Communication blackout has been lifted and Sequoia Project has resumed the monthly Information Calls on TEFCA.
The Recognized Coordinating Entity® (RCE®) is responsible for developing, implementing, and maintaining the Common Agreement component of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement™ (TEFCA™). The Common Agreement will create the baseline technical and legal requirements for health information networks to share electronic health information and is part of the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act). In addition to the Common Agreement, the RCE will collaborate with ASTP (formerly known as ONC) to designate and monitor Qualified Health Information Networks® (QHIN™), modify and update an accompanying QHIN Technical Framework, engage with stakeholders through virtual public listening sessions, adjudicate noncompliance with the Common Agreement, and propose sustainability strategies to support TEFCA beyond the cooperative agreement’s period of performance.
In August 2019, ASTP awarded a cooperative agreement to The Sequoia Project to serve as the Recognized Coordinating Entity (RCE) following a full and open competition to make a single, 4-year award. In August 2023, the non-profit was awarded a five-year contract to continue the public-private engagement in support of a nationwide framework for secure health data sharing.
This months call began with an ASTP welcome from Thomas Keane, MD, MBA, Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Here are quotes that can assure you this administration is continuing the TEFCA initiative.
- I can tell you, as you guys probably have seen, there’s a lot of interest in healthcare information technology and in particular, interoperability and data exchange in this administration.
- There’s tremendous interest in making data flow.
- The amount of improvement in care that we can see from data flowing, whether it’s through scientific discovery, the development of AI provider extenders, clinical decision support, support for administrative tasking, ePrior auth, all of this relies on the movement of data.
- I practiced in some form or fashion in this area going all the way back to 2003 and the work that you all have done and that Sequoia have and that my colleagues at ONC have done have really transformed medicine.
- So by way of statistics, my understanding is that 328 ,000 clinicians participated in TEFCA and Q1, over a thousand hospitals. And we’d like to continue to see TEFCA scale seamlessly.