By EHRA Public Policy Leadership Workgroup

After a journey more than four years in the making, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and The Sequoia Project achieved a major milestone in the advancement of nationwide health information exchange: the publication of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) v1.0. ONC and The Sequoia Project have demonstrated their commitment to incorporating input from stakeholders across the industry, which created a process that produced significant improvements with each draft publication. We applaud the significant efforts undertaken by ONC and The Sequoia Project to collaborate with industry interoperability experts and create a framework that incorporates key principles of trusted exchange, like reciprocity, as well as a technical approach that leverages commonly adopted standards. 

For well over a decade, members of the Electronic Health Record Association (EHRA) have invested substantially in advancing the data sharing capabilities of the health IT systems used by healthcare organizations across the country with the belief that doing so will improve the quality and efficiency of health care. It is our sincere hope that TEFCA will continue to build on those investments for the benefit of patients.