Interoperability End of Year Progress 2018
Real Progress with Patient-Record Sharing via CommonWell and Carequality

CommonWell to Carequality: The Connection Heard Round the US

As announced in August 2018, a few pioneering organizations have tested the initial CommonWell-Carequality connection, which was announced in November 2018 to be generally available. 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. 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. While this connection is just getting started, KLAS plans to measure the impact of this sharing in a 2020 interoperability report.

“We were connected to CommonWell [with Cerner] but only had a handful of exchange partners in our area. Our major referral partners were running Epic, so we volunteered to be first. With the CommonWell connection to Carequality, we saw record matches on 55% of our patient population via the Carequality connection.” —IT Director

“The data coming from the Cerner sites via Carequality and CommonWell came [into the Epic EMR] just like any other data we were used to seeing.” —IT Analyst

NextGen, eClinicalWorks Show Most Notable Progress; MEDITECH Makes Initial Connection

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. MEDITECH also made their first connection to CommonWell. The connection is currently available only for Expanse customers, and MEDITECH is working to make it available for customers using C/S 5.x. The plan for those on 6.x or MAGIC is still undetermined. CPSI (not covered in KLAS’ previous report) has also made notable progress this year. Customers report that CPSI has built functionality into Evident and made it easy to connect to CommonWell. Cerner continues to actively push for customer participation and has added 35 hospital customers. While Cerner is passionate about customer participation, customers still face the most technical barriers (e.g., installing Resonance and the mapping in the background), which typically take three to six months to resolve. 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.

Virence Health (GE Healthcare) has been slower to get out of the gate despite good feedback from early adopters. Greenway Health also doesn’t have much momentum, and overall, interviewed Greenway organizations are the least excited about their CommonWell connection. Greenway is working on expanding support for the CommonWell connection to Intergy; beta customers validate that this is underway but not complete. 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. MEDHOST has been aligned with CommonWell since 2014 but has yet to have any live connections.

Biggest Remaining Obstacle Is Local Community Adoption