Epic marks one year of connecting hospitals since joining the Trusted Exchange Framework and the Common Agreement and pledges to continue connecting health system customers under universal interoperability.

WHY IT MATTERS

Epic built its electronic health records-based interoperability network before TEFCA and partnered with others to create nationwide exchange frameworks, including Carequality.

Since TEFCA went live in December 2023, the EHR giant has onboarded 625 hospitals in 12 months.

"Epic's customers are connecting quickly with TEFCA," Rob Klootwyk, Epic's director of interoperability, noted in a statement Monday. 

"It is estimated that before TEFCA, 30% of U.S. hospitals were not able to exchange electronic health information," added Dr. David Kaelber, MetroHealth System's chief health informatics officer.

"TEFCA provides a universal on-ramp for those organizations, many in rural and underserved communities, to connect." 

THE LARGER TREND

The U.S. Health and Human Services approved Epic, eHealth Exchange, CommonWell, Health Gorilla, Kno2 and KONZA National Network as the first qualified health information networks under TEFCA early in 2023. 

Authorized by the 21st Century Cures Act, QHINs are the on-ramps for providers to join TEFCA. Fostering trust is key toonboarding healthcare providers, Matt Doyle, interoperability software development lead at Epic, told Healthcare IT News after the HHS announcement.

Epic announced it was onboarding its first cohort of 24 health systems, including Mount Sinai, Mayo Clinic, Kaiser, Johns Hopkins and Stanford Health, individual hospitals and safety nets, to test the nationwide interoperability framework.

"We are excited about the vision of a simpler if not single on-ramp to secure, national health information exchange that will benefit all of our patients and providers," Dr. Matthew Eisenberg, associate chief medical information officer at Stanford Health Care, said in a statement at the time.

ON THE RECORD

"TEFCA helps MetroHealth, and other health systems improve patient care nationwide by providing access to a larger breadth and depth of patient electronic health information for a more holistic understanding of a patient," said Kaelber.

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.