Coalition launches guide for national patient ID

PARCA eNews – April 30, 2021 – Patient ID Now, a coalition of healthcare organizations including the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, Inc. (HIMSS) published its strategy for developing a national patient identification system April 27, 2021.

The Framework for a National Strategy on Patient Identity: A proposed Blueprint to Improve Patient Identification and Matching is intended to guide the creation of a national system for patient identification to ensure patient matching and safety.
The coalition calls on the federal government to collaborate with healthcare organizations, state, local and tribal health authorities to create and implement a national patient ID system.

The publication comes on the heels of healthcare organizations grappling with a national pandemic that underscored the need for a better system of patient matching to ensure safety.

“Throughout the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgent need to address the issue of patient identification," said HIMSS President & CEO Hal Wolf in a press release. "The inability to accurately match patients with their records has severe patient safety and financial implications and impedes health information exchange. The framework lays the foundation for a national strategy that saves lives, while protecting a patient's choice and privacy rights.”

The coalition recommends that a national strategy:

• Provide guidance and standards on the calculation of error rates across health IT systems and organizations and identify minimum acceptable levels of accuracy
• Leverage public and private sector resources to address patient privacy, including materials from the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the principles of Self-Sovereign Identity, and Privacy by Design
• Define the minimum standardized data set needed for patient identification and matching

The goal of the Patient ID Now coalition is to achieve 100 percent match rate for patients The framework is intended to guide the development of universal Patient ID as a crucial step in modernizing healthcare in the U.S.