WASHINGTON – CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL) has signed an exclusive sales and distribution agreement that provides federal, state and local government agencies with access to EagleForce Associates, Inc.’s proprietary advanced and predictive analytics technology that offers real-time monitoring of pharmaceutical medications, including opioid prescriptions. This strategic agreement extends CenturyLink’s existing big data analytics practice and will help government agencies save lives and reduce prescription drug waste, fraud and abuse.
“America is facing an opioid abuse crisis, with more than 250 million painkillers prescribed each year,” said Erich Sanchack, CenturyLink senior vice president and general manager, federal solutions. “Unfortunately, many health care stakeholders have been slow to adopt the latest evidence-based technologies and cutting-edge analytics that can significantly reduce prescription medication waste, fraud and abuse at the doctor’s office or point-of-sale pharmacy.”
Through this strategic agreement, CenturyLink will work with government agencies to apply EagleForce’s real-time neural computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence methodologies to verification procedures that help doctors, pharmacists and drug manufacturers more accurately identify the improper use and administration of opioid and other prescriptions.
Subscribers will also be able to more accurately identify relationships between health care providers, pharmacies and patients regarding prescription medications and insurance benefits, while drastically reducing the manual workflow and system latencies in existing prescription drug monitoring programs.
The EagleForce technology has an established connection to every retail pharmacy in the country for real-time benefit checks. These advanced analytics methodologies are designed to correctly identify patients across multiple disparate health care systems, including the ability to cross reference name and spelling variances across electronic medical records and pharmacy systems.
Through seamless integration and connection with CenturyLink’s carrier-class network, the EagleForce Attestation Center for Program Integrity™ can perform a real-time audit of many government benefit processing systems, allowing pharmacists and health care providers to monitor the complete medication processing lifecycle. This auto-adjudication of electronic prescriptions, along with automated intake and screening, improves prescription claim processing and helps reduce prescription drug waste, fraud and abuse.
The opioid monitoring system also complies with the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, which restricts the use of pharmaceutical co-pay benefits by patients who are members of government health care plans.
The system’s advanced analytics capabilities are used to distinguish between different types of government health plans, such as Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Health Services, Department of Defense Tricare, Indian Affairs, Bureau of Prisons, Children’s Health Insurance Program, and may be used to identify duel-eligible beneficiaries to coordinate plan benefits. It also provides an opportunity to review every claim instead of just a random sampling.
The CenturyLink and EagleForce teams are committed to helping health care providers seamlessly comply with various rules and regulations administered by the Drug Enforcement Administration, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General and other relevant agencies.
“This strategic agreement will allow CenturyLink and EagleForce to offer advanced analytics as a service to government agencies, thus equipping them with the first real-time tools to monitor and reduce the fraud, waste and abuse associated with the nation’s opioid crisis,” Sanchack said. “Adopting these new technologies and methodologies will enable the government to more efficiently and effectively audit pharmaceutical manufacturers, pharmacy benefit managers and retail pharmacies in real-time for potential violations, thus saving billions of dollars and thousands of lives.”
“In this era of compliance, we believe our health enterprise technologies provide the most comprehensive real-time ability to look across the health care landscape to accurately monitor and restrict the improper utilization of medications and benefits,” said EagleForce Associates Chief Operating Officer, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John W. Morgan III.
By supplying big data and IT services over its carrier-class network, CenturyLink provides government agencies with the security and reliability they need to carry out their important missions.
This agreement is another step forward in providing services that have helped CenturyLink steadily climb the rankings to No. 34 on Washington Technology’s 2016 Top 100 list of federal government IT contractors.
Pictured from left to right are CenturyLink Senior Vice President and General Manager of Federal Solutions Erich Sanchack and EagleForce Associates Chairman and CEO Stanley Campbell.
