160K athenahealth providers eligible to go live on TEFCA

Athenahealth has migrated all eligible providers on the athenaOne network to the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), enabling more than 160,000 providers to exchange data across the network.

The agreement, established as part of the 21st Century Cures Act, aims to further health information exchange through a 'network of networks' approach. TEFCA includes two parts: the Trusted Exchange Framework, which is a set of non-binding but foundational health information exchange principles, and the Common Agreement, which establishes the technical infrastructure and governing approach to support data exchange.

Migrating to TEFCA aligns with athenahealth's long-standing goal to enable nationwide healthcare interoperability, said Sam Lambson, athenahealth's vice president of product, pointing to the health IT company's role in founding the CommonWell Health Alliance.

The company has brought approximately 160,000 providers across 6,000 healthcare organizations onto the TEFCA network. Lambson explained that the migration occurred at scale, with the company bringing thousands of facilities onto the network in waves within a short period.

With its focus on ambulatory care providers, athenahealth hopes to bring more single-physician and independent practices into the data-sharing network.

"We think athenahealth is playing a really important role in connecting hospital and ambulatory care together because interoperability isn't just about data, it's about making the experience for patients better," he said in an interview.

According to Lambson, TEFCA offers several advantages over previous data-sharing efforts. For instance, if athenahealth and its CommonWell collaborators wanted to rally around a specific standard, they would have to contend with at least two or three different networks.

"Now, under TEFCA, we can really get in the same room as Epic and Cerner and the others, and we can actually talk about some of the advancements we want to make as kind of a network of networks around the standards," he explained.

Epic has already stated that all its clients will go live on TEFCA by the end of 2025. 

On the provider side, the TEFCA migration is expected to unlock improvements in care coordination.

"Our hope is that patient outcomes will improve as clinicians have access to more complete and actionable data at the point of care," Chris Voigt, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Privia Health, said in an email.

Additionally, TEFCA mandates that all participating providers support Individual Access Services (IAS), which allows patients to access their health data without having to log in. Lambson noted that with IAS, patients are digitally identified at the point of entry through a secure protocol, enabling them to access their data wherever it is on the TEFCA network. The goal is to create a more seamless patient experience.

Athenahealth is also launching a new product to boost provider experience and data access. Called ChartSync, the product allows providers to access and use relevant data retrieved from TEFCA and other sources at the point of care.

Voigt described the tool as an aggregator, simplifying and streamlining data from external organizations into the patient chart. This allows providers to find necessary clinical information without looking through lengthy documents, he explained.

While specific metrics are still being finalized, Voigt shared that Privia Health will track various indicators to assess improvements in care, such as reductions in redundant testing, medication reconciliation accuracy and patient readmission rates. The physician practice management and technology company will also evaluate provider and patient satisfaction related to data accessibility and care coordination.

Anuja Vaidya has covered the healthcare industry since 2012. She currently covers the virtual healthcare landscape, including telehealth, remote patient monitoring and digital therapeutics.