BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CommonWell Health Alliance® today announced it is extending its interoperability services to enable additional use cases beyond treatment and patient access, starting with Payment and Health Care Operations data requests.
Despite strides made in electronic clinical data exchange, existing payments and operations processes providing access to protected health information (PHI) remain archaic, predominantly manual, expensive, error-prone and time consuming. The additional functionality provided by the new use case aims to end these outmoded processes, improve quality of care and drive efficiency across the health care continuum.
To support this effort, CommonWell has added a new service provider, DataFile Exchange, to support the operational services specific to the Payment and Health Care Operations use case. Together, DataFile Exchange and Change Healthcare, the technology service provider for CommonWell, will facilitate the automated exchange of data requests from a broader set of users, including payers, record locator vendors and other qualified entities.
“CommonWell is maturing as an organization, and we see this new collaboration and service offering as the next step towards helping us collectively achieve national interoperability and the quadruple aim,” said Paul Wilder, executive director of CommonWell Health Alliance. “By leveraging our growing nationwide network and the expertise of Change Healthcare, DataFile Exchange and our members, CommonWell is well-positioned to be one of the largest request networks in the nation offering this type of functionality.”
DataFile Exchange was founded by Janine Akers, an industry leader in the exchange of PHI. DataFile Exchange will work closely with CommonWell, its members and Change Healthcare, which continues to act as the CommonWell technology service provider and data broker for the CommonWell network––in addition to building the functionality needed to support Payment and Health Care Operations data requests.
“Improving data exchange of Payment and Health Care Operations is critical, particularly as we look at ways to help our health care system do more with less time and resources,” said Janine Akers, founder and CEO of DataFile Exchange. “DataFile Exchange has broad industry experience with handling PHI, so it’s only natural for us to shift our focus to automating the exchange of PHI. We’re well-positioned to partner with CommonWell in its effort to help patients, providers and payers benefit from these next-level interoperability services.”
Four CommonWell Service Adopters who provide record retrieval services––Change Healthcare, Ciox, Inovalon and Moxe Health––currently are participating in a pilot to refine the use case, with the goal of making CommonWell services for Payment and Health Care Operations purposes generally available for these underserved areas in the coming few months.
Today, the CommonWell network enables the federated exchange of patient information across more than 17,000 provider sites representing 100 million individuals on its nationwide network alone. Combined with its CommonWell Connector™ and collaboration connections like the Carequality Framework, connected provider sites can exchange data with more than 50,000 clinics, hospitals, specialty centers and more. To date, more than 790 million health documents have been exchanged across the CommonWell network.
About CommonWell Health Alliance
CommonWell Health Alliance is a not-for-profit trade association of health care and technology organizations working together to create universal access to health data nationwide. CommonWell members represent more than 20 care settings, including market leaders and technology innovators in acute, ambulatory and post-acute care, patient portals, imaging, population health, emergency services, data locator services and more. CommonWell and its members are committed to the belief that provider access to health data must be built into information technologies at a reasonable cost for use by a broad range of health care providers and the populations and people they serve.
To learn more about CommonWell Health Alliance, visit https://www.commonwellalliance.org/. Engage with CommonWell on our blog, as well as through Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter using the handle, @CommonWell. CommonWell Health Alliance® and the CommonWell Logo are registered trademarks of CommonWell Health Alliance Inc.
About DataFile Exchange
DataFile Exchange is committed to promoting and servicing the automated exchange of protected health information (PHI). Building upon its extensive industry knowledge of the evolution from paper medical records to the digital exchange of PHI, DataFile Exchange supports providers, data retrieval vendors, records copiers and EHR vendors expanding from digital to automated exchange of health information beyond the treatment use case. For more information, visit: www.datafileexchange.com.
