Edgepark has announced the launch of a nationally available ostomy storefront through Parachute Health, a provider of ePrescribing software for durable medical equipment (DME).
This new digital platform will enable health-care providers to place orders for patients’ ostomy supplies. Currently, Edgepark serves over 132,000 patients requiring ostomy supplies across the nation, a number poised to grow with the launch of this new storefront.
Edgepark is a division of Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH).
“When we typically bring a new ostomy patient onto service, there’s a lot of back and forth with the prescriber regarding notes around their condition, and their care plan, which has historically has been through faxes, conversations and notes passed between organizations,” Edgepark Senior Vice President and General Manager Anthony Alvarez told HME Business.
On its end, Parachute digitizes that process, allowing its partners to more effectively understand what is happening in real time with the care of the patient, Alvarez said.
He added that since Edgepark has been a strong ostomy provider, expanding with Parachute in the ostomy marketplace was a logical next step.
“We have always aimed to improve not only the experience of our patients but also that of the prescribers in this category,” he told HME Business. “We previously partnered with Parachute in the diabetes space, and it made a lot of sense for us to work with them on ostomy, given our historical presence in the category and their desire to continue adding categories to the platform.”
As for the increase in demand for ostomy supplies that may result from the new platform, Alvarez said his team is ready.
“The good news is we are doing a lot of that work today via those older, more traditional means,” he said. “The Parachute platform will make us more efficient on a per-patient basis. We’ve also got a strong team in our back office here at Edgepark that is prepared to handle that volume quickly. We have great relationships with our prescribers, so we have a good sense of what’s coming and when it’s coming.”
Edgepark offers more than 3,000 ostomy products in total.
