Twenty-Seven Epic Customers Pledge to Participate in TEFCA

May 24, 2023

In its role as a QHIN, Epic says it is optimistic that nearly all of the 2,000 hospitals and 600,000 clinicians that use Epic across the U.S. will participate

David Raths

Epic Systems has released a list of 27 health systems that are pledging to participate in the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) with Epic as their Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN).

So far, participation in TEFCA is voluntary, with no regulatory requirements or incentives yet tied to joining. But many health systems are signaling they are eager to take part in the interoperability framework.

“By joining TEFCA, these health systems reaffirm their ongoing commitment to improving patient care by advancing health information exchange,” said Matt Doyle, interoperability software development lead at Epic, in a statement. “Our plan is to deliver software this year that will help our customers to be among the initial participants in TEFCA, and we’re optimistic that nearly all of the 2,000 hospitals and 600,000 clinicians that use Epic across the U.S. will participate.”

“Stanford Health Care is excited to join the nationwide TEFCA framework. We have long supported regional partnerships to promote data sharing for treatment and our North California partners have been trailblazers in national interoperability as early participants in the Carequality Framework,” said Matthew Eisenberg, M.D., associate CMIO at Stanford Health Care, one of the pledging hospitals, in a statement. “We are excited about the vision of a simpler if not single on-ramp to secure, national health information exchange that will benefit all of our patients and providers.”

Epic TEFCA Interoperability Services was among the first set of applicants accepted to continue to the testing phase of the QHIN Designation process under TEFCA in February. Other organizations in that cohort include CommonWell Health Alliance, eHealth Exchange, Health Gorilla, Konza, and Kno2. In addition, connectivity services company MedAllies recently announced that its application to be a QHIN has been approved. As a candidate QHIN, MedAllies must now successfully complete the testing and project plan phase of the onboarding process to be designated a QHIN.

Epic’s customers use its Care Everywhere platform to exchange 14 million full patient charts daily, and half of those exchanges occur with organizations using other vendor systems, the company points out.

Here is a list of the organizations that have so far pledged to participate: