Competing health care providers create plan to share their electronic records

Newswire: Dec. 4, 2017.

Dateline: Gastonia, N.C.

Rival health care providers in the Charlotte, N.C. area and its suburbs are now sharing electronic health records despite their competitive interests, showing cooperation that benefits patients who must visit specialists in different systems.

CaroMont Health, based in Gastonia, N.C. and Carolinas HealthCare of Charlotte this month announced plans to combine their critical patient information and set up a secure portal for healthcare providers to access those records.

Executives of both systems say it will improve quality and timeliness of care.

Without sharing information, patients routinely encounter delays, unnecessarily duplicated tests and other diagnostics, and other inconveniences.

CaroMont’s chief executive, Chris Peek, told The Gaston Gazette that his company had begun sharing electronic health records with other providers across the country back in 2016 when CaroMont implemented Epic Systems EHR management.

Both companies are connected to many other healthcare organizations; this partnership is novel because these two directly compete in the same market.

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