Oak Brook, Ill., and Boston, Mass., (Dec. 1, 2016) – Today, the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) announced it is joining CommonWell Health Alliance® as a General Member to help break down barriers to nationwide data exchange. CommonWell, a non-profit trade association, is dedicated to the simple vision that health data should be available regardless of where care occurs. RSNA is an international society of radiologists, medical physicists and other medical professionals that promotes excellence in patient care and health care delivery through education, research and technologic innovation.
According to Black Book, 94 percent of America’s providers, health care agencies, patients and payers persist as meaningfully unconnected.[i] In an effort to improve the status quo, CommonWell and its members have committed to using their diverse experience across the health care continuum to produce and deploy real-world, cross-vendor interoperability services that will contribute to improved health care delivery and outcomes for providers and the people they serve.
CommonWell and its members are actively deploying these interoperability services, which are now live at 4,700 provider sites nationwide, ranging from large acute hospitals to rural specialty practices. CommonWell services include person enrollment, record location, patient identification and linking, and data query and retrieval across the health care continuum. Unique to CommonWell, its services aim to solve the patient linking and identity problems at scale. Additionally, CommonWell members have access to a working, functioning record locator service, allowing providers to find health records associated with a patient, no matter where the care is delivered. Services are built into the software by CommonWell member companies to help providers maintain their existing workflow.
“Each member of CommonWell brings a unique and specific contribution to our organization,” said Nick Knowlton, Membership Committee chair for CommonWell Health Alliance and vice president at Brightree. “We are excited to have RSNA strengthen our collective experience across the health care continuum as we continue to deploy our cross-vendor interoperability services nationwide.”
RSNA currently has more than 54,000 members from 136 countries. RSNA annually hosts the world’s premier radiology forum and publishes two high impact peer-reviewed journals, Radiology and RadioGraphics. RSNA is a founding sponsor of the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) initiative, an organization dedicated to advancing standards-based healthcare that developed many of the specifications on which the CommonWell network is built. RSNA also administers the Image Share Network, a pilot project for patient-focused sharing of medical images funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, and the Image Share Validation Testing program, which tests vendor compliance with the IHE standards used in the network.
“Our membership with CommonWell extends our commitment to interoperability, which complements our mission to promote excellence in patient care and health care delivery through education, research and notably technologic innovation,” said Dr. David S. Mendelson, vice chair of Radiology IT at Mount Sinai Health System, professor of radiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, co-chair of Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) International and a member of the RSNA Radiology Informatics Committee. “CommonWell offers real-world interoperability services that enable providers to securely, efficiently and accurately share patient data nationwide. Access to vital health information brings tangible value to our members. We look forward to working with them to extend this model to include the exchange of medical images and radiology reports.”
RSNA joins the Alliance with the intention to contribute to enhancing nationwide interoperability in health care. To date, more than 50 organizations are members of CommonWell.