Epic Systems to Revolutionize Healthcare Data Sharing with TEFCA Transition by 2025
Epic Systems to Transition Customers to New Medical Records Exchange by 2025
Epic Systems, a leading health-care software company, has announced plans to transition all its customers to a new government-backed medical records exchange by the end of 2025. The company, which has been instrumental in establishing the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), aims to have its entire community live on the TEFCA network by the end of 2025, with all customers committed to the transition by the end of 2024.
TEFCA is designed to provide a secure legal and technical framework for sharing patient data, addressing the complex challenges of transferring medical records between different health-care organizations. Currently, Epic houses records for over 280 million individuals in the U.S., but patients often have records scattered across various systems, making data exchange difficult.
The transition to TEFCA is expected to unify various health-care information exchange efforts and improve interoperability. Epic’s extensive reach and long history in the market add credibility to TEFCA, potentially encouraging other organizations to join the exchange.
In a related development, Carequality, an interoperability network that includes Epic as a member, has announced it is working to align with TEFCA. Carequality currently connects over 70% of hospitals, 50,000 clinics, and 600,000 care providers, making its alignment with TEFCA a significant step towards nationwide interoperability.
Epic has commended Carequality’s decision to align with TEFCA and will continue to facilitate exchanges through Carequality during the transition period. The company believes that TEFCA presents the best opportunity to engage the remaining 30% of U.S. hospitals and reinforce trust in data exchange networks.
As the health-care industry moves towards greater interoperability, this transition to TEFCA is seen as a crucial step in improving patient care and data accessibility across the nation. The implementation of TEFCA is expected to address longstanding challenges in medical records exchange while maintaining strict privacy protections in line with regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
