McKesson To Buy U.S. Oncology For $2.16 Billion

By the end of the year, the McKesson Corporation is supposed to buy the U.S. Oncology Incorporation for $2.16 billion (Lewis). McKesson provides services and products to health care providers and payers. Not only does McKesson provide medicine and medical supplies, it also has sophisticated workflow solutions, which helps places such as hospitals to run smoothly. McKesson also works to lower the cost of these necessities. Patient care and medication safety is a priority for McKesson (McKesson). U.S. Oncology is the nation’s premier oncology services company. The goal of U.S. Oncology is to increase patient access to safe, high-quality cancer care. This incorporation also works with physicians, manufacturers, and payers, but specifies in the field of cancer. Patient satisfaction is also important to them (U.S. Oncology).

The oncology industry is one of the fastest-growing divisions in healthcare, therefore, it is important for these two companies to put their strengths together in order to deliver technology, business, and distribution services to community cancer practices. The combination of both companies will greatly increase patient/customer satisfaction because they will be able to access information about their medicine, its clinical outcomes and also get clinical expertise in order to help them receive personalized medication. The integrated healthcare IT includes the iKnowMed, an electronic health record, and Lynx, which is a text-based web browser. There are also consultative capabilities and an improvement of the supply chain because the system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources are all being improved because of the combination of these two companies. The products and services from the supplier to the customer will be valued more because of the way they are handled.

I believe that the merge of two companies is a giant step in the world of health care because there are many cases today where patients are not satisfied with their health insurance. There are also those cases where people with dwindling help have no insurance at all because the companies don’t want to risk their death.

Sources

Health Care Information Technology Medical-Surgical Supplies and Pharmaceutical Distributor: McKesson. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. .

Lewis, Nicole. "McKesson To Buy U.S. Oncology For $2.16 Billion." Information Week. Web. 2 Nov. 2010.

US Oncology Public Website. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. .