CommonWell Health Alliance Expands and Live with Interoperability Service Offering

ORLANDO, Fla., Feb. 23, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- CommonWell Health Alliance (the "Alliance") – the health information technology (HIT) vendor-led interoperability effort – announced today that Tenet Healthcare Corporation (NYSE: THC), with 77 hospitals in 14 states, has signed a letter of intent to use the Alliance services. This comes two months after the announcement that participating providers from Chicago; Elkin and Henderson, NC; and Columbia, SC joined the initial launch of CommonWell's interoperability services.

"We are excited to expand the rollout of CommonWell's interoperability services – another step forward in making patient data available for providers, regardless of where care is administered," said Jeremy Delinsky, chairman of the board for the CommonWell Health Alliance and chief technology officer, athenahealth. "CommonWell remains firmly committed to advancing interoperability across health care; we are encouraged by the support of Tenet, as well as by the progress of all live service sites."

As CommonWell moves into the next phase of its service launch, the Alliance looks forward to working with Tenet to bring the system onto its patient identification and matching, record locator, and document query and retrieval services.

"Tenet is committed to advancing technology with our hospitals and health care networks to ensure we're providing the right information when and where it's needed, enabling our providers to increase the efficiency and accuracy in care delivery and improve the quality of care in the communities we serve," said Bo McPartland, Tenet's vice president of IS Planning and Analytics. "We look forward to working with CommonWell in breaking down the health data silos that exist today."

Providers Involved in Initial Launch Are All "Live" and the Services and Use Case Specifications are Published

This news comes on the heels of another milestone for CommonWell. All sites named in December's initial launch announcement have now been live and operational with the Alliance's services for two to four weeks. They are now able to enroll patients into CommonWell's service, identify whether other provider participants have data for a patient who is enrolled in the network when the patient is at their setting of care, and transmit data to another provider that has consent to view data on that enrolled patient.

CommonWell Health Alliance has subsequently published the services and use case specifications that provide detailed information on the initial core services, standards and workflow that allow the CommonWell members to embed the services created by the initial service provider, RelayHealth.

"Within 24 hours of our 'go live', our team enrolled almost 200 patients in CommonWell's services and we continue to enroll additional patients," said Randy Williams, director of Information Technology at Maria Parham Medical Center, a HIMSS stage 6 hospital in Henderson, NC. "The demand for interoperability is there from both our providers and patients. We look forward to delivering higher-quality patient care through more seamless sharing of patient health data between providers."

Over a dozen initial service launch providers have been working alongside CommonWell members, testing the integration and training the providers' staff to enroll patients in the services. This work has allowed the Alliance to bring to production its vision of efficiently and accurately sharing patient health information across IT systems and enabling care providers with the patient clinical information that could impact patient care. Ultimately, the Alliance's vision and mission are to enable patients to be at the center of their health care with new tools to better manage who can access their medical history at the point of care.

Get More Information on CommonWell's Work at HIMSS Booth #1389

During this year's Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2014 Conference and Exposition, CommonWell Health Alliance will be on the exhibit floor at Booth #1389 to give conference attendees the most up-to-date information on the Alliance's progress toward interoperability and data liquidity. On Monday and Tuesday, providers who are already utilizing CommonWell's services will be sharing their experiences with booth visitors. And, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the Alliance will be providing live demonstrations of CommonWell's services at the booth.

About CommonWell Health Alliance
CommonWell Health Alliance is a trade association of health IT companies working together to create universal access to health care data. The Alliance is open to all health information technology providers who are committed to making patient's data available to themselves and providers regardless of where care occurs. Alliance 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.

The members of CommonWell Health Alliance invite all health IT suppliers to join them in working together to provide seamless, trusted access to health information, in support of better, more cost-effective care for their patients and communities. To learn more about the CommonWell Health Alliance, please visit www.commonwellalliance.org, and read CommonWell Community blog. Also follow CommonWell on Twitter at @CommonWell, join them on the Alliance's LinkedIn page, and like the Alliance's Facebook page.

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SOURCE CommonWell Health Alliance