Last week, we hosted our first virtual Fall Summit. For years, this meeting has been critical to onboarding new members, advancing technical work needed to grow our nationwide interoperability network and celebrating how far we’ve come as an organization. But just as important, our members looked forward to the in-person mindshare and comradery that makes CommonWell so unique.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure how successful it could be in a virtual setting.
I don’t think I’m alone in saying, Zoom (or Microsoft teams, WebEx… fill in the blank!) fatigue is REAL. So, the fact that after 3 days of online meetings I have a renewed sense of community and am feeling inspired and energized to go tackle 2021 is a truly nice surprise. Meeting virtually didn’t stop the team from reconnecting on a personal level or from moving the needle on technical work that is key to future use cases and services.
Just some of the topics we discussed include:
- Our commitment to improve patient matching.
- Our role in federal mandates impacting Health IT, including TEFCA.
- How we can continue to drive value for providers and patients while extending our services to new audiences, including payers.
- New efforts to ensure data quality while continuing to make it easier for provider organizations and clinicians to get access to the network.
Hearing about the progress that is happening—not just at CommonWell but in the health care industry overall— reminds me that what we’re doing matters, is game changing and requires passionate people to make it happen.
And passionate people are what makes up our CommonWell family. In true CommonWell spirit, we made sure to carve out some time for coffee chats, a scavenger hunt, a drink mixing competition and even knowledge sharing over lunch.
Steve Jobs once said: “Great things in business are never done by one person; they are done by a team of people.” Our annual summits epitomize this, and I can’t wait to see what great things lie ahead.