TEFCA Archives - HIT Leaders and News

Interoperability’s Next Act: AI, TEFCA, and the Strategic Stakes of the eHealth Exchange Gathering

Jason Free — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 11:54:28 +0000

When the eHealth Exchange convenes its 2025 Annual Meeting in Nashville this November, it won’t just be another interoperability summit. The event will serve as a barometer for how U.S. health data infrastructure is evolving under new pressures, technical, political, and economic.

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FHIR at a Crossroads for Real-World Evidence

Jason Free — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 11:56:49 +0000

The Electronic Health Record Association’s June 23 comment letter arrives just weeks after the Food and Drug Administration opened Docket No. FDA-2025-N-0287 to explore whether HL7 FHIR can carry real-world data into formal submissions. Representing almost thirty vendors, the EHR Association applauds the inquiry yet warns that inconsistent coding practices, limited lineage metadata, and opaque de-identification workflows still undermine research-grade reliability. FDA’s docket signals a strategic shift from viewing FHIR solely as a messaging format to considering it a regulatory substrate that could align clinical care documentation with pharmaceutical evidence pathways.

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CMS Is Building Infrastructure Without a Plan to Govern It

Jason Free — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 10:04:29 +0000

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) latest pivot toward building a national digital infrastructure signals a long-overdue and promising maturation of its modernization agenda. But for all the focus on APIs, directories, and data sharing, the true challenge is less about technology and more about governance: who will own, operate, and sustain the digital rails of the American healthcare economy?

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TEFCA’s Strategic Crossroads: Governance, Payment Levers, and the Real Market Reordering

Jason Free — Mon, 12 May 2025 12:25:51 +0000

The federal interoperability push has entered a pivotal new phase, as made clear in a recent interview with Steven Lane, Chief Medical Officer at Health Gorilla, published by HIT Leaders and News. Lane’s remarks signal that TEFCA and the designation of Qualified Health Information Networks are not incremental policy adjustments. They are a redefinition of control, obligation, and value creation in the health data economy.

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From Fragmented Exchange to Trusted Infrastructure: Steven Lane on TEFCA’s Interoperability Pivot

Jason Free — Wed, 07 May 2025 12:01:05 +0000

The national push for interoperability is entering a pivotal phase, defined not just by technical standards but by trust, governance, and economic alignment. In this strategic Q&A, Steven Lane of Health Gorilla outlines why TEFCA and the emergence of QHINs are more than a compliance checkbox. They represent a reengineering of how health data moves across the ecosystem. Unlike previous efforts like Carequality that relied on narrow use cases and loosely enforced policies, TEFCA introduces enforceable rules, patient-directed data sharing, and the leverage of future CMS incentives. Lane addresses the sector’s uncomfortable truths: from legacy business models built on data hoarding to the cultural erosion of trust in HIE. But he also maps a path forward, grounded in regulatory pressure, market demand, and the inevitability of patient-centered control.

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Public Health Data Modernization Workshop Identifies Critical Needs for Partnerships, Public Policy, Funding and Health Information Exchange

Jason Free — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 12:28:41 +0000

HIMSS and its partners convened 140 people for a Public Health Data Modernization Workshop at the 2024 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition, where participants discussed the current state of public health data modernization; learned about one another’s needs, challenges and priorities; and forged connections within the public health community and among the public health, healthcare and IT supplier communities.

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CommonWell Health Alliance Announces Members, Platform Enhancements to Advance Interoperability with TEFCA-Ready Platform

Jason Free — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 11:55:11 +0000

CommonWell Health Alliance is thrilled to announce new members and platform enhancements following the successful launch of its new platform in collaboration with ELLKAY, a leader in healthcare data interoperability.

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Decoding Interoperability: TEFCA and National Networks and Frameworks Explained

Jason Free — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 11:12:16 +0000

With the foundation of The Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), healthcare is poised to enter a new era of communication and collaboration.

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ONC Releases Common Agreement Version 2.0, Paving the Way for TEFCA Exchange via FHIR

Jason Free — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 11:04:05 +0000

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and its Recognized Coordinating Entity (RCE), The Sequoia Project, Inc., announced that Common Agreement Version 2.0 (CA v2.0) has been released.

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HHS Expands TEFCA by Adding Two Additional QHINs

Jason Free — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 14:31:36 +0000

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), announced that two additional organizations—CommonWell Health Alliance and Kno2—have been designated as Qualified Health Information Networks (QHINs) capable of nationwide health data exchange governed by the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA).

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