Fierce Health Payers January 18, 2022
Five years in the making, the nation’s top health IT agency released Tuesday the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, a critical step in establishing a nationwide data-sharing network.
The long-awaited interoperability framework (PDF), called TEFCA, was mandated by the 21st Century Cures Act back in 2016 and was designed to improve data sharing between health information networks.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health, within HHS, released the first draft of the TEFCA back in January 2018. The framework provides the policies, procedures and technical standards necessary to exchange patient records and health information between providers, state and regional health information exchanges and federal agencies.
“Today’s milestone marks the beginning of a new era of electronic health information...