Dive Brief:
- A group known as the Health IT Now Coalition is asking HHS to decertify EMRs that require additional costs or extra modules to share data freely.
- The Coalition is also requesting that HHS and lawmakers investigate EMR vendors that are participating in the federal Meaningful Use incentive programs that obstruct data sharing.
- Interoperability issues are currently widespread. For example, a recent RAND Corp. report found that Epic, one of the largest EMR vendors in the U.S., was operating a "closed platform" that hinders interoperability.
Dive Insight:
A lot of money is at stake here. The Coalition estimates that $24 billion in federal funds has been paid over the last three years to users of health IT systems that don't easily share data. Vendors, meanwhile, continue to argue that critics of their data-sharing capabilities are off-base. For example, Epic contests RAND's conclusion that their system isn't interoperable and notes that the report was authored by VA researchers who proposed the VA's open source platform as an alternative.