Dive Brief:
- More than 1,000 hospitals and 22,000 clinics that use Epic are live on the federal government’s health information sharing framework, the electronic health record vendor said Monday.
- Epic plans to transition all of its customers to the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, or TEFCA, by the end of the year, according to Matt Doyle, Epic’s Interoperability Software Development Lead.
- Currently 41% of Epic’s customers are live with TEFCA, while 43% are working to implement the data sharing network. The remaining 16% are in planning stages, Doyle said in an emailed statement.
Dive Insight:
TEFCA is a major initiative for healthcare interoperability, setting technical requirements and exchange policies for companies to pull together clinical information sharing networks across the country.
The framework went live in December 2023 with five Qualified Health Information Networks, organizations that represent health systems, insurers or health IT vendors that can query and receive information from other networks.
Epic’s network, Epic Nexus, was one of the original QHINs designated at TEFCA’s launch.
The government framework lowers barriers to health data sharing, allowing more providers in rural and underserved communities to easily exchange information and improve care, Epic said Monday. The company had previously said last year it would move all of its customers onto TEFCA by the end of 2025.
The number of QHINs has also expanded since TEFCA went live. This spring, e-prescribing giant Surescripts’ data exchange said it had received QHIN status, bringing the number of designated information sharing networks to nine.
Oracle Health, an EHR competitor with Epic, is also looking to earn QHIN designation. The technology giant submitted its application in February.
Epic is a major player in healthcare technology as the nation’s largest EHR vendor. The vendor controlled more than 42% of the acute care hospital market last year, according to a report published this spring by healthcare IT research firm Klas Research.
