Epic Nexus connects 625 hospitals to TEFCA
Epic celebrates one year of connecting hospitals since joining the Trusted Exchange Framework and Joint Agreement and pledges to continue connecting health system customers with end-to-end interoperability.
Why does it matter?
Epic built its own health records-based electronic interoperability network prior to TEFCA and partnered with others to create nationwide exchange frameworks, including Carequality.
Since launching TEFCA in December 2023, the electronic health records giant has onboarded 625 hospitals in 12 months.
“Epic customers are quickly engaging 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 Kalber, chief health informatics officer at MetroHealth System.
“TEFCA provides a global pathway for these organizations, many in rural and underserved communities, to connect.”
The biggest trend
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services approved Epic, eHealth Exchange, CommonWell, Health Gorilla, Kno2, and KONZA National Network as the first Qualified Health Information Networks (QHINs) under TEFCA in early 2023.
QHINs licensed under the 21st Century Cures Act serve as an on-ramp for providers to join TEFCA. Fostering trust is key to onboarding healthcare providers, said Matt Doyle, interoperability software development lead at Epic Healthcare IT News After the announcement of the Ministry of Health.
Epic announced that it is recruiting the first group of 24 health systems, including Mount Sinai, Mayo Clinic, Kaiser, Johns Hopkins, Stanford Health, individual hospitals and safety networks, to test the interoperability framework nationwide.
“We are excited about the vision of a simpler, if not one, secure national health information exchange that will benefit all of our patients and providers,” said Dr. Matthew Eisenberg, associate chief medical information officer at Stanford Health Care. In a statement at the time.
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“TEFCA helps MetroHealth and other health systems improve patient care nationwide by providing access to a greater breadth and depth of electronic patient health information for a more comprehensive understanding of the patient,” Kalber said.
Andrea Fox is a senior editor at Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS media publication.