Dublin, Ohio, April 23, 2014 – Updox, the industry leader for physician connectivity and CRM solutions for health care, announced the organization became a founding member of Carequality, a new initiative dedicated to accelerating progress in health data exchange among multi-platform networks, healthcare providers, electronic health record (EHR) vendors and health information exchange (HIE) vendors. Formed by Healtheway, Carequality is an open, transparent and inclusive industry-driven effort that convenes stakeholders and facilitates industry consensus to develop and maintain a standards-based interoperability framework to enable information exchange between and among networks.
Thirty-three national health care organizations, representing providers, HIE, HIT, payers, retail health and other networks, have united as part of Carequality. The consortium’s goal is to facilitate agreement on a common national-level set of requirements that will enable providers to access patient data from other groups as easily and securely as today’s bank customers connect to disparate banks and user accounts on the ATM network. Once achieved, this level of health data interoperability will represent a dramatic improvement in the quality of healthcare available and also reduce the cost to support interoperability.
“We launched Carequality as an industry-driven effort to build on the innovative health IT interoperability work already in progress throughout the country,” said Mariann Yeager, executive director, Healtheway. “We’re pleased to have Updox as a founding member. Their leadership in health care technology and commitment to building partnerships throughout practices and health care providers makes them as a valuable part of the initiative.”
“Updox was founded on the principal of changing the way health care is delivered. The opportunity to collaborate with other Carequality organizations and use technology to improve outcomes, increase efficiency and reduce health care costs nationwide is perfectly aligned with our purpose and goals,” said Michael Morgan, chief executive officer, Updox. “As a leader in Direct messaging, representing more than 40 of the leading electronic health records, we are looking forward to participating in this effort and making valuable contributions that benefit the accuracy, availability and quality of health care at a national level.
As physicians and hospitals become more accountable for the care they provide, information needs to flow freely as patients move between different care providers. Providers need to be able to request, send, and receive health information in a secure and seamless manner. Many interoperability efforts have begun tackling this challenge, but to date, they have done so independently of one another. Carequality will provide these existing initiatives and networks with a standardized framework for working together.
Industry stakeholders have expressed a strong preference to have these requirements developed through an industry-driven consensus process, with support and participation by the federal government. An industry-driven process should engage a diverse group of stakeholders, in an open, transparent, balanced and inclusive manner and focus on specific sets of capabilities prioritized by stakeholders.
About Carequality
Carequality is an industry initiative that enables health information networks to exchange data using a common interoperability framework. Carequality is an action-oriented collaborative, designed to allow existing initiatives and industry constituents to work together to accelerate meaningful health information exchange by enabling internetwork connectivity via an open marketplace for interoperability services shared across existing and future exchange networks. For more information, visit http://carequality.net/ and follow us at www.twitter.com/carequality.
About Updox
Providing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for health care, Updox is the industry leading Physician Connectivity Platform. More than 40 electronic health record (EHR) vendors, representing 140,000 physicians, selected Updox as their Health Information Service Provider (HISP) of choice to be a part of the Updox Direct Network (UDN). With our CRM solutions, independent medical practices can easily manage communications from one inbox, streamline physician relationships, drive collaboration with partners and engage patients – all integrated with the practice’s existing EHR. Practices benefit through improved relationships with patients and other providers, increased revenues, reduced costs, and enhanced business efficiencies.
Updox services are available directly to independent physicians or through partnerships with EHR vendors to help practices run more efficiently, increase revenues and offer patients a more satisfying experience interacting with their providers where they are treated like customers and not numbers. More than 30,000 members have joined Updox to change how medical practices collaborate and share information.
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