Health systems across the U.S. are pledging to join a nationwide health information sharing framework called Trusted Exchange Framework and the Common Agreement (TEFCA). TEFCA is a public-private partnership authorized in the 21st Century Cures Act, a bipartisan congressional initiative to advance interoperability across the country.
The health systems that have pledged to join TEFCA include some of the most renowned and respected medical organizations in the U.S. and span from large hospitals to safety nets. These health systems already use Epic’s interoperability tools to advance information sharing and have pledged to use Epic’s software to share health information through the emerging TEFCA framework.
“By joining TEFCA, these health systems reaffirm their ongoing commitment to improving patient care by advancing health information exchange,” said Matt Doyle, Interoperability Software Development Lead at Epic. “Our plan is to deliver software this year that will help our customers to be among the initial participants in TEFCA, and we’re optimistic that nearly all of the 2,000 hospitals and 600,000 clinicians that use Epic across the U.S. will participate.”
“Stanford Health Care is excited to join the nationwide TEFCA framework. We have long supported regional partnerships to promote data sharing for treatment and our North California partners have been trailblazers in national interoperability as early participants in the Carequality Framework,” said Dr. Matthew Eisenberg, Associate CMIO at Stanford Health Care, one of the pledging hospitals. “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.”
Epic TEFCA Interoperability Services was among the first set of applicants accepted to continue to the testing phase of the QHIN Designation process under TEFCA in February. Making TEFCA a reality is the next step in Epic’s long history of pioneering 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 14 million full patient charts daily, and half of those exchanges occur with organizations using other vendor systems.
In 2014, Epic was a founding member of the Carequality framework with support from the broader healthcare community and federal government stakeholders. Today, 100% of Epic’s U.S.-based hospital and clinic customers participate in Carequality.
Starting in 2018, Epic collaborated with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), The Sequoia Project as the Recognized Coordinating Entity (RCE), and the broader healthcare community to refine the principles and policies of TEFCA, and was the first EHR to announce its intent to join TEFCA last spring.
Pledging Organizations
- Alameda Health System
- Ballad Health
- Baptist Health (FL)
- Baptist Health (KY)
- BJC HealthCare and Washington University School of Medicine
- Cedars-Sinai
- Children’s Hospital Colorado
- Community Health Network
- Contra Costa Health
- Duke Health
- Guthrie
- Hawaii Pacific Health
- Hill Physicians Medical Group
- Houston Methodist
- Intermountain Health
- Johns Hopkins Medicine
- Kaiser Permanente
- KeyCare
- Legacy Health
- MaineHealth
- Mayo Clinic
- MetroHealth
- Michigan Medicine
- Mount Sinai Health System
- NYU Langone Health
- OCHIN
- Pikeville Medical Center
- Pediatric Physicians’ Organization at Children’s (PPOC)
- Rush University Medical Center
- St. Luke’s Health System (ID)
- Stanford Health Care
- UC Davis Health
- University of Miami Health System
- Weill Cornell Medicine
- Yale New Haven Health
If your organization is interested in joining this list by pledging to join TEFCA, reach out to your Epic BFF.