Bipartisan Representatives Introduce MATCH IT Act of 2024
CHICAGO – February 16, 2024 –Patient ID Now, a coalition of leading healthcare organizations, applauds the introduction of the Patient Matching and Transparency in Certified Health IT (Match IT) Act of 2024 by Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Representative Bill Foster (D-IL) in the US House of Representatives.
The MATCH IT Act would address the problem of patient misidentification within the healthcare ecosystem while improving patient safety and privacy. The bill would create an industry standard definition for the term “patient match rate” — to allow measurement of patient match rates across the healthcare system — and would improve standardization of patients’ demographic elements entered into certified health IT products to ensure patients are accurately matched with the correct medical record.
Patient misidentification within the US healthcare system has long threatened patient safety and privacy and is a driver of unnecessary costs to patients and providers. The inability of clinicians to ensure patients are accurately matched with their medical records has caused medical errors and even patient deaths. Patients often undergo unnecessary repeated medical tests because of the inability to ensure accurate matches to their medical records.
According to Black Book Research, the expense of repeated medical care due to duplicate records costs an average of $1,950 per patient inpatient stay and more than $1,700 per emergency department visit. Thirty-five percent of all denied claims result from inaccurate patient identification, costing the average hospital $2.5 million and the US healthcare system more than $6.7 billion annually.
“The American Health Information Management Association® (AHIMA®) commends Representatives Mike Kelly and Bill Foster for prioritizing patient safety and for continuing to champion the issue of patient matching,” said AHIMA President and Board Chair, Mona Calhoun, PhD, MS, Med, RHIA, FAHIMA. “The MATCH IT Act would help decrease rates of misidentification, improve patient privacy and patient care through a standardization of patient information, and allow records to be matched more accurately. AHIMA looks forward to the passage of this critical legislation.”
Here is what leaders of other coalition member organizations said about the recent legislation:
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About Patient ID Now
Patient ID Now is a coalition of healthcare organizations representing a wide range of healthcare stakeholders committed to advancing a nationwide strategy to address patient identification through legislation and regulations. Founding members include the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, Inc. (HIMSS), and Intermountain Health.
About AHIMA
AHIMA is a global nonprofit association of health information (HI) professionals with more than 67,000 members and more than 100,000 credentials in the field. The AHIMA mission of empowering people to impact health®drives our members and credentialed HI professionals to ensure that health information is accurate, complete, and available to patients and providers. Our leaders work at the intersection of healthcare, technology, and business and are found in data integrity and information privacy job functions worldwide. To learn more about AHIMA and the health information profession, visit ahima.org.
Contact:
Dawn Glossa
(312) 233-1076
dawn.glossa@ahima.org