What Will ONC Do With TEFCA?

Chilmark Bight from May 2018: Major issues raised by stakeholders about the 1st draft of TEFCA

ONC’s draft Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) and U.S. Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI), required by the 21st Century Cures Act, generated a mountain of comments from healthcare stakeholders. In Table 1, we summarize the major issues raised. They express the hopes and fears for the future of healthcare information exchange held by our industry’s varied stakeholders.

Key Takeaways

• TEFCA will not catalyze a business case for healthcare data exchange.
  • Providers, in particular, will have to balance the cost of compliance against the penalties of non-compliance. Payers stand to benefit from better access to provider data, if TEFCA is technically feasible and broadly deployed, neither of which are inevitable.
• TEFCA will shield providers from data blocking liability and marginally reduce their reporting burden.
  • ONC risks a backlash from providers and payers by creating an overly prescriptive program that does not accomplish its primary objective: widespread data liquidity.

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