This week, the HHS Office of National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) recognized an ensemble of organizations who agreed to be subjected to a year-long testing process to become QHINs under TEFCA. Not to worry, these six entities are not suffering from a terrible disease and this is not a clinical trial to cure them (we asked). Instead, this means that Epic, CommonWell Health Alliance, eHealth Exchange, Health Gorilla, Kno2 and KONZA were all talked into helping (Mariann Yeager must be very persuasive) the federal government create a nationwide health information exchange platform. To be a QHIN is like being a Queen of data sharing — as the acronym implies if you mispronounce it slightly. The would-be QHINs, who each have copious amounts of health data, will share their data according to the two parts of TEFCA: the Trusted Exchange Framework (standards to follow when sharing data) and in accordance with the Common Agreement (the legal agreement that governs information-sharing). The whole point of TEFCA is to make sure that patient records are shared whenever they need to be to get patients the care that they need. We applaud this important goal, but we are fairly sure that this year-long process will not be entertaining or fun to watch. Maybe watch this instead.
February 17, 2023 | 2 min read
February 17, 2023
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