Continuing its decades of interoperability leadership, Epic’s community of nearly 2,000 hospitals and 45,000 clinics will have the ability to join the nationwide framework
Epic is announcing its plan to join a new health information exchange framework to improve health data interoperability across the country. The Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) will bring information networks together to help ensure that all people benefit from complete, longitudinal health records wherever they receive care. In the future, TEFCA will expand to support use cases beyond clinical care, such as public health.
Epic collaborated with ONC, The Sequoia Project, and the broader healthcare community to build consensus around the principles and procedures of TEFCA. When the application process opens later this year, Epic will apply to join TEFCA as an inaugural Qualified Health Information Network.
“Our fundamental goal is to help all patients receive informed, personalized care—regardless of where they go to receive it,” said Dave Fuhrmann, senior vice president of interoperability at Epic. “Our customers have led the way with large-scale interoperability through Carequality, and we’re happy to help with the next stage in the evolution of interoperability.”
Epic’s support for TEFCA continues the company’s long history of championing interoperability. In 2008, Epic’s provider community began using Care Everywhere—the first interoperability platform of its kind. Today, providers use Care Everywhere to exchange more than 10 million patient charts (composed of 24 million actionable, standards-based documents) every day, and half of those exchanges occur with organizations that use different interoperable systems. Nearly all of Epic’s customers also choose to exchange data through Carequality, a nationwide exchange framework that includes roughly 70 percent of U.S. hospitals.
