Epic and athenahealth topped the list of highly interoperable EHR systems, according to a recent KLAS Research report.
For the report, the health IT research firm conducted more than 500 interviews with providers about interoperability, with an emphasis on "plug-and-play" data sharing. Plug-and-play connectivity refers to an EHR vendor integrating their product into a single national network, which their clients are able to participate in and access data from — for example, athenahealth's network or Epic's Care Everywhere.
KLAS Research assessed nine popular EHR vendors — Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, eClinicalWorks, Epic, GE Healthcare, Greenway Health, Meditech and NextGen Healthcare — on their interoperability capabilities when exchanging information between the same and different EHR vendors. Across the board, athenahealth stacked up as one of the most interoperable health IT vendors.
When considering data exchange between providers using the same EHR vendor, Epic topped the list as the most interoperable vendor, followed by athenahealth and GE Healthcare. For data exchange between providers using different EHR vendors, athenahealth ranked most interoperable, followed by GE Healthcare and Greenway Health.