VA, DOD are now live on national health data sharing superhighway
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The Social Security Administration, Indian Health Service and the Consumer Product Safety Commission all previously joined the initiative.
The Veterans Affairs and Defense Departments will now send and receive electronic health information with medical providers through the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement — or TEFCA — according to a Thursday press release .
“Many of America’s veterans and warfighters receive care in multiple locations, making it critical for their providers to have access to secure, timely health information,” said Thomas Keane, National Coordinator for Health IT, in the release. “TEFCA will help ensure their providers can get up-to-date information no matter where they receive care.”
TEFCA is a superhighway that gives patients, medical providers, public health authorities and federal agencies access to electronic health information.
Nearly 25,000 organizations are live on TEFCA, including hospitals, clinics and other entities, according to the release. Since TEFCA went live in December 2023, it has facilitated the exchange of more than 2 billion health records, the release adds.
The VA and DOD connections to TEFCA were a long time coming.
VA has publicly stated its intention to connect to TEFCA since at least March 2025. The Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization Office — which has helped VA, DOD and several other federal agencies implement a common electronic health record — said in September that it was preparing to connect to TEFCA to make health data exchanges between the federal EHR and other EHRs seamless.
“Wherever our beneficiaries seek care — whether at a military treatment facility, a VA medical center, or a participating local hospital — their critical health information will travel securely with them across connected care settings,” said Leslie Sofocleous, the office’s director, in the Thursday release.
Besides VA and DOD, the Indian Health Service, Social Security Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission have previously joined the TEFCA.
Similar to VA and DOD, IHS’s goal for TEFCA is to improve care coordination between agency and nonagency medical providers.
SSA, meanwhile, joined TEFCA to speed up disability claims processing by obtaining digital copies of medical records. As of Aug. 13, the agency had made 60,595 data requests and connected with 84 health care entities, Nextgov/FCW previously reported .
CPSC plans to use TEFCA to obtain digital hospital emergency room data that are needed for an update of the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, a tracking system for consumer product-related injuries. But that forthcoming overhaul has attracted blowback from congressional Democrats and hospital groups over data privacy concerns.