EHRA Calls For Nationwide Patient Matching

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

The Electronic Health Record Association recently sent a letter to U.S. Senators urging them to adopt a nationwide patient matching system, allowing patients’ data to follow them across state lines.

In order to make electronic health record data available and useful, the data they contain must be accessible no matter which state or region a patient is in. A letter to the US Senate, sent by the Electronic Health Record Association (EHRA) explains that only nationwide patient data matching will ensure timely, accurate, and efficient matching of patients to their data in other systems.

"EHRA urges Congress and the federal government to engage with EHR developers and the broader health IT community to help prepare for and ensure the best use of technology," the EHRA letter stated.

"This growth in EHR adoption and associated digitization, including new ecosystems of connected health IT that includes but extends beyond EHRs, will drive important innovations, including personalized medicine, population health management, data analytics and advanced payment models. Given the critical role that EHRs will play in enabling these capabilities, we urge Congress and the federal government to engage with EHR developers and the broader health IT community to help prepare for and ensure the best use of technology,” said the letter.

Healthcare IT News reports the EHRA also outlined four main points in an addendum to the letter:

1. What data sources should be made more broadly available?

Generated and captured data, personal health records, data from mobile and wearable medical devices and websites, captured data, payer data and more should be included; but all must meet HIPAA requirements.

2. How and in what form should the data be conveyed?

"In general, data should follow the patient, with priority given to where the information is needed to provide clinical services. In general, the patient should determine who and for what purposes the data can be used," EHRA said.

3. What reforms would help reduce the unnecessary fragmentation of healthcare data? What reforms would improve the accessibility and usability of healthcare data for consumers, payers and providers?

"We must continue to focus on standardizing common data elements used in health IT to reduce fragmentation in patients' health information and to more effectively support collaborative care delivery and data analytics." EHRA responded.

4. What barriers stand in the way of stakeholders using existing data sources more effectively and what reforms should be made to overcome these barriers?

EHRA again emphasized the need for a nationwide patient data matching strategy to better use these data sources.

“To improve patient safety and data interoperability, a consistent nationwide patient data matching strategy should be a priority,” EHRA told Senate committee members in response to their query regarding the availability and utility of healthcare data Health Data Management reports. “Patient identification that ensures accurate patient record matching across provider sites is a primary concern when aggregating patient information from multiple organizations. Error rates in existing technologies that manage patient identification are sufficiently high to cause concern about medical errors, redundant testing, and inefficiency.”