Ascension is one of several major healthcare providers and organizations that have joined with healthcare information technology companies to commit to making their systems able to share data with one another. The move will help patients more easily access their electronic health information and allow it to be shared across multiple healthcare providers.
A total of 17 vendors of electronic health record (EHR) and other IT systems serve the needs of 90 percent of hospitals in the U.S.
The group also promised to implement “federally recognized, national interoperability standards and practices and adopt best practices, including those related to privacy and security,” according to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell. She announced the agreement Monday at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s conference in Las Vegas.
Mary Paul, Vice President, Ascension Information Services, told CNBC that “interoperability” is “core to the goal” of having providers connect with each other to care for their patients.
“Paul said the development of EHRs has been ‘a significant journey to go from a process where you collect information in paper form from many different sources,’” CNBC says.
“What we’re trying to do is speak with a single voice, and I do think that's important,” she told the network.
Participants include the nation’s five biggest private health systems and more than a dozen professional health organizations, including Hospital Corporation of America, Intermountain Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians, among others.
