Dan Schipfer Alliance Updates, Members

CommonWell’s journey over the past 14 months has been an exciting one, and I had the pleasure of recounting it in a recent webinar. Joining me to present were CommonWell colleagues from athenahealth, Cerner and CPSI who provided a demonstration how the CommonWell services work across the different EHR systems, allowing providers to query and retrieve patient data.

In case you missed the webinar, I’ve outlined some of the highlights below. (Jitin Asnaani, CommonWell Health Alliance Operating Committee and Membership Committee member, also gave a similar update with demonstrations provided by McKesson, Allscripts and Greenway on April 22).

As a partnership between fierce HIT competitors dedicated to making data interoperable for the common good, CommonWell’s announcement was a surprise to the industry at HIMSS13. In December 2013, the first four geographies for CommonWell’s initial services launch were announced, and just one month later the first providers were live with CommonWell services. The following month 12 providers were live, Tenet Healthcare Corporation signed up as a participating provider, and CVS Caremark and MEDHOST became new members. Currently, CommonWell represents more than 42 percent of acute EHR providers and more than 21 percent of ambulatory EHR providers. Looking ahead, CommonWell’s commercialized services will be offered starting July 2014 – and we’re just getting started.

CommonWell is not a data repository, but a broker making document query and retrieval quicker and more seamless. Core CommonWell services include:

  • Identification management
  • Record locator
  • Consent management and enrollment
  • Authentication and auditing services for trusted data access

These services directly benefit patients. As an example of how CommonWell works, we demonstrated how a patient would arrive at her OB/GYN and provide her unique ID, such as her driver’s license. If she chose to opt in to the CommonWell system, her data would be queried through CommonWell, and she would be asked to confirm the various providers she has visited before. The provider is the single point of contact with CommonWell; so Jennifer would be able to move between different points of care amongst CommonWell participating providers without needing to provide her health history repeatedly. With CommonWell services the data will be available, in real time, and in the provider’s native EHR.

Henky Erawan of athenahealth, Scott Stuewe of Cerner, and Kristal Speller of CPSI walked us through an example of CommonWell services from the provider perspective. Benefits to providers are powerful and include improved patient matching through a stronger, more intelligent ID matching system; better interoperability that increases provider and patient satisfaction; and streamlining the interface to a single connection with CommonWell.

To listen to the full webinars, please visit our website:

  • April 9 Webinar: CommonWell Health Alliance Update by Dan Schipfer and Demonstrations by athenahealth, Cerner, CPSI
  • April 22 Webinar: CommonWell Health Alliance Update by Jitin Asnaani and Demonstrations by McKesson, Allscripts, Greenway

And remember, if you are interested in engaging more with CommonWell in the future, we have many ways to participate:

  • As a participating health care provider
    • Commercial services are scheduled to be launched later this summer
    • Please express your interest via our website contact form
    • Contact your health IT supplier for details on how you can participate

As always, we welcome you to join in on the conversation here on our CommonWell Community blog. We also enjoy networking and sharing news via our social media channels, so follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Dan Schipfer, vice president & general manager – Government & Industry, Cerner Corporation, serves as the CommonWell Health Alliance’s Operating Committee chair.