With the establishment of connectivity between CommonWell and Carequality, announced back in August, as well as other interoperability advancements by electronic health record (EHR) vendors, the ability to exchange patient records is within the reach of most acute care or clinic-based provider organizations, regardless of size or financial situation, according to a new report from Orem, Utah-based KLAS Research.
In the report, “Interoperability: Real Progress with Patient Record Sharing Via CommonWell and Carequality,” KLAS researchers note that since the last KLAS report on interoperability, which was published in March 2018, the acute care/ambulatory EHR market has taken critical steps forward in sharing data via national networks. The most notable advancements include the establishment of the CommonWell-Carequality link, Meditech’s initial connection to CommonWell, and notable Carequality adoption among NextGen Healthcare customers, according to KLAS researchers.
Most of the prevalent acute care/ambulatory EHR vendors are connected to the national framework, marking significant progress for interoperability, according to KLAS researchers. The report findings come a few weeks after CommonWell and Carequality announced that the connection to the Carequality framework was “generally available.” Cerner and Greenway Health successfully completed a focused rollout of the connection with a handful of their provider clients, who have been exchanging data daily with Carequality-enabled providers, CommonWell officials said.
In August, CommonWell Health Alliance and Carequality announced initial connectivity, which is the beginning of a broader effort to increase health data exchange nationwide, and builds on an announcement made almost two years ago. In December 2016, CommonWell and Carequality announced connectivity and collaboration efforts with the aim of providing additional health data sharing options for stakeholders. Officials said that the immediate focus of the work between Carequality and CommonWell would be on extending providers’ ability to request and retrieve medical records electronically from other providers. In the past year and a half, teams at both organizations have been working to establish that connectivity.
Now, since the connection went live in July, officials noted that CommonWell-enabled providers have bilaterally exchanged more than 200,000 documents with Carequality-enabled providers locally and nationwide, as reported by Healthcare Informatics in November.
CommonWell, an alliance formed five years ago, operates a health data sharing network that enables interoperability using a suite of services aiming to simplify cross-vendor nationwide data exchange. Major vendors connecting to CommonWell include athenahealth, Cerner, CPSI, eClinicalWorks, Greenway Health and Meditech.
Meanwhile, Carequality, an initiative of The Sequoia Project that launched about a year later, is a national-level, consensus-built, common interoperability framework to enable exchange between and among health data sharing networks. Vendors using Carequality include athenahealth, Epic, eClinicalWorks and NextGen Healthcare. Nearly all major EHR vendors have aligned with one or both of these options, according to KLAS.
Together, CommonWell members and Carequality participants represent more than 90 percent of the acute EHR market and nearly 60 percent of the ambulatory EHR market. Today, more than 15,000 hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare organizations have been actively deployed under the Carequality framework or CommonWell network, officials attest.
This latest KLAS interoperability follows a report back in March in which KLAS researchers positioned that the CommonWell Health Alliance’s interoperability efforts were hindered by a lack of provider adoption and its interoperability services currently lacked value. However, when CommonWell and Carequality eventually connect, “instant value” will be created for users, KLAS researchers attested in that report.
Currently, Epic is not a member of CommonWell, despite other major EHR vendors pushing them in that direction. Back in 2015, athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush famously tweeted to Epic’s CEO Judy Faulkner that his company would pay for Epic to join.
Indeed, KLAS reported in March that CommonWell will likely see a significant adoption increase with a solid Carequality connection. “Since its launch five years ago, the tendency to over-market the level of adoption of CommonWell has created apprehension and a lack of trust among potential participants and prompted this report, showing a snapshot of providers’ success,” the researchers said in the March report. KLAS researchers also claimed that when CommonWell connects to Carequality, “the entire Epic base will become available, creating instant value for most areas of the country.”
Following the publication of that report, CommonWell’s Executive Director Jitin Asnaani, in an exclusive interview with Healthcare Informatics, defended his organization’s mission and attested that the network is continuing to grow and prove its worth.
Asnaani also critiqued the KLAS report’s claim that vendors such as athenahealth and Epic give their customers a head start by enabling plug-and-play data sharing via Carequality. Asnaani called this specific critique “totally bogus,” asserting that the quality of data sharing is dependent on the vendors rather than dependent on CommonWell or Carequality.
KLAS Assessment on the Progress of CommonWell-Carequality Connection
In this latest report, KLAS researchers focused specifically on the progress EHR vendors have made in sharing patient records via the standardized (plug-and-play) networks of CommonWell and Carequality.
KLAS researchers assert that this focus is important because the “plug-and-play” option is the “only option” that allows provider organizations “avoid significant costs, delays, and organizational workload.”
