Dive Brief:
- Leading EHR vendors agreed to a set of objective interoperability measures at a recent IT summit hosted by KLAS Enterprises, a health IT market research firm.
- Congress has been critical of gaps in interoperability of EHRs, despite a public investment of $31.5 billion in federal funds.
- The proposed interoperability reports will be based on information from healthcare providers regarding their IT systems and will include "harder" and "softer" information, according to Micky Tripathi, president and CEO of Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative.
Dive Insight:
An example of "harder" data may be providers stating the types of interoperability they achieved using a specific vendor's system and "softer" data may be how responsive a vendor is to a provider's interoperability needs.
EHR vendors who have signed on in support of the metrics include Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, eClinicalWorks, Epic Systems, GE Healthcare, Greenway Health, Healthland, McKesson, Meditech, Medhost, and NextGen Healthcare.
Adam Gale, KLAS president and CEO, told Modern Healthcare, "The consensus on an objective measure is a great step forward for the industry as executives find ways to overcome the complex issue of interoperability."