Beacon Health System, of South Bend, Ind., and Fisher-Titus Medical Center, of Norwalk, Ohio, are the latest customers of CommonWell Health Alliance services, which allows health care providers to see patient health data from outside organizations within their Cerner electronic health record.
Patients at these facilities will be able to give their doctors and nurses access to medical records from outside health care organizations that participate in CommonWell.
“Safety is as the heart of delivering world-class health care,” said Mark Warlick, Beacon Health System chief information officer. “CommonWell Health Alliance gives us access to the patient’s complete record, no matter where care is delivered. Having access to this information can help care givers provide exceptional and safe care to their patients.”
Through CommonWell services, the hospital systems hope to advance interoperability and allow patients to give their care providers a more complete picture of their medical history.
“Interoperability helps us advance our mission of providing safe, quality health care in a cost effective manner,” said John Britton, Fisher-Titus Medical Center vice president of Information Services. “The services provided by CommonWell give us a simple, patient-driven way to give our providers access to health information that can help them improve their ability to care for patients.”
Beacon Health System and Fisher-Titus Medical Center are helping to 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,” Robke said.
Founded by a group of health care IT suppliers committed to advancing interoperability, CommenWell services include patient identification and linking, record locator and retrieval, patient access, privacy and consent management, and trusted data access.
The largest, locally owned and operated health care system in its region, Beacon Health System is the nonprofit parent organization of Elkhart General Hospital and Memorial Hospital of South Bend, which have served North Central Indiana and Southwestern Michigan patients for more than 100 years.
Fisher-Titus Medical Center, which serves the north central Ohio region, was among Modern Healthcare Magazine’s Top 100 Best Places to Work in the U.S. for three consecutive years. In 2010, Fisher-Titus became the country’s first all-digital “smart” community hospital after partnering with Cerner to implement a fully integrated electronic health record system including interactive technology in patient rooms.
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