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Henry Archibong
As the last leftovers of Thanksgiving dinner are being reheated, and the weather outside is turning frightful, healthcare thought leaders and changemakers are reflecting on balmy San Diego and the recent Sequoia Project 2023 Annual Meeting. HealthMark participated in this year’s event along with 200+ attendees, eager to get a glimpse into the future of Carequality, the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) and all things interoperability!
The Annual Meeting Goes on, Rain or Shine
The Sequoia Project Annual Meeting delivered on everything but the sunny San Diego weather we had all hoped for (the forecast actually described it as ‘high intensity rain’). But nonetheless, the event served as a great opportunity for attendees across the healthcare ecosystem to connect on the state of interoperability and learn what’s new with landmark interoperability initiatives like TEFCA. The 2023 meeting marks the fifth time representatives from federal agencies, health systems, health IT developers, care providers and health information exchanges have come together for this event. Here are our hottest takes from this year!
TEFCA: Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot!
Unsurprisingly, TEFCA was the hottest topic of the meeting. Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) candidates dove deep into the TEFCA waters, sharing key dates, implementation details and use cases in preparation for their upcoming December go live. It was helpful to hear speakers from the various QHINs talk through how they approached the technical design of their networks, which provided key details that developers like HealthMark can iterate on for future go-live phases.
Reference Check: What is a QHIN?
A QHIN, or Qualified Health Information Network, is an organization or group that will connect health information networks on a national scale, sharing data from their own network of healthcare vendors, providers and health systems to other qualified networks.
There was a lot of emphasis on the public health and patient access uses cases for a national interoperability framework. The December QHIN go live focuses on the treatment use case, and that should tell us a lot once it gets going. Beyond that, TEFCA holds a lot of promise for use cases like individual access, performance audits, and payor coverages. How we work together across the healthcare ecosystem to adapt, break through roadblocks, solve challenges and iterate will determine the next steps TEFCA takes.
Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Regulatory FHIR
In addition to the mammoth that is TEFCA, the discussion of regulatory initiatives was also a hot topic at this year’s meeting.
Information Blocking: You Can Run, but You Can’t Hide
The biggest takeaway here was that patient right of access is paramount, and Information Blocking will continue to be a focus for oversight agencies. In fact, Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently proposed a new rule that will establish Information Blocking disincentives for providers. Read more about that proposed rule here.
Between this new proposed rule and the Final Rule that came out in June with penalties for HIT developers, it’s clear that the Information Blocking spotlight will continue to get brighter. Providers and healthcare vendors are increasingly being held accountable for the ease of release of information, especially with regards to patient access. In fact, since 2021, 902 claims have been made in the Information Blocking Portal.
So, how do you know if you’re Information Blocking? Check out our blog with examples included!
And for more information on Information Blocking, check out our Autocomplete Game video!
A 5o-State Patchwork Quilt
Several conversations touched on the unique regulatory climate we operate in, with federal privacy and security laws acting as the floor, and states layering their own regulations on top. For many healthcare organizations that operate in multiple states, the patchwork of state regulations often creates a messy barrier to information sharing success. Does this make the case for a single source of data privacy truth, a single federal data privacy law that all states must operate under? What kind of benefits and challenges arise from such a concept? The answers to those questions are yet to come, at least for now.
This Event was FHIR
Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), the standards defining how healthcare information can be exchanged between different systems, came up in many conversations too. From potential realities to where FHIR stands today, attendees and panelists participated in a lively discussion about this fiery topic.
Sharing information amongst healthcare providers has long been a challenge, but hearing more about Project Lantern was a bright spot. Project Lantern is a monitoring system that will allow ONC to oversee and publicly provide nationwide analytics about the availability and standardization of FHIR APIs. Micky Tripathi, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS, made it clear in his keynote that ONC is getting serious about holding the entire industry accountable for ease of information sharing through interoperability.
From a regulatory standpoint, we’ve seen a lot of new proposed rules and updates to existing regulations over the past few years. As we head into the new year, it’s clear that the enforcement of these regulations will be a key focus in 2024, and the future of healthcare as we know it.
Ride The Wave of the Future
Standards and plans look great on paper or in a rule book, but how do healthcare organizations put them into action to meet the needs of patients, providers and payors? We heard nuggets of acknowledgment throughout the event for the real-world challenges associated with secure, standards-based health data exchange. TEFCA and FHIR adoption are both still in the early stages, and while we at HealthMark feel very positive about both initiatives, a lot remains to be seen.
The overwhelming focus to this point has been on building the underlying data sharing pipeline, and it’s important that we don’t forget about the usability of the data being shared. How do interoperability standards ensure that the data exchanged is meaningful, appropriate and noise free? And how do healthcare organizations ensure the same? As we move forward in the interoperability landscape, this will be a critical element of success.
The Sun Sets on 2023’s Meeting and Rises on Interoperability
At this year’s meeting, ONC made it clear that healthcare interoperability is shifting from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have.” While this isn’t exactly news to the healthcare industry, the escalation in language highlights a sense of urgency around interoperability that isn’t limited to one singular agency or administration.
HealthMark was thrilled to participate in this year’s event with all the other changemakers in the healthcare interoperability space. We are definitely not sitting on the sidelines for this one, and we are excited about the future. We’re actively engaged in TEFCA, participating in Sequoia Project workgroups and focused on delivering new solutions that will leverage our unique position in the healthcare ecosystem as the steward of millions of patient medical records.