CommonWell Health Alliance to launch services in Illinois, N.C. and S.C.

CommonWell Health Alliance, an interoperability-focused trade association, is rolling out its services in Chicago, Elkin and Henderson, N.C. and Columbia, S.C. The program’s goal is connecting providers to exchange health data between disparate care settings, according to an announcement.

Participating sites are:

• Chicago Lake Shore Medical Associates, a Division of Northwestern Memorial Faculty Foundation and Lake Shore Obstetrics & Gynecology (Chicago);
• Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital and Hugh Chatham Family Medicine (Elkin, N.C.);
• Maria Parham Medical Center and Premier Women's Health Professionals (Henderson, N.C.); and
• Midlands Orthopaedics, Capital City OBGYN and Palmetto Health (Columbia, S.C.).

The Alliance's member companies—Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, CPSI, Greenway, McKesson and Sunquest, as well as service provider RelayHealth—will participate in the initial launch scheduled for early 2014. At that time, provider sites will validate a unique patient-centric identity and matching approach, as well as a consent-driven record sharing and retrieval process across care facilities. Providers will enroll patients into the service and manage patient consent protocol while identifying whether other provider participants have data for the patients. Providers will be able to transmit data to another provider that has received consent to view data on that enrolled patient.

“These interoperability services will improve the speed and efficiency with which they are able to access the patients' data, regardless of which health IT system other providers are using,” according to the announcement. Patients will be able to facilitate record linkage by confirming matches and by providing additional information, such as a driver's license, to further validate their identity, according to a description of the program.

The alliance intends to add additional provider sites and geographies in the coming months. It plans to share preliminary results from this initial service launch at the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference & Exhibition in February 2014.