Coordinated Care Management

February 23, 2012

AMA Joins with AT&T to Improve Collaboration among Medical Professionals



The American Medical Association (AMA), the largest association of medical doctors and medical students in the United States, has formed a strategic alliance with AT&T, a provider of mobile telephony, fixed telephony, broadband and subscription television services in the United States.

Through this alliance, AMA and AT&T will enable physicians, physician organizations and medical societies nationwide to connect and collaborate with hospitals, payers and patients to help enhance patient care and reduce costs.

As indicated, the organizations will integrate AMA's AMAGINE physician community portal for physicians with AT&T Healthcare Community Online, creating an advanced collaborative care and Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE) platform. By combining the platforms, both powered by Covisint, physicians will have more tools at their fingertips to modernize the management of their practices.

The two iconic brands, AMA and AT&T, said in a press release that they will advance the adoption of health information technology across the healthcare ecosystem by enabling physicians, hospitals, payers and patients to access health IT applications and exchange highly-secure clinical and administrative data. The alliance is also aimed at creating a solution that can offer highly-secure, virtually anywhere, anytime access to advanced applications, aggregated clinical information and data analytics that enable the coordination and management of patient care and population health.

To take this further, AT&T will own and operate the combined platform as AT&T Healthcare Community Online and lead efforts to evolve technology solutions and bridge clinical and information needs across patients, physicians, hospitals and ancillary organizations. AMA will remain actively engaged and will collaborate with AT&T on business strategies to expand availability and accessibility of health IT for physicians and practices.

"If caregivers across the country aren't connected, they can't collaborate effectively as a team. By joining forces with the nation's largest physician organization, we're providing a seamless solution to meet the 'last mile' of connectivity across the entire healthcare ecosystem," Randall Porter, assistant vice president, AT&T ForHealth, AT&T Business Solutions said in a release.

"This alliance with AT&T makes the combined product offering that much stronger and more beneficial to physicians," Robert Musacchio, senior vice president of Business Operations for the American Medical Association said in a statement.

"With the AMA's extensive knowledge of physician and patient needs, and AT&T's proven track record delivering technology solutions to clients, we expect that physicians and their patients will be able to enjoy the benefits of advanced health IT sooner and with more dramatic results," Musacchio added.

The relationship will expand the functions and capabilities of the AMAGINE physician community portal that helps physicians easily integrate health IT into the management of their practices through a single source with affordable choices. AT&T Healthcare Community Online provides the foundation for a fully clinically integrated system across the entire care team and helps improve collaboration, reduce paperwork and potential errors, and ultimately improve the quality of patient care.

AMA and AT&T said they will discuss the alliance at HIMSS12 in Las Vegas from Feb. 20 - Feb. 24, 2012.




Edited by Rich Steeves
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