Epic Customers First to Share Medical Records With SSA Through TEFCA

The secure electronic exchange is expected to speed SSA benefit determinations by up to 50%, helping Americans with disabilities access services more quickly.

Epic health system customers have become the first to share medical records with the Social Security Administration (SSA) through TEFCA, the federally sponsored interoperability framework.

The secure electronic exchange is expected to speed SSA benefit determinations by up to 50%, helping Americans with disabilities access services more quickly.

The first set of health systems connecting to SSA through TEFCA includes AltaMed (Los Angeles, CA), Citizen Potawatomi Nation Health Services (Shawnee, OK), Overlake Hospital Medical Center (Bellevue, WA), Saint Francis Health System (Tulsa, OK), and Valleywise Health (Phoenix, AZ). An additional 13 hospitals and 374 clinics have also joined the network, with plans for more to connect in the near future.

SSA Chief of Disability Adjudication Jay Ortis emphasized that the initiative “ensures that Americans receive the service and benefits they need, when they need them” by leveraging national interoperability frameworks and electronic health record (EHR) providers.

Epic’s Director of Interoperability, Rob Klootwyk, said TEFCA provides “a streamlined option for data exchange with SSA” that benefits millions of people and allows organizations to connect more efficiently. Over the past 15 years, Epic customers have shared more than 11 million records with SSA through networks such as Carequality and eHealth Exchange, assisting nearly 500,000 people in 2025 alone.

Early adopters like MetroHealth System (Cleveland, OH) and OCHIN (Portland, OR) have already reported substantial benefits. Dr. David Kaelber, Chief Health Informatics Officer at MetroHealth, highlighted cases where SSA benefits were approved within a single business day, improving patient well-being and chronic disease management. Jennifer Stoll, Chief External Affairs Officer at OCHIN, noted the connection “drastically reduces the amount of time it takes to ensure patients receive much needed resources to support their health and well-being.”

Epic has been a longstanding leader in interoperability, launching Care Everywhere in 2008 as the first platform to allow direct exchange of medical records between health systems without centralized storage. Today, Epic customers have achieved full connectivity nationwide, further enabling initiatives like the TEFCA-SSA exchange.

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