CommonWell launches interoperability effort
The CommonWell Health Alliance was launched last February amid much hoopla and then laid low. Now, the organization has announced services to connect providers and exchange health data between disparate care settings.
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, the provider sites in Chicago, North Carolina and South Carolina will validate a unique patient-centric identity and matching approach, as well as a consent-driven record sharing and retrieval process across care facilities.
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.
Also this week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced $50 million in funding to help community health centers establish or expand behavioral health services for people living with mental illness, and drug and alcohol problems.
Community health centers will be able to use these new funds to hire new mental health and substance use disorder professionals, add mental health and substance use disorder services, and employ team-based care models. I’ve heard several speakers in recent months call for an increased focus on mental health and substance abuse because so many chronic care patients have these problems on top of their diabetes or heart disease or asthma.
What do you think? Will these services and funding help the patients in your region? Please share your thoughts.
Beth Walsh
Clinical Innovation + Technology editor
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.