Interoperability is a familiar buzzword, but do we really know what it means? In the healthcare industry, it is often used as a catch-all term for anything involving data exchange. Additionally, the metrics used to measure interoperability—record exchange, APIs, and so on—are largely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. These factors have made it difficult for healthcare organizations to know which interoperability use cases are being discussed and what EHR vendors are actually capable of. Further, the lack of partnership between healthcare organizations, vendors, and payer organizations has hindered progress toward greater interoperability.
These issues were the impetus for KLAS’ recent report titled EHR Interoperability Overview 2025. In this report, KLAS provides a clearer look at three key interoperability use cases that reflect organizations’ most pressing interoperability needs: (1) provider-to-provider patient record sharing, (2) third-party application data sharing, and (3) payer-to-provider patient record sharing. The following blog post shares the top insights from the report as well as additional thoughts from our in-house experts.
Patient Records Are Becoming More Available but Not More Usable
For over 15 years, KLAS has monitored the data-sharing capabilities of EHR vendors. The good news is that in that time, vendors’ data-sharing capabilities have steadily improved, supported by networks and frameworks like CommonWell, Carequality, and emerging QHINs.
However, as the chart below shows, clinician satisfaction with data sharing has barely increased since 2018. While data is increasingly available, clinician users struggle to sift through duplicative, inconsistently formatted, and poorly mapped information. This hinders the ability of the shared data to meaningfully support decision-making during patient care. To make meaningful progress in the usability of shared patient records, the healthcare industry needs to focus on better data normalization, data deduplication, and workflow alignment.
More APIs Doesn’t Equal Better Third-Party Data Sharing
Across the industry, EHR vendors frequently point to the number of APIs they offer as evidence of their ability to support integration with third-party applications. But as this report highlights, increased API availability does not equate to high customer satisfaction with integration.
Currently, different vendors take different approaches to APIs—some use multiple to perform a task, while others use a single API. Healthcare organizations need vendors to work together to standardize interoperability methods and approach things in the same way. FHIR APIs will most likely be the future of third-party interoperability, but those still have a way to go until they can fully meet organizations’ needs.
Trust, Not Technology, Is the Biggest Barrier to Payer-to-Provider Data Sharing
Data sharing between payers and providers has been a long-standing challenge that has often led to administrative inefficiency and drained resources on both sides.There are several solutions that are addressing the technical exchange of data, but trust is going to be a much harder obstacle to overcome.However, more and more payer and provider organizations are focusing on developing strong relationships to support efficient data sharing, especially with recent CMS mandates like CMS-0057-F.
Such relationships are captured in KLAS’ K2 Collaborative Points of Light case studies, which highlight how payer and provider organizations work together to achieve outcomes. Nearly all of the 2025 case studies involved some element of data sharing and emphasized the importance of establishing trust and transparency between payer and provider parties. Meaningful improvement to payer-provider data sharing will not happen until all stakeholders commit to shared goals and practices.
Where Interoperability Goes from Here
If there is one message that readers should take from the EHR Interoperability Overview 2025 report, it is that interoperability is a team sport. No single healthcare organization, vendor, or payer can solve interoperability challenges alone. Progress depends on shared terminology, shared expectations, and shared accountability.
Today, we see promising technology and growing regulatory pressure to increase interoperability capabilities for all three use cases. But we also see a lack of alignment between stakeholders, which dramatically slows meaningful interoperability improvement.
KLAS’ aim is to disrupt this pace of progress and help increase alignment and improvement. In 2026, we anticipate publishing follow-up reports on each of the three interoperability use cases outlined in the overview; these reports will validate vendor offerings and share customer experiences with those offerings.
To dig deeper into each interoperability use case, we invite all to read the full report.
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