CommonWell Health Alliance is beginning to gain a little traction more than two years since it was announced as a concept. Earlier this month, the organization announced that it had added five new members, "enhancing the association's nationwide footprint, share of the EHR marketplace and diversity across the care continuum."
Of those health IT vendors to join the organization, MEDITECH, Merge and Kareo were named contributing members while PointClickCare and Surgical Information Systems (SIS) joined as general members.
"Membership now represents 70 percent of the acute care EHR market and 20 percent of the ambulatory care EHR market," CommonWell said in a release. "CommonWell membership also represents market leaders in imaging, perinatal, laboratory, retail pharmacy, oncology, population health, post-acute care and others across the care continuum."
CommonWell Health Alliance is a not-for-profit trade association of health IT companies working together to create universal access to healthcare data. It is open to all organizations that want make patient data available to providers regardless of where care occurs.
Members support the belief that provider access to this data must be built into health information technologies at a reasonable cost for use by a broad range of healthcare providers and the populations and people they serve.
CommonWell is essentially an organization of vendors seeking interoperability. According to the organization's statement of purpose, "We believe that it is critical for interoperability to be built into our health IT systems, not bolted on as an afterthought. We believe without interoperability, future innovations in health IT are limited and work only in pockets rather than benefiting the system as a whole."
Healthcare organizations, like Wood County Hospital in Ohio, are using CommonWell services as a way to enable providers to see patient health data from outside organizations within its Cerner electronic health record, the hospital recently said in a statement. Therefore, patients who receive care at its facilities can give their doctors and nurses access to medical records from outside healthcare organizations that participate in CommonWell.
"CommonWell Health Alliance gives us another opportunity to reach out to other healthcare organizations to connect the care our patients receive in a cost-effective manner," Stan Korducki, president and CEO of Wood County Hospital, said in a statement.
By offering CommonWell services to its patients, Wood County Hospital is breaking through organizational and technological boundaries to advance interoperability and help patients give their care providers a more complete picture of their medical history. CommonWell services are expected to be live by this summer.
Another Ohio facility, Magruder Hospital, also recently signed up to use CommonWell for similar reasons as Wood County.
"Magruder Hospital is committed to providing treatment to people beyond the walls of the hospital," said Chuck Dellick, Magruder Hospital director of information technology. "Signing up to use CommonWell services was an easy decision for us, since their approach to interoperability will help us connect to important patient information that happens outside of the hospital walls."
MEDITECH is one of CommonWell's largest members to join since inception. It provides fully integrated technology solutions for hospitals, ambulatory care centers, physicians' offices, long-term care and behavioral health facilities, and home care organizations.
Merge provides enterprise imaging, interoperability and clinical systems that seek to advance healthcare. It offers solutions in radiology, eye care, cardiology, orthopedics and clinical trials.
Kareo brings more than 30,000 providers and 60,000 users of its cloud-based medical office software suite into CommonWell. PointClickCare's cloud-based software platform helps more than 10,000 senior living and skilled nursing communities to achieve results that matter, and Surgucal Information Systems joins as CommonWell's first vendor solely focused on providing solutions specific to the perioperative process.
To date, CommonWell's services — patient identification, record location, patient privacy and consent, and data access — are live in six states including North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Massachusetts, Washington and Illinois. More than 20 provider locations are using the services, and more than 26,000 people have enrolled on CommonWell's network.
