Six organizations are the first to earn Drummond Validated™ – FHIRplace (CRD) status. Of the nine organizations that completed CRD interoperability testing in Q3 2026, three earned Silver and three earned Bronze!
Their systems now exchange coverage and prior authorization information with confidence. That result comes from a different way of testing. Most interoperability testing in health IT is a one-time snapshot. FHIRplace works differently. It is a continuous matrix in which provider-facing and payer-facing systems test against each other over weeks and months.
That extended timeline is what makes the results meaningful. FHIRplace identifies interoperability issues between the two sides, and participants fix those issues and retest until each scenario completes successfully.
Drummond awards the seal only after reviewing each organization’s test records, so it cannot be self-reported. Earning it means testing with real data and real payer connections, fixing what breaks and retesting until the results hold. The seal reflects a commitment to interoperability that goes beyond claiming it.
- Silver: Medplum, Medical Informatics Engineering (MIE), and ZeOmega
- Bronze: Nucural, Mesh Health Solutions, and Smile Digital Health
The Gaps Testing Revealed
Testing covered a matrix of 1,252 unique provider-payer connections over 15 weeks. The testing identified 311 interoperability issues, the kind of mismatches that would otherwise surface in live operations.
Of the 994 tests actively executed, 69% reached a confirmed successful or remediated state. Scenarios not yet attempted form a testing queue that participants work through on a rolling basis.
The issues discovered from the testing event revealed four distinct patterns:
- Order Type Support Gaps – Payer systems couldn’t process different order types, causing complete transaction failures.
- Clinical Identifier Gaps – Provider systems sent graphic placeholders instead of actual identifiers preventing payer matching.
- Callback Functionality Gaps – Addresses were non-functional, blocking payers systems from retrieving needed information.
- Prefetch Configuration Gaps – Incomplete configurations caused requests to fail before reaching coverage logic
Isolating these gaps lets organizations see the path to deeper interoperability. Each failure shows what went wrong and where to look first, so similar problems can be prevented in future testing.
Testing Moved the Ecosystem Forward
In Q2, Rule Evaluation issues made up 52.4% of all findings. Participants worked through them, and by Q3 that share had fallen to 13.5% of new findings. Clearing those foundational gaps exposed the next layer of the workflow. Trigger and Context Discovery issues, which concern how systems start a coverage check and pass patient context along with it, made up 36% of Q3 findings.
Each round of testing moves problems out of live operations and into the test environment, where they can be fixed before they reach patients. This is how shared testing moves the ecosystem forward. Participants test, fix what they find, and test again at a deeper level, with each round building on what the last one uncovered.
Q4 Brings the Full ePA Workflow Into Testing
Q4 2026 extends testing across the complete ePA workflow. Participants can test Coverage Requirements Discovery (CRD), Documentation Templates and Rules (DTR), and Prior Authorization Service (PAS) together, so the full chain is validated in one connected process.
Testing runs through the Intermediary Connector, which inspects the transactions as they pass from provider to intermediary to payer. Participants see how coverage requirements, documentation, and authorization decisions move through that chain.
For detailed testing metrics, issue breakdowns, and participant achievements, download the full Q3 2026 FHIRplace Testing Report.