To appreciate how important it is for the health care system to change, we need only think about the care we want for our loved ones. Most of us have a parent or grandparent or sibling or spouse who has a need for more than one doctor, multiple prescriptions and a large care team. Rich Elmore, our acting vice chair, recently shared his own personal story of experiencing limited and untimely access to health information at critical junctures and I know there are many people with a similar story.
How can we be sure that the care they receive is coordinated across all those providers and actually helps improve their condition? As people who work in the industry, we understand all too well the gaps and disconnects that can occur, causing the quality of care to suffer. These gaps and the subsequent effects that fall on patients and consumers are why CommonWell is so important and why McKesson is invested in its success.
Improving coordination and quality starts with a basic challenge. We must develop a way to identify each patient consistently and accurately so that his or her health care information can be accessed whenever it’s needed. That’s the revolutionary capability the CommonWell Health Alliance intends to bring to our health care system.
2014 will be a pivotal year for CommonWell as we approach our goal: to demonstrate that CommonWell is a practical working solution. In our initial service launch, we are measuring success not merely by proving that data standards can work conceptually, but by showing that they are already working to deliver interoperability among a network of organizations.
By achieving this goal, we will build even more credibility and enthusiasm for our ultimate goal of providing safe, accurate and timely access to a patient’s medical information across all care settings, regardless of technology or system and we can then continue to scale the Alliance.
I am proud to be part of this initiative and to serve on the Board.
Hear a bit more from Rod on how providers are responding to CommonWell.
Rod O’Reilly, SVP Strategy, McKesson Technology Solutions, was elected as the secretary of the CommonWell Board of Directors in October 2013.