Dive Brief:
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Epic announced that it will incorporate care management content from xG Health Solutions, which is developed by the Geisinger Health System, into its electronic health records (EHRs).
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xG Health Solutions content helps to guide clinical decision-making with evidence-based assessments and care plans for 60 conditions commonly seen in care management programs, according to the EHR vendor.
- The content should be available to users of Epics Health Planet software, a population management platform, by later this year.
Dive Insight:
Epic is making an effort to work with other health IT vendors to improve EHR functionality and interoperability. The new partnership could point to a larger trend toward collaboration within the health IT industry.
Last year, the EHR vendor, one of the largest in the U.S., announced that it had increased electronic exchanges of health records through its Care Everywhere platform by 300% from the previous year. At the time, nearly 250,000 exchanges had occurred through the Care Everywhere platform. Efforts like these helped Epic to earn accolades as a market leader in interoperability.
It has also partnered with another big player in the EHR space. Epic and Cerner are involved in an Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT initiative aimed at improving interoperability, SearchHealthIT reported. The two competitors are cooperating with developers to make health information available in mobile apps.
Other health IT vendors appear to be making more of an effort to improve interoperability as well. Through the Sequoia Project, vendors including athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Epic, NextGen, and SureScripts have enabled electronic information exchange at more than 200 hospitals and 3,000 clinics.
Yet there is still a lot to accomplish when it comes to improving EHRs. In a recent interview with HIStalk, Andy Slavitt, former acting administrator for the CMS, said that there was a lot of frustration among EHR users and that the federal government has not seen a significant return on investments in health IT just yet.