fully capitalize on the exciting promise of generative AI. [Source – Business Wire] HARMAN is seeing strong early results of the LLM training, and its AI and ML teams are well positioned with an end-to-end, tested framework to fine-tune more private LLMs, beyond the healthcare industry, to solve similar customer problems.

Read More

Health Technology, Digital Healthcare

Best Buy Health and Geisinger Enhance Home Chronic Disease Management

Geisinger | September 13, 2023

Collaborating with Best Buy's Geek Squad ensures faster care, better adherence, and superior outcomes for chronic care patients. In 2021, Geisinger launched ConnectedCare365, enrolling over 1,100 patients in remote monitoring for various chronic conditions via Best Buy Health's Current Health platform. In July 2022, Best Buy Health and Geisinger began a program with Geek Squad Agents to deliver and activate remote care management devices. Best Buy Health and Geisinger have announced their commitment to expand their collaborative efforts to enhance the quality of care for a broader patient population within the Geisinger network. This expansion builds upon their successful delivery of in-home care to patients with chronic conditions through Geek Squad. This initiative currently encompasses 300 Geisinger patients. During their home visits, these agents critically educate patients about the technology integral to their care plan. They offer detailed explanations about the devices, instruct patients on proper usage, and ensure seamless data transmission to the patient's care team. Additionally, agents are available to help with troubleshooting as needed, and they oversee the collection and processing of all devices after a patient leaves the program, following the care team's instructions. The program has achieved a remarkable 50% reduction in the time it takes for a patient to go from admission into the chronic care at-home program to the completion of device setup. This pivotal shift has seen the period shrink from an average of 96 hours to just 48 hours. Furthermore, patients' adherence to their care plans has improved by a commendable 19%, evident in their consistent use of remote technology equipment. Additionally, there has been an 18% decline in reported technical issues, and when replacements were necessary, Geek Squad agents swiftly provided new devices within 24 hours of receiving reports. These exceptional results have garnered positive patient feedback, with a net promoter score of 89 when asked about their experience with Geek Squad's home visits for chronic care program setup. Deborah Di Sanzo, President of Best Buy Health, stated, The results of our program show that when we combine what Best Buy is known for—technology support and expertise—with Geisinger's best-in-class care teams and network of clinics and hospitals, we can make a meaningful difference in the patient and caregiver experience. [Source: Business Wire] Additionally, she emphasized Geisinger's outstanding performance on this initiative. She expressed strong enthusiasm for expanding these capabilities nationwide, in alignment with Best Buy Health's mission to promote accessible at-home care for everyone. Karen Murphy, EVP, Chief Innovation Officer and Founding Director of the Steele Institute for Health Innovation at Geisinger, emphasized the dynamic changes in healthcare. She highlighted the organization's heightened dedication to bringing care closer to patients and members while striving to establish higher care quality standards. The collaboration with Best Buy Health has enabled Geisinger to reshape the healthcare experience, ushering in positive transformations in care delivery and reception. Best Buy aims to enhance lives through technology by providing customers with expert guidance, a diverse product range, and comprehensive in-store and online services. Meanwhile, Geisinger dedicates itself to simplifying the journey to improved health for its extensive community of over one million individuals.

