ONC Releases Health IT Specification for Patient Matching
ONC collaborated with members of the health IT community to create a technical specification that aims to enhance patient matching.
In collaboration with standards development organizations (SDOs) and health IT stakeholders, ONC has released the Project US@ (‘Project USA’) Technical Specification Final Version 1.0 which aims to improve patient matching through data standards.
As more and more healthcare organizations exchange patient health data, ensuring accurate patient matching is key for patient safety.
Project US@ is a unified, cross-standards specification that could be used across the care continuum for representing patient addresses (mailing, physical, and billing, etc.).
ONC officials encouraged payers, state and federal agencies, public health organizations, health IT developers, research organizations, healthcare providers, and all other interested stakeholders to consider implementing the final specification.
“A standardized patient address might seem like a small thing, but that’s precisely why this work was important,” Steve Posnack, deputy national coordinator for health IT, noted in a public statement. “Improving the accuracy and consistency of addresses will have a big impact if implemented at scale.”
“I am grateful to the SDOs, federal partners, and health IT stakeholders who all joined in to rapidly develop this new specification,” Posnack added.
To guide stakeholders on best practices of Project US@ adoption, the American Health Information Management Association developed The Project US@ Companion Guide in collaboration with ONC.
“Among other facets, the AHIMA Companion Guide focuses on identifying, recording, and verifying patient addresses at point of registration to support data governance and quality improvement,” Steven Posnack and Carmen Smiley wrote in a HealthITBuzz blog post.
ONC released a draft Technical Specification Version 1.0 for comment in June 2021 and SDO’s collected feedback during a 30-day comment period in July 2021. ONC received nearly 130 comments from stakeholders and the public which helped inform the Final Version 1.0.
“This new “tech spec” will advance the healthcare industry’s proficiency in recording and managing accurate and consistently formatted patient addresses and support more efficient patient matching and record linkage,” Posnack and Smiley noted.
The ONC officials noted that the Project US@ community’s work will continue in 2022 with a focus on geolocation data, tribal communities, and other specifics.