KLAS also acknowledged that “virtually all major EMR vendors can successfully share patient records through the traditional point-to-point connections (a costlier approach in terms of time, resources, ongoing maintenance, and money), local HIEs (health information exchanges) and direct exchange (where records are manually sent to other providers).”
Referring to the CommonWell-Carequality connectivity as the “connection heard round the U.S.,” KLAS researchers contend that this connection should be “key in driving value and opening the floodgates so that any provider organization that desires to can exchange patient records with relative ease and little cost.” KLAS plans to measure the impact of this sharing in a 2020 interoperability report.
According to the report, this fall, two CommonWell-connected Cerner organizations tested and validated the ability to connect with Epic sites via Carequality. “Their initial reports are that the connection enables data sharing with critical partners otherwise out of their reach and adds tremendous value to their existing CommonWell exchange. The Epic sites involved indicate that they also are able to see and consume data via the new connection,” KLAS researchers wrote.
In a blog post, KLAS researcher Corey Tate, the author of the latest KLAS report, reiterated the value of the CommonWell-Carequality connection with regard to the availability of Epic data to provider organizations who connect. “Access to the Epic data is exactly what was talked about by the initial sites that tested the CommonWell connection to Carequality. Ironically enough, Epic’s intra-operability, which was initially dismissed, will likely be the catalyst that pulls widespread patient-record sharing forward. “
Currently, all but two of the other major EHR vendors—athenahealth, Cerner, CPSI, eClinicalWorks, Epic, Greenway Health, MEDITECH, NextGen Healthcare, and Virence Health (formerly GE Healthcare)—have customers connecting, according to KLAS. At this point, Allscripts and MedHost have yet to connect to CommonWell or Carequality. However, Allscripts recently announced more solidified plans to have their Carequality connection ready in Q1 2019 and to then roll it out in product updates throughout the year, according to KLAS. MedHost has been aligned with CommonWell since 2014 but has yet to have any live connections, KLAS researchers state.
While all of these vendors have connections to this national network, only athenahealth and Epic customers have connected en masse, according to Tate, in his blog post. “Each vendor has more than 90 percent of their customers connected. Cerner is next at around 35 percent. Many other vendors’ customer bases are just getting started,” Tate wrote.
“Epic and athenahealth have near complete uptake among their customers, allowing them to work on the next steps for interoperability, such as fine-tuning usability and increasing value for clinicians,” KLAs researchers wrote in the latest report. The researchers noted that plug-and-play sharing is “virtually invisible and automatic” for athenahealth and Epic customers, and “both vendors remove the big obstacles” to providers’ success.
KLAS researchers also highlight Epic’s and athenahealth’s approach to facilitating participation, via an opt-out approach, and removing governance barriers, via predetermined handling of outside data. The researchers contend that this indicates that “regardless of customer size, vendors can facilitate widespread adoption if they choose.”
NextGen Healthcare and eClinicalWorks show the most notable progress in connecting to the national framework, according to KLAS. Since NextGen Healthcare made their bidirectional connection available in Q1 2018, customers have rapidly taken up connections to Carequality. “With 80 customers connected, there is still much room for additional uptake—though NextGen has removed both financial and technical barriers to make this a reality. eClinicalWorks customers have also rapidly taken up connections, with nearly triple the number participating today (~2,500) compared to March 2018,” according to the report.
Meditech also made their first connection to CommonWell, and CPSI has made notable progress this year as well, KLAS reports. Cerner continues to actively push for customer participation and has added 35 hospital customers.
“Virence Health (GE Healthcare) has been slower to get out of the gate despite good feedback from early adopters,” the KLAS researchers wrote. “Greenway Health also doesn’t have much momentum, and overall, interviewed Greenway organizations are the least excited about their CommonWell connection.”
KLAS researchers also note that with CommonWell and Carequality linked, the biggest technical obstacle to widespread patient-record sharing has been removed, and the biggest remaining obstacle is local community adoption. “The healthcare industry is rapidly approaching the point where an organization using any of the major acute care/ambulatory EMRs should be able to easily connect to other provider organizations with minimal cost and effort,” KLAS researchers state. “Many vendors have eliminated obstacles on the path to data exchange—all but Virence offer connections to customers at no cost, and all but Cerner have made this plug and play by removing technical barriers.”
“Today, the biggest barriers preventing widespread participation are governance and the need for organizations to decide to participate. Even Epic and athenahealth customers report diminished value from their connection when local exchange partners opt not to connect to the national networks,” KLAS researchers wrote in the report. KLAs also believes that until other vendors take an opt-out approach, provider organization leaders will need to be proactive in promoting local connections to the networks to ensure high value from the connection.
