Continues to Expand Nationwide Services Footprint
CommonWell Health Alliance announced the commitment of five of its health IT vendor members—athenahealth, Cerner, CPSI, Greenway Health and McKesson—to actively deploy CommonWell services to health care provider sites nationwide throughout 2015.
Already, more than 60 provider sites are live on CommonWell services across 15 states including: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Washington. CommonWell expects 2015 deployments to enable at least 5,000 provider sites to be live on the services nationwide. CommonWell’s built-in services include patient identification, record location, patient privacy and consent, and trusted data access.
”CommonWell and its members are well on their way to making nationwide interoperability a reality,” said Jitin Asnaani, Executive Director of CommonWell. “Member commitment to action is already producing real-world interoperability services, but this expands the benefits of data exchange across the health care continuum and across the country.”
Planned as part of a broader announcement that the company will issue next week from HIMSS, athenahealth will make CommonWell services available, at no additional charge, to its entire cloud network of more than 62,000 providers, serving more than 60 million patients nationwide.
“Being interoperable on paper or via system certification alone isn’t good enough; we have to take measures to advance actual interoperation across health care,” said Jeremy Delinsky, Chief Product Officer at athenahealth, Inc. “We’ve always considered information exchange capabilities to be inherent within the services we deliver versus something extra to charge for. Making CommonWell instant-on for our clients is the latest extension of how athenahealth is working to ensure information can follow the patient, no matter the care setting or EHR system.”
Since January, Cerner has seen nearly 175 provider sites across 39 states sign up to use CommonWell services in 2015, with anticipated continued growth throughout the year. Cerner will continue to offer CommonWell services for free to its clients through 2017, after a nominal one-time setup fee.
“We’re excited to see our clients join us and really lead the efforts in helping make nationwide interoperability a reality,” said Bob Robke, CommonWell Board Treasurer and Cerner Vice President for Interoperability Services. “Together, Cerner, along with other CommonWell members and our thousands of combined clients, is growing a national interoperability network that helps people give their care providers access to their health information regardless of where they are in the U.S.”
“Palmetto Health was involved in CommonWell’s initial pilot in 2014 and has continued to use CommonWell services to improve the flow of health information. We plan on it being part of our strategy for interoperability not just in our region but nationally,” said Dr. Tripp Jennings, Palmetto Health System Vice President for Medical Informatics. “Technologies like this dramatically change the way we do emergency care and deliver care across the whole continuum.”
McKesson plans to make CommonWell services available, at no additional cost, to its entire base of Paragon customers in 2015.
“We are excited to be part of an initiative we believe will promote better health by making it easier for health care providers to share and receive patient data across the care continuum,” said Jim Pesce, President, Enterprise Information Solutions, McKesson Technology Solutions.
CPSI and Greenway Health will also continue to expand CommonWell services across their customer bases in 2015. CPSI is currently live at eight provider sites across Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and more. Greenway Health is live with five provider sites across the Carolinas.
”We continue to be a proud founding member of CommonWell Alliance and contribute to its work to connect care,” said Scott Fannin, Greenway Health Vice President of Product Management for Interoperability and CommonWell Board Member. “Nationwide interoperability must be a goal of all of us to truly transform health care delivery and outcomes, and CommonWell’s collaboration and services are a major step towards that goal.”
CommonWell’s 25 members represent 70% of the acute care EHR market[1] and 24% of the ambulatory care EHR market,[2] as well as market leaders and innovators in imaging, perinatal, laboratory, retail pharmacy, oncology, population health, post-acute care and many more. CommonWell continues to welcome new members with future plans to deploy the services nationwide. In addition, CommonWell plans to develop additional use cases to enable real-world exchange across the care continuum.
About CommonWell Health Alliance
CommonWell Health Alliance is a not-for-profit trade association of health IT companies working together to create universal access to health care data. CommonWell is open to all organizations that are committed to making 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 health care providers and the populations and people they serve.
To learn more about CommonWell Health Alliance, please visit www.commonwellalliance.org and read the CommonWell blog. Also follow CommonWell on Twitter at @CommonWell, join us on CommonWell’s LinkedIn page, and like CommonWell’s Facebook page.
About athenahealth
athenahealth is a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health records (EHR), revenue cycle management and medical billing, patient engagement, care coordination, and population health management, as well as Epocrates and other point-of-care mobile apps. We connect care and drive meaningful, measurable results for more than 62,000 health care providers in medical practices and health systems nationwide. For more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com.
About Cerner
Cerner’s health information technologies connect people, information and systems at more than 18,000 facilities worldwide. Recognized for innovation, Cerner solutions assist clinicians in making care decisions and enable organizations to manage the health of populations. The company also offers an integrated clinical and financial system to help health care organizations manage revenue, as well as a wide range of services to support clients’ clinical, financial and operational needs. Cerner’s mission is to contribute to the improvement of health care delivery and the health of communities. On February 2, 2015, Cerner Corporation acquired substantially all of the assets, and assumed certain liabilities, of the Siemens Health Services business from Siemens AG. Nasdaq: CERN. For more information about Cerner, visit cerner.com, read our blog at cerner.com/blog, connect with us on Twitter at twitter.com/cerner and on Facebook at facebook.com/cerner.
About CPSI
CPSI is a leading provider of electronic health records systems for more than 650 community, rural and critical access hospitals and their 12,000 providers. Founded in 1979, the Company is dedicated to meeting the ever-changing needs of health IT, while optimizing the quality of care for communities in 46 states and the District of Columbia. CPSI provides a complete information and patient care system from business office to bedside combined with comprehensive implementation, training and ongoing support from our staff of approximately 1,350 healthcare and business professionals. CPSI’s wholly owned subsidiary, TruBridge, LLC, focuses exclusively on providing business office, consulting and managed IT services to rural and community healthcare organizations, regardless of their IT vendor. To join the conversation with CPSI, connect with us on Facebook, Twitter (@cpsiehr) and on the CPSI blog. For more information, visit www.cpsi.com or www.trubridge.com.
About Greenway Health
Greenway Health™ delivers the clinical, financial and administrative information tools providers need to practice medicine the way they want to practice. Greenway helps providers stay ahead of complex regulatory requirements, maximize revenue and, most important, focus on their patients rather than on technology. Greenway accomplishes this through intuitive user interfaces, leadership in exchanging clinical data, and a grass-roots service culture. Join Greenway Health in its mission to improve health by visiting www.greenwayhealth.com, calling (866) 242-3805 or connecting via social media on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
About McKesson
McKesson Corporation, currently ranked 15th on the FORTUNE 500, is a healthcare services and information technology company dedicated to making the business of healthcare run better. We partner with payers, hospitals, physician offices, pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies and others across the spectrum of care to build healthier organizations that deliver better care to patients in every setting. McKesson helps its customers improve their financial, operational and clinical performance with solutions that include pharmaceutical and medical-surgical supply management, healthcare information technology, and business and clinical services. For more information, visit www.mckesson.com. To sign up for McKesson’s Better Health 2020™ blog, visit www.betterhealth2020.com.
[1] KLAS—Clinical Market Share 2014, June 2014. © 2014 KLAS Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved. www.KLASresearch.com
[2] SK&A, a Cegedim Company—“EHR Vendor Market Share by Physician Size,” January 2015.