LAS VEGAS – Health information network Surescripts announced at HIMSS16 Tuesday the nationwide activation of its National Record Locator Service, a service designed to give providers a way to obtain a more complete view of a patient’s health history. Surescripts’ National Record Locator Service includes 140 million patients and nearly 2 billion interactions between patients and caregivers, the company said.

“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 Surescripts CEO Tom Skelton. “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 Systems Corp. and NextGen Healthcare are key partners in the National Record Locator Service effort to enable patient record location and standardize record-sharing practices, Surescripts said.

[Also: See photos from Day 1 of HIMSS16]

“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 look forward to partnering with our industry peers to bring true nationwide interoperability to life.”

With the National Record Locator Service, provider organizations using Epic’s Care Everywhere and NextGen’s Share software can quickly identify and share patient records across disparate systems and geographies, Surescripts said. Operating under the Carequality Interoperability Framework (an initiative of the Sequoia Project), the National Record Locator Service integrates into existing workflows of electronic health records systems to give providers more complete information about their patients, the vendor explained.

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, Surescripts added.

“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 of clinical, research and new solutions at Express Scripts. “This service has the potential to improve patient safety and health outcomes for all Americans.”

Surescripts will be demonstrating the National Record Locator Service at its HIMSS16 exhibit hall booth (#2160). Also at HIMSS16, on Tuesday, March 1, at 4:15 p.m. Pacific Time, John Halamka, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Health System, will moderate a panel discussion including executives from CVS Health, Epic, NextGen Healthcare and Surescripts.

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT

This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.