With the intense focus on health IT interoperability, KLAS has issued a report on the current landscape and who is taking the lead when it comes to overcoming barriers.

According to "Interoperability 2015: Are We Lifting Together?," customers rating their own vendors name athenahealth and Epic as easiest to connect to. Vendor peers list Epic as most effective to connect to and MEDITECH as least effective, followed by Cerner. Providers connecting with foreign EMRs pick athenahealth and Cerner as leaders in connection ease.

Meanwhile, athenahealth and Epic lead with their overall service levels, while eClinicalWorks, McKesson, GE and NextGen are described as interoperability laggards, receiving low marks in general support.

Most are disappointed with poor coordination among vendors, difficulty locating records and limited parsing abilities, according to the report, and the majority of respondents have little optimism about the future of public HIEs, reporting limited value.

Most (98 percent) of providers said they are willing to share, but only 82 percent report their main competitor to be similarly willing. Either way, most providers are starting to see data sharing as inevitable, but resistance remains. Smaller ambulatory practices are the least likely care providers to want to share their own records.

Interoperability is not the leading factor for buyers, according to the report. “As KLAS closely monitors EMR buying trends, we have yet to see EMR decisions hinging on which vendor is better at externally sharing health information data. Healthcare organizations are unclear about vendor differences when it comes to external connectivity and so cannot use this as a decision criteria.”

Access the complete report.