Wood County Hospital Signs Up for Commonwell Services

Wood County Hospital has signed up to use CommonWell HealthAlliance TM services to enable healthcare providers to see patient health data from outside organizations wiithin its Cerner electronic health record (ENH). Patients who receive care at its facility will be able to give their doctors and nurses access to medical records from outside healthcare organizations that participate in CommonWell.

“CommonWell Health Alliance gives us another opportunity to reach out to other health care organizations to connect the care our patients receive in a cost-effective manner,” said Stan Korducki, President of Wood County Hospital.

By offering CommonWell services to its patients, Wood County Hospital is breaking through organizational and technological boundaries to advance interoperability and help patients give their care providers a more complete picture of their medical history. CommonWell services will be live in the third quarter of 2015.

“Wood County Hospital is helping lead the charge for interoperability across health care,” said Bob Robke, CommonWell Treasurer and Cerner Vice President of Network Services. “Our organizations share a common belief that every person’s medical record should follow them, regardless of where they receive medical treatment or the type of EHR system that houses their records.”

CommonWell was founded by a group of healthcare IT suppliers committed to advancing interoperability by allowing different systems to work together in order to share patient health data with their care providers. The services offred by CommonWell address four of the key challenges in health care interoperatability:

• Patient identification and linking – Assist health IT suppliers to more quickly and accurately identify patients as they transition through care facilities
• Record locator and retrieval – Health providers locate and access their patient records, regardless of where the encounter occurred, by providing a “virtual table of contests” that documents available data from each encounter location
• Patient access, privacy and consent management – Potential future capabiilties include a patient-authorized means to simplify management of data sharing consents and authorizations
• Trusted data access – Provide authentication and auditing services that facilitate secure data sharing among member systems

Interoperability in healthcare enables organizations to share patient information regardless of educational, geographic or technological boundaries. when people can securely share important medical information with providers, they can help improve care quality by giving providers a more complete picture of their medical history.