The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has extended for another year the Sequoia Project’s contract to act as the Recognized Coordinating Entity (RCE) to support the implementation of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA). 

The nonprofit Sequoia Project was awarded the next option year with a more than 15% increase in funding under its existing contract to ONC.
 
“The Sequoia Project’s partnership with ONC has enabled TEFCA’s success to date,” said Mariann Yeager, CEO of the Sequoia Project and RCE lead, in a statement. “Looking ahead, we are focusing on network integrity, advancing new use cases, and supporting continued growth.”
 
The organization said that more than 1.5 billion documents have been shared through TEFCA exchange since the go-live in December 2023. More than 100,000 sites nationwide are sharing patient data under explicit, approved exchange purposes, including treatment, government benefits determination, public health, healthcare operations, payment, and individual access services (IAS). The IAS exchange purpose empowers consumers to direct the sharing of health data with the digital health platforms of their choice, including popular health apps. 

In the most recent contract year, the RCE designated two additional Qualified Health Information Networks (QHINs), published 13 new policies, engaged more than 100 stakeholders and experts across more than 100 meetings, and facilitated the governing bodies.

“The Sequoia Project’s RCE team is excited to continue supporting TEFCA’s growth and maturity as the leading federally endorsed framework for trusted exchange,” added Yeager. “This past year was marked by tremendous growth, and today, TEFCA has 11 QHINs that represent more than 23,000 organizations nationwide, with more organizations in the on-boarding process.”

 Not everything has gone smoothly in TEFCA’s roll-out. There has been legal wrangling between QHINs. In January 2026 Epic and a group of healthcare providers—OCHIN, Reid Health, Trinity Health, and UMass Memorial Health— filed a lawsuit against companies allegedly exploiting confidential patient records for profit. The lawsuit claims that Health Gorilla, a health information network, allowed Mammoth, RavillaMed, and other companies to improperly access and profit from nearly 300,000 patient medical records belonging to members of the Epic community. Health Gorilla denies wrongdoing and maintains it acted in good faith. The litigation is ongoing.