CVS joins CommonWell Health Alliance

CVS has joined CommonWell Health Alliance, a health information technology vendor-led interoperability effort.



The company joins founding members Allscripts, Athenahealth, Cerner, CPSI, Greenway, McKesson and Sunquest and service provider RelayHealth in the Alliance's work.



As the Alliance grows over time, participation by organizations such as CVS will help providers easily and securely access prescription information, enabling a more holistic view of the patient, with the goal of providing better care and increased patient and consumer safety. Through the Alliance, pharmacies and health care providers will be able to better connect with the broader health ecosystem, the Alliance stated.



"As pharmacies play an increasingly important role in the delivery of health care and pharmacists become more engaged in advising and counseling patients, there will be more opportunities to improve health outcomes through better data sharing across the provider community," stated CVS chief medical officer Troyen A. Brennan. "CommonWell will be well-positioned to help deliver real-time pharmacy-based information into physician practices to help identify opportunities to coordinate care and will help the pharmacist deliver care-based messages back to patients."



CVS will join CommonWell as a contributing member, building upon the foundation of the Alliance's structure and working with RelayHealth to embed these services natively into its pharmacy system.



"We are thrilled to have CVS join the CommonWell Health Alliance; they are a terrific complement to our existing membership and their decision to join is testament to the work we've accomplished over the past year," stated Jeremy Delinsky, chairman for the CommonWell Health Alliance and chief technology officer of athenahealth. "As an alliance, we look forward to working with CVS, recruiting and welcoming new members, and most importantly advancing the state of interoperability across health care."