February 5, 2019–CommonWell Health Alliance today announced a new option for health IT vendors and health care practitioners looking to connect to the nationwide CommonWell interoperability network. Through creation of this new CommonWell Connector™ program, participating CommonWell members who provide integration platforms and services will now be able to offer CommonWell services to their customers, including both to provider organizations and to other end-user facing platforms such as EHRs. “The CommonWell network enables participating practitioners to meaningfully engage in data exchange to provide the best care possible for their patients,” said Jitin Asnaani, CommonWell Health Alliance executive director. “With this new option, organizations interested in connecting to CommonWell, such as EHRs, can dramatically reduce the development effort required to connect to the CommonWell network and enable their clients to participate [...]

November 16, 2018—CommonWell Health Alliance today announced the rollout of its connection to the Carequality Framework, which is now Generally Available to CommonWell members and will increase health IT connectivity nationwide. The connection will allow CommonWell- and Carequality-enabled health care providers, through some of the industry’s largest participating EHR vendors, to connect and bilaterally exchange health data to improve care coordination and delivery. “We are proud to break down yet another barrier to interoperability by making this much-anticipated connection available to our members and their clients,” said Jitin Asnaani, CommonWell Health Alliance executive director. “This increased connectivity will serve to empower providers with access to patient health data critical to their health care decision-making.” Leveraging the technological infrastructure built by CommonWell service provider Change Healthcare, members Cerner and Greenway Health [...]

February 16, 2017—CommonWell Health Alliance® today announced it has completed building the first set of The Argonaut Project’s FHIR specifications into its core services—making it the first national network to enable comprehensive FHIR-based-exchange at scale. CommonWell, recognizing its critical role in improving nationwide health data exchange, has been using FHIR since 2013 when it first developed its core interoperability services and person-centric national network. By building the latest set of FHIR specifications, all CommonWell Members will be able to leverage FHIR-based outbound query and retrieve capabilities to access data across the network. Brightree will be the first to deploy this capability to clients across the country this year and has already built FHIR-based workflows into their technology. By implementing the latest FHIR specifications, CommonWell and its members have made it [...]

February 15, 2017—CommonWell Health Alliance® today announced that 14 members have committed to building new application programming interfaces (APIs) that will complement existing services and increase the value of the CommonWell network to individuals and caregivers. The existing CommonWell services, which include person enrollment, record location, patient identification and linking, and data query and retrieval, are all live nationwide. The new APIs are anticipated to be utilized for a variety of needs across the health and care ecosystem, such as for individuals seeking coverage for disability insurance, for organizations investing in more effective care coordination, or for communities seeking to drive public health programs. “Although there is still much to be done before achieving the ‘ubiquitous interoperability’ CommonWell Members seek, the collective pursuit of that mission by our Members has [...]

December 13, 2016—CommonWell Health Alliance and Carequality announced today an agreement to increase health IT connectivity nationwide. The agreement provides additional health data sharing options to a broad range of stakeholders across healthcare, and has three aspects: CommonWell will become a Carequality implementer on behalf of its members and their clients, enabling CommonWell subscribers to engage in health information exchange through directed queries with any Carequality participant. Carequality will work with CommonWell to make a Carequality-compliant version of the CommonWell record locator service available to any provider organization participating in Carequality. CommonWell and The Sequoia Project, the non-profit parent under which Carequality operates, have agreed to these initial connectivity efforts and will explore additional collaboration opportunities in the future. While future collaboration could touch on many different areas within healthcare [...]

August 23, 2016—CommonWell Health Alliance® today announced that members will be giving patients access to their health data for the first time via the CommonWell network. This access will be made possible by extending existing CommonWell services to enable 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. Eight CommonWell members have already committed to deploying these services. With the ability to self-enroll in CommonWell and self-link their health records, patients will be able to give their providers across the care continuum more secure, near instant access to their important health data, which could help improve care and coordination. In addition, the self-query and view capabilities will save patients time and hassle of [...]

February 24, 2016—CommonWell Health Alliance® today announced the availability of its cross-vendor interoperability services to the post-acute market. Brightree, Cerner and McKesson are among the first CommonWell members that have committed to deploying these services nationwide in 2016. Each year more than 10 million Medicare beneficiaries are discharged from acute care hospitals into a variety of post-acute care settings, including long-term care hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, skilled nursing facilities and patients’ homes with services from home health and hospice agencies. More than 66 percent of these Medicare beneficiaries have two or more chronic conditions with 14 percent having six or more.[i] “This patient population typically requires care from multiple providers in a variety of highly divergent settings,” said Jitin Asnaani, executive director of CommonWell Health Alliance. “Our collective experience across the [...]

February 11, 2016—CommonWell Health Alliance today announced seven new members are joining its effort to enhance nationwide health data exchange regardless of health IT vendor, geography or setting of care. These new members augment the reach of CommonWell Services in the ambulatory market, increase its membership representation for provider-engagement, imaging and EMS solutions, as well as expand into the direct-to-consumer arena. eClinicalWorks joins CommonWell as a Contributor Member and commits to offering CommonWell services to its customers. eClinicalWorks is a cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) company offering solutions for private practices, hospitals, population health, revenue cycle management and patient engagement. It holds the highest market share among all cloud-based EHR vendors, with more than 115,000 providers using its solutions today.i lifeIMAGE, an interoperable medical image sharing network; MediPortal, a patient [...]

April 9, 2015—CommonWell Health Alliance today 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 [...]

April 1, 2015—CommonWell Health Alliance today announced the addition of five new members that significantly enhance the association’s nationwide footprint, share of the EHR marketplace and diversity across the care continuum. MEDITECH, Merge and Kareo join as contributing members while PointClickCare and Surgical Information Systems (SIS) join as general members. With the addition of these new members, CommonWell membership now represents 70% of the acute care EHR market and 20% of the ambulatory care EHR market. CommonWell membership also represents market leaders in imaging, perinatal, laboratory, retail pharmacy, oncology, population health, post-acute care and others across the care continuum. “We know it takes collective experience and dedication to break down barriers to nationwide data exchange, so we are especially pleased to welcome these industry innovators to the CommonWell family,” said [...]