The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT announced on Monday that the two interoperability alliances have crossed the finish line and are now onboarded as Qualified Health Information Networks capable of nationwide health data exchange with other QHINs under the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement.

WHY IT MATTERS
CommonWell Health Alliance, which comprises many electronic health record vendor members – including Oracle Health, athenahealth, Greenway, Meditech and others – pledged TEFCA participation in September 2022 following the release of the QHIN application by ONC's recognized coordinating entity, the Sequoia Project.

By that time, more than 2.6 billion records were already exchanged across the CommonWell network, founded by competing EHR vendors in 2013, through federated exchange of patient information by providers and the Carequality Framework used by members.

Like CommonWell, the Kno2 data exchange platform was inaugurated last year as part of the first cohort of organizations approved to implement TEFCA and is also now a fully onboarded QHIN.

"Kno2’s role as a QHIN amplifies our core message: Interoperability lies at the heart of transforming healthcare," Jon Elwell, CEO of Kno2, said in a separate announcement Monday.

Current and future partners of Kno2 can access QHIN capabilities, the company said on its website.

"Through this designation, Kno2 positions itself to continue to leverage the power of communication to solve healthcare’s most pressing challenges, including reducing cost, improving provider experience and patient outcomes and reducing care disparities," he said.

CommonWell Health Alliance Executive Director Paul Wilder called the alliance's QHIN designation "a natural extension of our mission and progress to date" in a website statement.

"Data needs to flow with the patient as they move through their health journey," Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager at Oracle Health and Oracle Life Sciences added.

She called CommonWell's QHIN status announcement a "milestone" for ensuring "that patients and their providers have the right data at the right time."

THE LARGER TREND
With a number of recent goals, including TEFCA exchange, achieved, ONC is focused on driving its interoperability 2024 roadmap.

Noting regulations governing the transparency of artificial intelligence and its FAST track to FHIR exchange, Micky Tripathi, ONC national coordinator, told Healthcare IT News earlier this month that the agency has received a lot of positive feedback from healthcare stakeholders.

The Sequoia Project accepted comments on TEFCA 2.0, where it begins to functionally tackle FHIR implementation and facilitate FHIR exchange by QHINs, last week, and is expected to finalize the common agreement's update within the first quarter.

ON THE RECORD
"These additional QHINs expand TEFCA's reach and provide additional connectivity choices for patients, health care providers, hospitals, public health agencies, health insurers and other authorized health care professionals," Tripathi said in the announcement.

"The designation of these two QHINs, which brings the total number of QHINs to seven, highlights the rapid expansion of TEFCA exchange and the support of more and more leaders around TEFCA exchange," added Mariann Yeager, CEO of the Sequoia Project.

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