Six Healthcare Organizations Form Coalition to Develop Nationwide Patient Identification Strategy

Six healthcare organizations—including the Salt Lake City, Utah-based Intermountain Healthcare—are forming a national coalition called Patient ID Now, focused on addressing the issue of patient identification by advocating for legislation and regulations.

The founding members of Patient ID Now, along with Intermountain, are the American College of Surgeons, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, Inc. (HIMSS), and Premier Healthcare Alliance.

The coalition recently launched a website, PatientIDNow.org, which highlights the group’s principles. Noting that failure to accurately identify patients to their data raises patient safety and quality of care concerns, Patient ID Now believes it’s critical for Congress to repeal a section of law that prevents the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from working with the private sector to develop a nationwide patient identification strategy.

Although the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) requires HHS to develop a unique identifier, subsequent federal appropriations language has prohibited its implementation. However, the 21st Century Cures Act— signed into law in 2016—requires the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to examine steps taken by the federal government and the private sector to reduce matching errors.

Marc Probst, vice president and chief information officer, Intermountain Healthcare, noted that “Lifting the ban will enable a national solution to our current inability to consistently and accurately identify patients to their health records. Lifting the archaic appropriations ban on a unique patient health identifier will save lives and is long overdue.”

Properly matching patients and their data not only improves care but saves resources. The Ponemon Institute indicates that on average, 35 percent of all denied claims result directly from inaccurate patient identification or inaccurate and incomplete patient information, costing the average US healthcare system $1.2 million per year.

What’s more, in a 2014 report about the issue, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) found the best error rate among healthcare providers is around 7 percent, though the error rate is typically closer to 10 to 20 percent within healthcare entities, and this rises to 50 to 60 percent when entities exchange information with each other.

“It’s inspiring to see six healthcare organizations work together to create positive change for patients and healthcare systems,” said AHIMA CEO Wylecia Wiggs Harris, Ph.D. “I am optimistic Patient ID Now will achieve its goals of helping healthcare systems better match patients with their data.”

Patient ID Now invites members of Congress and congressional staff, as well as media, to a virtual Hill briefing on July 7. Speakers will discuss the importance of matching patients and their data, and how Congress can help improve this area of the country’s healthcare system. Opportunities for engagement with speakers will be available, according to officials of the coalition.

“CHIME is pleased to join the Patient ID Now Coalition as one of its founding members,” said CHIME’s President and CEO Russell Branzell. “CHIME has called for removing the funding ban for many years; the pandemic only amplifies the need for a safe, efficient and accurate strategy for matching patients to their healthcare records. We look forward to working with our colleagues to remove the funding ban and find solutions that will address this important patient safety issue.”

In 2016, CHIME announced a National Patient ID Challenge, a $1 million crowdsourcing competition to incentivize the private sector to develop a fail-safe patient identifying solution that links patients to their medical records. But CHIME eventually suspended that challenge, noting that the competition did not achieve the results that were envisioned.