Health care venture SharedClarity to evaluate medical devices

Minnetonka-based UnitedHealthcare is working with three of the nation's largest health care providers to determine the effectiveness of medical devices.

SharedClarity is the organizations' joint venture that will study data on the performance of pacemakers, hip implants and other medical devices. SharedClarity was initially created by UnitedHealthcare but is now an independent company.

"We're going to identify the ones that have the best outcome and our members are going to jointly negotiate with the device manufacturers for those products, driving utilization toward those products that have the best outcome," said Mark West, SharedClarity president.

SharedClarity will have a lot of patient data at its disposal. UnitedHealthcare provides health insurance benefits to more than 40 million Americans. The Dallas, San Francisco and Illinois-based health care systems involved in the collaboration care for about 7 million patients annually. The organization plans to add additional health system members in coming months.

SharedClarity will also use the results to negotiate purchasing agreements with device manufacturers.

"The studies are going to provide great information on product performance," West said. "If we identify there is a product that performs and has fewer re-admissions and complications than another product, that's good for the patient but also takes costs out of the industry."

Currently, there are no plans to publicly share the reports on the effectiveness of medical devices. But West says the information might be made public in the future.

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