ONC Expands Health Equity Data Initiative to Standardize Patient Addresses

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced that it will incorporate recommendations from the HHS Equity Technical Assistance Center (ETAC) into the next iteration of its Project US@ initiative.

Project US@ follows a health-equity-by-design framework, which means that it is focused on improvements in data integrity and patient matching to advance health equity for all. Where a patient lives is a major social determinant of health (SDOH), impacting risk for chronic disease and life expectancy. The project was created to help healthcare professionals accurately measure and utilize this information.

The project was launched in 2021, and since then, collaborators have engaged in efforts to standardize patient addresses. Doing so enables providers to more accurately evaluate the social, economic, political, and physical environments that impact patient health, an ONC blog post notes. Address standardization also improves patient matching and medical record linking within and across health systems.

This year, Project US@ partnered with ETAC to help improve the project’s health equity efforts. ETAC equity experts reviewed Version 1.0 of the Project US@ Technical Specification and American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) companion guide. According to the blog post, the purpose of the review was to help ensure all communities benefit from Project US@ by centering equity in the project’s work and considering the needs of different communities.

Following the review, ETAC recommended that those involved in the project engage and collaborate with partners to “put the value of equity into action” and consider the value of address matching for those marginalized in healthcare. Additionally, ETAC recommends ensuring that the people providing their data are treated as the owners of their information and included in efforts to collect, analyze, interpret, and use the data. 

ONC and the American Health Information Management Association have also received feedback from consumer engagement subject matter experts and advocates to help them determine best practices to engage patients in data update and maintenance efforts so that high-quality, accurate data is available.

As a result of this feedback, the two are collaborating with federal agencies and industry partners to enhance the equitable collection and management of address data for American Indian and Alaska Native communities, active military and veteran communities, patients experiencing homelessness, and others.

ONC and AHIMA are also working with geolocation standards and data experts to support patients who may be experiencing homelessness or living in rural areas. These insights will also be used to bolster broader public and population health management efforts, the blog post states.

These additions and improvements are set to be included in Version 2.0 of the Project US@ Technical Specification and the AHIMA companion guide, which will be released next year.

The ONC announcement comes the same week that HHS awarded nearly $90M in American Rescue Plan funding to community health centers nationwide to enhance care in underserved communities via data modernization.

Last week, the importance of high-quality data for the advancement of health equity was further highlighted when researchers argued in a Health Affairs article that having knowledge of race and ethnicity, and including that data in healthcare algorithms, is necessary to combat algorithmic bias effectively, rather than taking a “race-blind” approach.