Dean Riggott Photography
Surescripts
ARLINGTON, Va. – September 20, 2016 – Surescripts, the nation’s leading health information network, will offer electronic health records (EHR) software vendors free access to its National Record Locator Service (NRLS) until 2019. A number of leading EHR vendors, including Aprima, eClinicalWorks (eCW), Epic, Greenway Health, and NextGen Healthcare have already agreed to offer the capability to their users.
NRLS provides care teams with access to a more complete picture of a patient’s care history regardless of where care was delivered and through any EHR vendor. As a result, providers can quickly and efficiently identify and share patient records within existing workflows, so they can deliver more informed care – a capability not possible without true interoperability. Surescripts operates within the nationwide Carequality Interoperability Framework that leverages a common set of legal, technical and policy rules for data sharing across technology platforms and networks. Surescripts NRLS went live this year with 140 million patients and more than 2 billion interactions between those patients and members of their care teams.
“Surescripts is proud to take a leading role in this landmark effort to scale interoperability nationwide by leveraging our innovative network capabilities and data assets, because we recognize the urgent need to enhance patient safety and care quality,” said Tom Skelton, Chief Executive Officer for Surescripts. “We are committed to working with all vendors to accelerate the adoption of record locator and exchange, while adding valuable new services to make meaningful health information available to providers.”
The foundational ability to locate and exchange patient records with NRLS combined with Surescripts’ unique network capabilities and access to high quality data will enable more sophisticated and valuable clinical information exchange with the addition of new services in 2017. These new network services, including care alerts, will provide a unique view into patient care over time, across multiple locations and between different EHR systems. These new capabilities will move beyond event-based patient interactions and support a more comprehensive approach to managing patient health. These capabilities are vital to helping the healthcare system achieve the goals of cost containment, improved care quality, and broader patient access.
“We hear from clinicians every day who complain that the data they need to deliver quality care to patients is trapped in manual systems,” said Neil Simon, Chief Operating Officer of Aprima. “We are excited to bring these capabilities to life for our providers, so they can focus on what matters most – their patients.”
“We are proud to support Surescripts in this groundbreaking initiative to connect providers with critical patient information when and where they need it,” said Girish Navani, CEO and Co-founder of eClinicalWorks. “Participation in this service is part of our commitment to expanding nationwide interoperability. The availability of information helps providers make more informed care decisions for patients and empowers them to be true stewards of high-quality healthcare.”
“Our customers have already seen increases in record location using Surescripts NRLS,” said Carl Dvorak, President of Epic. “A free NRLS could be a game changer to expand and accelerate vendor-neutral search—a big win for patient care nationwide and providers preparing for the reality of the post-reform environment.”
“We support the need for this type of expansive national record locator service,” said Scott Zimmerman, Chief Executive Officer of Greenway Health. “Consumers expect and employers are demanding that we resolve the challenges of interoperability, improve care coordination, and remove waste from the nation’s healthcare system.”
“We are embracing the important opportunity to help our industry realize the full potential of the exchange of health information,” said Rusty Frantz, President and CEO of NextGen Healthcare. “By connecting providers nationwide to quickly and efficiently locate and share patient records across disparate systems, geographies and technologies, our healthcare industry will better realize the promise of digital healthcare in a value-based care environment.”
“We’re very pleased to see that the Carequality Framework is able to advance the work of services like the Surescripts NRLS and to aid in its adoption by so many participants,” said Dave Cassel, Director of Carequality, an initiative of the Sequoia Project. “A big part of our mission is providing the ecosystem in which different services can flourish, all doing their part to ensure that critical health information is securely available, whenever and wherever needed.”