The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has laid out the timeline for the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), with the goal of having the new network open for participation in the first quarter of 2022.
In August 2019, ONC awarded a cooperative agreement to The Sequoia Project to serve as the Recognized Coordinating Entity (RCE) to administer a new nationwide network based on the Common Agreement. Since then, ONC and the RCE have worked together to gather stakeholder input to draft and refine the approach to enabling nationwide exchange across different health information networks.
This collaborative process will culminate with publication of the Common Agreement V1 Final and Qualified Health Information Network Technical Framework V1 Final in the first quarter of calendar year 2022, at which point health information networks will be able to apply to become QHINs and, after approval, begin on-boarding on a rolling basis.
ONC has awarded a new round of funding of $942,000 to The Sequoia Project under the RCE cooperative agreement to support RCE activities from August 2021 to August 2022
The RCE has been tasked with developing a set of metrics to be reported on a regular basis by QHINs that assess compliance with the Common Agreement and process and outcome measures that demonstrate compliance.
