By Jitin Asnaani, Executive Director, CommonWell Health Alliance
Twitter: @CommonWell
Twitter: @jitin
From the beginning, CommonWell has been dedicated to a simple but crucial vision and underlying belief that health data should be available to individuals and providers regardless of where care occurs.
After all, how many times have you arrived at a doctor’s appointment, only to have a clipboard handed to you to fill out your entire medical history, emergency contact information and information about other specialists you have seen? It has probably happened more than a few times, and with each handoff of the clipboard, you likely longed for a better way or wondered how it would all get taken care of in the event that you couldn’t fill out those forms yourself.
At CommonWell, we believe that health data, regardless of where treatment occurs, should be available at your providers’ fingertips to help you receive the best care possible. The good news is CommonWell, working with our service provider and members, has created a nationwide network and service to do just that.
We have announced an enormous first for our industry, and more importantly, for the health care consumer. CommonWell services have now been extended to allow participating members to enable patients access to their health data for the first time via the CommonWell network. This access allows a person to self-enroll in CommonWell, self-link their health records wherever they receive care, and self-query and view their health data available on the CommonWell network.
Just think about how that could change how you manage your own health care. If your doctors use CommonWell services, you will be able to link, query and view your health data, from multiple different doctors, in one electronic location. No more carrying paper records from doctor to doctor. No more trying to remember what year, let along what month and day, you had your last tetanus shot or tonsils out. No more worrying about what information your doctor may be using to provide you care.
Currently, eight CommonWell members have already committed to deploying these services, including MediPortal and Integrated Data Services, who will begin launching these new services via their patient portal offerings before the end of the year. Details on how individuals can get access will be shared on our new Patients webpage as information is available, so check back often.
Central to the CommonWell mission is the desire to expand health data sharing across the spectrum of caregivers – care managers, doctors, nurses – and now the individual. As we continue on the path to interoperability, CommonWell and its members are dedicated to this mission and plan to continue deploying new interoperability services to increase patient access, enhance patient control and improve care and coordination.
To learn more about these services and the members who will be deploying them, see our announcement.
This article was originally published on CommonWell Health Alliance and is republished here with permission.