Surescripts will offer electronic health record system vendors free access to its national record locator services until 2019 as a way to foster data exchange, the company announced this week.
The service, launched in 2015, is a federated query-and-response solution that integrates through existing EHR software, enabling providers to obtain a patient’s health history without having to rely on the patient’s memory. Users of the service have access to a more complete picture of a patient’s care through multiple vendors, regardless where the treatment was provided.
The locator service, which operates within the CareQuality Interoperability Framework, went live this year with 140 million patients and more than two billion interactions between patients and providers. Several vendors, including Epic, NextGen, Greenway Health, Aprima and eClinicalWorks have already agreed to offer this capability to their provider clients.
The CareQuality interoperability framework, which leverages existing networks and business relationships to enable data exchange, became operational last month. It was created to lower interoperability barriers and enable exchange between and among health data sharing networks. Published in December 2015, the framework is based on principles of trust that cover the legal terms, technical specifications, policy requirements and governance processes to enable interoperability.