Patient matching advocates continue to tout proposed federal law
Proponents say the MATCH IT Act will enable federal agencies to lead efforts to automate how records are linked to patients.
Challenges surrounding ensuring that the electronic records of a patient always match up with the right person have confounded the industry for years.
The inability to always correctly match records to patients with 100 percent certainty poses both patient safety risks and unavoidable costs in manually clearing up confusion and sorting out identities.
Now, there’s renewed interest in federal legislation that may provide capabilities for automating patient matching, while at the same time alleviating long-time concerns about perceived risks surrounding the use of patient identifiers.
Solving the patient matching process at long last will be important for the industry for achieving efficiency and accuracy And it will become even more important as more patient-generated data is interconnected with patient records, and as organizations seek to map in capabilities from artificial intelligence and make progress on personalized medicine.
What’s made it difficult
Even as early electronic health records systems began to emerge in the 1990s, it was clear that moving to digital records could inject problems in matching patients to records.
However, efforts to move to unique patient identifiers provoked privacy fears, especially any thought that identifiers would in some way be based on individuals’ Social Security numbers. These privacy concerns resulted in 1999 legislation that specifically banned federal funding to create a unique patient identifier. That’s long been seen as an impediment that leaves providers and facilities struggling to match patient records.
With the adoption of the HITECH Act in 2009, implementation of EHR systems skyrocketed among provider organizations, as did rising requirements for those systems to be able to exchange patient data and enable patient access to medical records. However, growing capabilities underscored the need for improvements in patient matching capabilities.
Getting federal involvement
That’s sparked a round of industry efforts to seek ways to better achieve patient matching. Now, there’s growing momentum surrounding proposed federal legislation that would provide a range of ways to bring patients together with their own records.
Called the Patient Matching and Transparency in Certified Health IT (MATCH IT) Act of 2025 (H.R. 2002), the bill was introduced by Reps. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and Bill Foster (D-Ill.) It has 11 congressional cosponsors from both sides of the political aisle.
From the industry side, a variety of professional organizations and health systems are championing the initiative, including the Patient ID Now coalition, a group that advocates for a national solution to patient matching that has drawn support from more than 50 organizations that represent every aspect of healthcare. Among industry associations backing MATCH IT are AHIMA, CHIME, HIMSS, DirectTrust and Civitas Network for Health, as well as others.
Key requirements
As proposed, the bill requires the Dept. of Health and Human Services “to establish a definition and standards for patient matching (i.e., the process of accurately matching patients with their medical records, including when records are exchanged between health care providers).”
As part of the mandate, HHS would be tasked with developing a minimum data set for technology standards to increase patient matching, as well as incentives for patient matching under Medicare.
In addition to developing a uniform definition and standards for patient matching, HHS would get the responsibility of tracking “patient match rates and document improvement over time.”
The definition and standards “must account for certain situations, including duplicate records and multiple matches,” instances that are particularly challenging for provider and payer organizations alike.
The bill also requires the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) “to adopt a minimum data set to help healthcare providers or health information systems achieve a patient match rate of 99.9 percent.” The minimum data set and related standards would be incorporated into the U.S. Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) and the Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program.
HR 2002 also looks to implement a rewards plan to encourage industry buy-in for the effort. It would task the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services with establishing a voluntary bonus measure within the Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program to reward healthcare providers with a patient match rate exceeding a certain percentage to receive a payment adjustment.
Growing momentum
A CHIME document provides a synopsis of information about HR 2002.
CHIME, AHIMA and Patient ID Now are continuing to push aggressively for the legislation, planning a May 13 congressional briefing intended to educate “congressional staff on the importance of patient matching and how Congress can act to improve patient safety, privacy and interoperability within the healthcare system.”
Information on the briefing, which is in-person in Washington only, can be obtained by contacting Cassie Ballard, CHIME’s director of congressional affairs.
Fred Bazzoli is the Editor in Chief of Health Data Management.