The Health and Human Services Department and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT announced Tuesday that the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement was officially operational.
The TEFCA launch represents a milestone in the long journey toward national health data interoperability, said HHS Secretary Xavier Beccera at a news conference. The creation of TEFCA was required by the 21st Century Cures Act, which was signed into law in December 2016 by President Barack Obama. But Micky Tripathi, national coordinator for health IT, said the government’s vision for a national exchange of health information dates back nearly 20 years to when ONC was established in 2004 under President George W. Bush.
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The goal of TEFCA is to create a baseline for interoperable data sharing across disparate systems and providers carried out by designated Qualified Health Information Networks. Five QHINs--electronic health records vendor Epic’s Nexus subsidiary, nonprofit eHealth Exchange, health information exchange vendors MedAllies and Health Gorilla, and regional health information exchange KONZA--can immediately support the exchange of data with each other under TEFCA’s policies and technical requirements.
“This is the next evolution of network interoperability,” Tripathi said. “TEFCA is a network of networks. It’s not building something from scratch.”
The initial data sharing networks for TEFCA were named in February, Tripathi said. The five networks that were announced at Tuesday’s event met the TEFCA eligibility requirements while two additional organizations, Kno2 and CommonWell Health Alliance, are working to complete that process, Tripathi said.
Each of the organizations will try to recruit hospitals, other providers, payers and public health agencies to participate in TEFCA. The creation of this national network will improve patient care, safety and equity, said Craig Richardville, chief digital and information officer at Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health, which is participating in Epic’s QHIN.
“TEFCA is like the highway system,” Richardville said. “You have a lot of local areas that are connected. You can travel and transport data within your community, but when people start crossing communities, it gets difficult. ... TEFCA allows the opportunity [to connect everyone.]”
Onboarding providers will be the goal for the coming year, said Rob Klootwyk, director of interoperability at Epic. Klootwyk said 200 hospitals and 3,000 clinics that use Epic will be early adopters of TEFCA. The goal is to onboard the remaining 2,700 hospitals and 70,000 clinics that are Epic customers by the end of next year, he said.
Klootwyk said technically, it’s an easy switch to connect a health system’s EHR with TEFCA. The challenge will be educating providers on why they should adopt it.
“There are a lot of use cases for TEFCA, but critical adoption of providers is the first step,” he said. “We need to get everyone on. Every provider in the country needs to be on TEFCA.”
