The dirty secret: Why your EHR still can’t talk to other systems

Health care has made remarkable strides in recent decades — lifesaving diagnostics, precision therapies and minimally invasive procedures that were unthinkable a generation ago. Yet for all that progress, a physician in 2026 can still find it easier to fax a patient record than to share it electronically with a colleague across town.

Interoperability — the ability of different health IT systems to seamlessly exchange and use patient data — has been a stated priority for policy makers, health systems and technology vendors for years. The 21st Century Cures Act mandated it. Billions of dollars have been invested in it. And still, care teams routinely work around fragmented records, duplicate testing and systems that simply refuse to communicate.

The consequences are real. Delayed diagnoses. Redundant procedures. Medication errors. Physicians spending more time wrestling with technology than caring for patients. For a system already strained by staffing shortages and administrative burden, the failure of interoperability isn't just a technical inconvenience — it's a patient safety issue.

So why, after all this time and investment, are we still here?

The answer isn't a lack of solutions. The technology to achieve true interoperability largely exists. The obstacles are something else entirely — and once you see them clearly, they're hard to unsee.

There are two culprits, and they have nothing to do with the technology. Results of a survey from the CHiME Foundation reveal the real problems holding interoperability back.