ORLANDO, Fla. — CVS Caremark Corp. is joining the CommonWell Health Alliance, a nonprofit trade association of companies that is working to create better access to health care data.

In signing up as a contributing member, CVS joins founding alliance members Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc., athena­health Inc., Cerner Corp., McKesson Corp., Sunquest Information Systems Inc. and ­others.

Woonsocket, R.I.-based CVS operates the nation’s second-largest drug store chain, after Walgreen Co., and its pharmacy benefits management unit is one of the nation’s largest PBMs, with more than 60 million plan members.

“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,” comments Dr. Troyen Brennan, CVS Caremark’s chief medical officer.
“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.”

The alliance is open to all health information technology providers that are committed to making patient data available regardless of where care is given. 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 that they serve.

“We look forward to working with CVS Caremark, recruiting and welcoming new members and, most importantly, advancing the state of interoperability across health care,” says alliance chairman Jeremy ­Delinsky.