eClinicalWorks connects Eagle Physicians with Epic EHR at Novant, Wake Forest Baptist, Cone Health
Troubled EHR vendor eClinicalWorks announced this week that its customer Eagle Physicians & Associates exchanged health data with hospitals running rival Epic’s electronic health record system through the Carequality Interoperability Framework.
The news comes after eClinicalWorks said in early June that federally qualified health center Ezras Choilim signed on for its EHR and population health cloud services.
Both announcements follow the $155 million settlement in which the U.S. Department of Justice charged eClinicalWorks with fraudulently obtaining certification under the meaningful use EHR program that enables customers to attest to certain criteria and, in turn, collect reimbursement incentives from the federal government. The DOJ settlement also mandates that eClinicalWorks either upgrade existing customers for free or transfer their data to rival EHRs.
[Also: DOJ will probe more EHR vendors for false claims, sources say]
Eagle Physicians, for its part, needed a way to connect with Cone Health to share patient records at the point of care, according to Robert Fried, MD, CMIO at Eagle Physicians.
Fried said that eClinicalWorks put “significant resources into interoperability and providing it to users at no additional cost.”
[Also: eClinicalWorks scores federally qualified health center contract despite EHR fraud case]
And because they used the Carequailty Interoperability Framework, Eagle can also exchange health data with larger systems, notably Cone Health, UNC-Chapel Hill Medical Center, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and Novant Health, even though those hospitals use Epic’s EHR.
In the wake of the eClinicalWorks settlement, legal and health IT experts said they anticipate that the DOJ will widen the scope of its false claims investigations to look at other EHR vendors as well.
Twitter: SullyHIT
Email the writer: tom.sullivan@himssmedia.com
