DirectTrust, CHIME Deal Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be

Recently, CHIME and DirectTrust announced a deal that sounded pretty huge on the surface. In a joint press release announcing the agreement, the two organizations said they had agreed to work together “to promote the universal deployment of the Direct Trust framework and health information exchange network as the common electronic interface for health information exchange across the U.S.”

Their plans include making the Direct exchange network available anywhere they can, including hospitals, medical practices, pharmacies, labs, long-term care facilities, payers, insurers and health departments, and to top it off, on applications. If things go the way they planned, you’ll hardly be able to kick a health IT rock without finding Direct under it.

As I noted earlier this year, DirectTrust is on something of a roll. In May, it noted that the number of health information service providers who engaged in Direct exchanges grew to almost 95,000 during the first quarter of this year. That’s a 63% increase versus the same period in 2016. The group also reported that the number of trusted Direct addresses which could share PHI grew 21%, to 1.4 million, and that there were 35.6 million Direct exchange transactions during the quarter, up 76% over the same period last year.

Sounds good. But let’s not judge this in a vacuum. For example, on the same day DirectTrust released its first quarter results, the Sequoia Project kicked out a press release touting its performance. In the release, Sequoia noted that its Carequality initiative was under full steam, with more than 19,000 clinics, 800 hospitals and 250,000 providers using the Carequality Interoperability Framework to share health data.

In considering the impact of Carequality, let’s not forget that late last year it connected with rival interoperability group CommonWell Health Alliance. I don’t know if you can say that interoperability effort can corner a market– the organizations using the rival health data sharing networks probably overlap substantially—but it’s certainly an interesting development. While the two organizations were both allied with a leading EMR vendor (CommonWell with Cerner and Carequality with Epic), the agreement has effectively brought the muscle of the two EMR giants together.

I guess it’s fair to say that the Carequality alliance and DirectTrust may own interoperabililty for now, rivaled only by the stronger regional HIEs.  That’s pretty impressive, I admit. Also, it’s interesting to see an accepted health IT organization like CHIME throw its weight behind Direct. I wouldn’t have expected CHIME to dive in here.

That being said, when you get down to it, none of the groups’ capacity for sharing health data is as great as it sounds. For example, if Epic’s Care Everywhere exchange only transmits C-CDA records, you have to ask yourself if Carequality is working at a higher level. If not, we’re in “meh” territory.

Bottom line, it seems clear that these organizations are winning the battle for interoperability mindshare. Both seem to have made a fair amount of progress. But between you and me in the lamppost, let’s not get excited just yet.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

3 Comments

  • Amusing to see competition over interoperability. I thought the point was for everyone to interoperate.

  • Hi Anne,

    Truth is neither Direct, Carequality, CommonWell nor any other HIEs provide total interoperability! None can deliver a patient’s COMPLETE medical record from ALL their providers. Moreover, many (including Epic) can’t even deliver records from multiple locations using the same vendor’s EMR!

    Additionally, virtually all deliver only partial notes (CCDs or CCDAs) not complete notes which is what most providers require when treating their patients.

    Bottom line and despite all the hoopla, HIEs don’t come close to meeting the need for interoperability! There is only one system that does. It is the groundbreaking MedKaz which puts the patient center stage.

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