Mostashari, policy committee take critical look at CommonWell

Something to watch as it evolves in the coming months and years, but here is an excerpt of the alliance’s goals…

• Enabling providers to unambiguously identify patients – but not with a national patient identifier;
• Providing a way to match patients with their healthcare records as they transition through care facilities;
• Using existing unique identifiers (salted/hashed) such as cell phone number, email addresses or driver’s licenses for identity management;
• Enabling patients to manage consent and authorization;
• Creating a HIPAA-compliant and patient-centered means to simplify management of data-sharing consents and authorizations, focusing initially on the most common treatment situations;
• Helping providers to find the location of patient records across care locations via a secure nationwide records locator service;
• Enabling providers, with appropriate authorization, to issue targeted (directed) queries that provide for peer-to-peer (e.g., EHR to EHR) exchange.