TEFCA, short for the “Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement,” was established by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) under the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016. Initial drafts for the access and exchange of health information, were released in 2018 and 2019.
TEFCA’s goal is to reduce the barriers for sharing patient health records, by employing standardized language and formats. Additional goals included improved efficiencies and reduced costs for the healthcare system.
While the vision is compelling, progress has been incredibly slow. The need for “interoperability,” was first recognized in 2004. Here we are, 21 years later, and still struggling to achieve it. To make matters worse, by relying solely on this one approach, we’ve overlooked alternative strategies that may have been more effective—at the cost of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, and without any meaningful improvement in patient care for providers or patients alike.
Despite TEFCA’s good intentions, there are still no clear requirements or incentives for providers to adopt or use these data-sharing frameworks. Ongoing challenges include technical complexity, inconsistent governance policies, and evolving security requirements. In short, we’ve made TEFCA an exercise in futility, and still not improved or reduced the cost of care. Neither public health organizations nor physicians can access a patient’s full medical history from all of their providersat the point of care—when it’s needed the most.
Why MedKaz® is the Ideal Companion to TEFCA’s Vision for Interoperability
TEFCA promises to enable better care coordination, improved decision-making, and increased patient empowerment. But as with any transformative initiative, success depends not only on infrastructure and standards—it also hinges on practical, user-centric solutions that bridge the gap between policy and practice.
That’s where MedKaz offers a unique and powerful advantage.
While TEFCA builds a network for secure and trusted data exchange, MedKaz gives patients control over their own encrypted, reliable, and comprehensive medical records—independent of provider, system, or location—enabling them to securely share their information with care providers anytime, anywhere.This secure, patient-driven method of sharing health data enhances TEFCA’s goals by giving individuals full, portable access to their health information without being dependent on proprietary EHR vendors or health system alignment.
MedKaz addresses one of TEFCA’s key challenges: clinician adoption. By delivering a simple, unified, and longitudinal view of a patient’s medical history—on demand and directly from the patient—MedKaz eliminates the need for clinicians to navigate disparate EHR systems or comb through incomplete documents, CCDs, or labs. It gives them precisely the actionable information they need, at the point of care — making it a critical complement to TEFCA’s infrastructure. In addition, the MedKaz business model provides for physicians to be paid financial incentives when they use their patient’s Medkaz.
Most importantly, MedKaz doesn’t rely on faxed information or outdated exchange methods. Instead, it’s designed to seamlessly integrate with existing systems and services, ensuring data is not just exchanged—but also searchable, usable, relevant, and timely.
In a landscape where data fragmentation, administrative burden, and system-incompatibility continue to plague care delivery, MedKaz stands out as a practical, immediate solution that achieves TEFCA’s promise today. It streamlines clinical workflows, improves outcomes, reduces the cost of care, saves provider time, increases provider profitability, enhances patient engagement, and accelerates the realization of a better connected, and efficient healthcare system.
TEFCA lays the groundwork. MedKaz helps make it real.
