Electronic Health Reporter

CommonWell Health Alliance (the “Alliance”),  today announced it is moving into an important new phase of its effort to advance health information technology (HIT) interoperability, expanding membership opportunities and welcoming new members Brightree and MacPractice as contributing members of the not-for-profit trade association.

“When CommonWell was created in 2013, we wanted to ensure our members and their clients received value quickly and comprehensively,” said Nick Knowlton, Board Member for CommonWell Health Alliance and Senior Director at Greenway Health. “In that spirit, each of our initial member companies brought a unique aspect to allow us to stay focused, yet visionary.”

Knowlton explained that today, with more than 10 provider sites live, thousands of people enrolled and dozens of clinicians leveraging the organization’s services daily, CommonWell is now positioned to more broadly open its membership to organizations, including health care organizations, vendors and systems, who share the association’s vision for interoperability.

Members of the Alliance represent a wide breadth of the industry and allow the organization to build specifications and pilot services across varying geographies, provider types and venues of care. The newest contributing members bring distinctive strengths to the Alliance as they look to expand their services:

• Brightree enters the Alliance as the first dedicated post-acute vendor, with a sizeable footprint in the home health sector – one of the fastest growing patient care settings. In keeping with the Alliance’s goal of improving patient care regardless of where the patient is seen, Brightree’s entry will open new opportunities for in-home HIT access for patients and their clinicians.

“Brightree is dedicated to representing the post-acute care community’s desire to help our nation reduce the cost of care while improving patient outcomes. We believe the Contributing Membership gives us the highest level of involvement to ensure the unique workflows and needs of home health, long-term care and hospice providers are considered in setting new data-sharing standards across the complete continuum of care,” said Dave Cormack, president and CEO of Brightree.

• MacPractice brings the Apple community, technology and user base into mainstream CommonWell. Providing MacPractice-developed OS X and iOS native practice management and electronic medical record (EMR) products and surrounding services to 30,000 users (including 15,000 providers), MacPractice will bring greater visibility and credibility to the Alliance’s efforts on behalf of physicians, dentists, chiropractors and optical specialists within the Apple ecosystem.

“As an Apple developer that is dedicated to making Apple native products that are continuously relevant to doctors who prefer to use Macs, iPads and iPhones in their practices, MacPractice is excited to collaborate with other top HIT vendors to make interoperability a practical reality that benefits US patients and doctors,” said Mark Hollis, CEO of MacPractice.

Brightree and MacPractice join Founding members Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, CPSI, Greenway, McKesson and Sunquest, contributing members CVS Caremark and MEDHOST, and service provider RelayHealth in pursuit of the Alliance’s goal of providing better care and increased safety for patients and consumers.

For more information on participating and membership levels, visit the CommonWell Health Alliance website.

About CommonWell Health Alliance
CommonWell Health Alliance is a not-for-profit trade association of health IT companies working together to create universal access to health care data. The Alliance is open to all organizations who are committed to making patient’s data available to themselves and providers regardless of where care occurs. Alliance members support the belief that provider access to this data must be built into health information technologies at a reasonable cost for use by a broad range of health care providers and the populations and people they serve.

To learn more about the CommonWell Health Alliance, please visit www.commonwellalliance.org, and read CommonWell Community

blog. Also follow CommonWell on Twitter at @CommonWell, join us on the Alliance’s LinkedIn page, and like the Alliance’s Facebook page.

About Brightree

Brightree is the leading provider of cloud-based software focused on improving clinical and business performance across the post-acute care industry. The Company serves more than 3,000 organizations in the home medical equipment (HME), home health, hospice, orthotic and prosthetic (O&P), HME pharmacy, home infusion and rehab home care segments. Brightree’s solutions follow the natural workflow of providers to automate and improve how they manage their businesses, serve patients, and protect reimbursements. The company is ranked as one of the top 100 healthcare IT companies in the U.S. on the prestigious Healthcare Informatics 100 (HCI 100) list. For further information, visit www.brightree.com or call 1.888.598.7797.  Brightree is a registered trademark of Brightree LLC.

About MacPractice
MacPractice, Inc. is a client centric practice management and clinical software development firm, comprised of highly experienced and caring individuals, dedicated to the development and support of best-of-class Macintosh software, hardware, and associated services for physicians, dentists, and chiropractors.