Over 60% of hospitals plan to participate in TEFCA

Hospital awareness of TEFCA is growing, according to an ONC brief based on survey data from the American Hospital Association.

Over 60% of hospitals were aware of TEFCA and planned to participate in 2023, up from 51% in 2022.

Additionally, from 2022 to 2023, the percentage of hospitals that were aware of TEFCA but did not know if they would participate decreased from 23% to 9%.

Still, one in four hospitals was not aware of TEFCA in 2022 and 2023, indicating the need for further education on the national health information exchange (HIE) initiative.

Hospitals with greater resources, such as those that are larger, noncritical access and health system-affiliated, reported greater awareness and had higher levels of planned participation in TEFCA compared to smaller, critical access and independent hospitals.

Additionally, HIE membership correlated with planned TEFCA participation. Approximately seven out of 10 hospitals that participated in national networks or HIEs planned to participate in TEFCA compared to four out of 10 hospitals that did not participate in either kind of network.

"While the gap in plans to participate between hospitals already in networks and those not in any network remained large in 2023, we did observe a substantial increase in the proportion of hospitals without prior network involvement planning to participate in TEFCA," the ONC data brief noted.

In 2022, just 10% of hospitals without prior network participation planned to participate in TEFCA, compared to 39% in 2023.

ONC officials underscored the importance of tracking hospitals' awareness and plans to join TEFCA to ensure that all hospitals, regardless of size, system affiliation or prior network participation, can benefit from the nationwide health data interoperability that TEFCA aims to facilitate.

Hannah Nelson has been covering news related to health information technology and health data interoperability since 2020.