Read More

Healthtech Security, Digital Healthcare

CommonSpirit Health Sets Up National Value-Based Care Organization

CommonSpirit Health | September 22, 2023

Population Health Services Organization strives to enhance access to equitable healthcare, elevate quality, reduce costs, and benefit millions of patients. Half of CommonSpirit's value-based providers are external, paving the way for PHSO's network expansion. PHSO leverages CommonSpirit's value-based healthcare expertise, including successful risk-bearing organizations and ten accountable care organizations covering over 2.6 million lives. CommonSpirit Health has unveiled a nationwide value-based services platform named Population Health Services Organization (PHSO). This initiative primarily aims to enhance access to equitable healthcare, elevate care quality and outcomes, and reduce the overall cost of healthcare delivery. PHSO will deliver various services, including advanced population health analytics, network administration, care coordination, data management and analytics, technological infrastructure support, reporting, and additional support to empower healthcare providers and provider networks to excel in value-based care. Wright Lassiter III, CEO of CommonSpirit Health, stated, The PHSO is a natural extension of our mission and longstanding commitment to providing high-quality, equitable care and addressing social determinants of health. [Source – Business Wire] He added that by harnessing CommonSpirit's national scale and expertise in value-based care, the company's goal is to elevate the standard of healthcare in the United States and assist providers in succeeding in value-based care within diverse community-based health system environments. CommonSpirit Health extends its services to urban and rural communities across 24 states, establishing itself as one of the United States' most prominent providers of Medicare and Medicaid services. Consequently, its PHSO will cater to an even more diverse payer portfolio. Thomas McGinn, MD, MPH, Executive Vice President, Physician Enterprise at CommonSpirit Health, highlighted the organization's unique advantage in serving diverse communities encompassing Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial insurance, making their data more representative of the American population compared to models primarily focused on commercial insurance. He added that CommonSpirit's presence in 24 states provides them with the data, tools, and access to a broad patient demographic, allowing them to tackle crucial national health challenges that require their size, scale, and expertise. For example, they can utilize data insights to understand testing, referral, and treatment patterns, enabling interventions that reduce viral infections like Hepatitis C, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. Value-based care emphasizes the quality of healthcare over its quantity, promoting comprehensive and coordinated care to enhance health outcomes, quality, and equity. This model relies on contractual incentives for providers to achieve superior results, improve quality, enhance patient experiences, and curb healthcare expenses. Notably, the demand for such agreements is rising, exemplified by the company's goal to transition most Medicaid and all Medicare beneficiaries into value-based care relationships by 2030.

Read More

Health Technology, Digital Healthcare

HARMAN Launches New Private Large Language Model for Healthcare Industry- HARMAN HealthGPT

Business Wire | October 16, 2023

HARMAN, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. focused on connected technologies for automotive, consumer, and enterprise markets, announced that its Digital Transformation Solutions business unit has launched the groundbreaking Healthcare Private Language Model (LLM), known as HealthGPT. HealthGPT represents a leap in healthcare solutions by leveraging generative AI to empower healthcare professionals, researchers, and institutions through advanced patient care, medical research, and decision-making. HealthGPT brings forward all the benefits of a LLM like natural language interaction and learnability, with a strong knowledge base established from a variety of healthcare data sets. The model, built using the key principles of responsible AI, has additionally been tested for accuracy and hallucinations using HARMAN’s own automated LLM testing framework and the results were further validated by the healthcare subject matter experts. HARMAN HealthGPT is a private LLM, providing enterprises with more control over roadmap, privacy, compliance and security issues at optimized cost. Key advantages of working with HARMAN HealthGPT include Enhanced Clinical Insights: Provides real-time, context-aware clinical insights, aiding in decision making. End-to-end LLM Fine tuning framework: A comprehensive framework for fine-tuning Language Model (LLM) to achieve optimal performance. Data generation framework: A framework for creating high quality customized datasets to further fine-tune Language Model (LLM) for enhanced performance. Automated LLM evaluation framework: Completely automated solution to validate fine-tuned LLMs for quality of outputs, factual correctness, hallucinations, and toxicity. Cost Optimization: Advanced deployment techniques using quantization to significantly reduce model size and thereby processing costs by up to one-tenth. Drug Discovery and Research: Accelerate drug discovery and development by extracting valuable insights from clinical trial data. Nick Parrotta, President – Digital Transformation Solutions & Chief Digital and Information officer at HARMAN said, The business value of generative AI cannot be overstated. Organizations that scale and implement swiftly will see significant competitive advantages, productivity gains and more – but only if they can unlock their data and move from general purpose applications to more specialized, domain-specific applications. At HARMAN, it is our mission to help our clients navigate this hurdle and create a competitive advantage long-term. HARMAN HealthGPT is an example of our capabilities that will help organizations utilize specific industry trained models to better solve unique problems and add value for customers. With our long-standing AI expertise and ability to develop effective LLMs, we’re equipped to help our clients move past challenging roadblocks and fully capitalize on the exciting promise of generative AI. [Source – Business Wire] HARMAN is seeing strong early results of the LLM training, and its AI and ML teams are well positioned with an end-to-end, tested framework to fine-tune more private LLMs, beyond the healthcare industry, to solve similar customer problems.

Read More

More featured news