Select healthcare organizations are now live on the Carequality Interoperability Framework, a guideline with standards and specifications to enable organizations to share health information, regardless of EHR.
Carequality is a common interoperability framework designed to enable data exchange. Under the umbrella of The Sequoia Project, Carequality is a collaborative of public and private organizations that agree to common standards and specifications to support interoperability. Members include vendors, providers, payers and more.
More than 200 hospitals and 3,000 clinics are live on Carequality, and live exchange has occurred in four states. Sites sharing data are using various IT platforms, including athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Epic, NextGen and Surescripts.
An Epic spokesperson told Becker's, "For the first time, there is a clear path for all vendors and providers to follow to achieve nationwide interoperability."
Some of the initial launch sites of the Carequality platform include Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health and St. Louis-based SSM Health.
"Many of our patients also receive care from community providers utilizing a variety of EHRs," said Steven Lane, MD, clinical informatics director of privacy and interoperability at Sutter Health, in a statement. "Carequality promises to remove historic barriers to sharing information between different vendors' EHRs allowing patients' information to follow them wherever they choose to receive care."
More articles on interoperability:
Small, rural hospitals lag in interoperability: 7 findings from the ONC
ONC certifies Carefluence as first to comply with MU3 interoperability requirements
ONC launches challenge seeking input on using blockchain in health IT