News | February 29, 2016

Surescripts' National Record Locator Service Adds 140 Million Patients And 1.8 Billion Interactions

Express Scripts, CVS Health, NextGen Healthcare, and Epic partner with Surescripts to improve healthcare interoperability and patient safety

Marking another interoperability milestone, Surescripts, the nation’s leading health information network, announced the nationwide activation of its National Record Locator Service, a service that gives providers an effective way to obtain a more complete view of a patient’s health history. Surescripts’ National Record Locator Service includes 140 million patients and almost 2 billion, and growing, interactions between those patients and members of their care team.

“Surescripts has been committed to interoperability for more than a decade, and the National Record Locator Service is just another step on our continued journey to break through information silos, facilitate information-sharing and ultimately, improve patient care for the benefit of all who are connected,” said Tom Skelton, Chief Executive Officer of Surescripts. “We’ve proven that by bringing together the right partners, we can overcome legacy barriers and make true health information exchange a reality.”

CVS Health, Express Scripts, Epic and NextGen Healthcare are key partners in a nationwide effort to enable patient record location and standardize record-sharing practices that will lead our industry to a patient-centric and value based system.

“By implementing Surescripts’ National Record Locator Service, we can offer our customers instant access to an enormous amount of patient data,” said Michael Lovett, Executive Vice President and General Manager at NextGen Healthcare. “We are excited to join the network and look forward to partnering with our industry peers to bring true nationwide interoperability to life.”

With the National Record Locator Service, providers using Epic’s Care Everywhere and NextGen Share software will be able to quickly and efficiently identify and share patient records across disparate systems and geographies. Operating under the Carequality framework, the National Record Locator Service integrates seamlessly into existing EHR workflows to give providers more complete information about their patients. Providers are therefore able to offer their patients better care through the use of the service, regardless of EHR software affiliation.

Express Scripts and CVS Health, the nation’s two largest prescription benefit managers, are important data suppliers of patient visit information to the National Record Locator Service.

“By providing essential information to providers at the moment they need it, they have access to a patient-centric view to deliver the best patient care,” said Heather Sundar, Vice President, Clinical, Research and New Solutions at Express Scripts. “This service has the potential to improve patient safety and health outcomes for all Americans.”

To learn more about the National Record Locator Service, stop by the Surescripts booth (#2160) at HIMSS on Tuesday, March 1st at 4:15 PM for a panel discussion moderated by John Halamka, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Health System and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, along with executives from CVS Health, Epic, NextGen Healthcare, SSM Health and Surescripts.

About Surescripts
Surescripts is committed to unleashing the potential of American healthcare by creating a more connected and collaborative healthcare system. Our nationwide health information network connects doctor’s offices, hospitals, pharmacies, and health plans through an integrated and technology neutral platform. For more information, visit www.surescripts.com.

Source: Surescripts