Lawmakers reintroduce MATCH IT Act for patient matching

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) have reintroduced the Patient Matching and Transparency in Certified Health IT (MATCH IT) Act of 2025, cosponsored by Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA).

First introduced last year, the MATCH IT Act aims to address the problem of patient misidentification across the healthcare continuum.

The bipartisan legislation would create an industry standard definition for the term "patient match rate" to measure patient match rates across the healthcare system. Additionally, the law aims improve the standardization of patients' demographic elements across certified health IT products to ensure patient matching across disparate systems.

Patient misidentification within the healthcare system has major implications for patient safety and results in unnecessary costs to patients and providers.

The inability of clinicians to ensure accurate patient matching with EHR data has caused medical errors and, in some cases, death. To prevent these medical errors, clinicians often order duplicative testing to ensure prior results are correct, adding unnecessary costs. Some studies put the cost of duplicate medical records and mismatched data at $1,950 per patient per inpatient stay.

Additionally, according to Black Book Research, more than one in three claim denials result from inaccurate patient matching, costing the average hospital $2.5 million and the U.S. healthcare system more than $6.7 billion annually.

Patient ID Now, a coalition of healthcare organizations committed to advancing a nationwide strategy to improve patient identification, has endorsed the bipartisan legislation.

Founding members of the coalition include AHIMA, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), HIMSS and Intermountain Health.

"The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) commends Representatives Mike Kelly and Bill Foster for once again leading the charge to protect patient safety and improve patient matching," said Maria Caban Alizondo, PhD, RHIT, FAHIMA, AHIMA president and board chair, in a press release.

"The MATCH IT Act would decrease rates of patient misidentification, improve patient privacy and care and bring down costs within the healthcare ecosystem associated with mismatched patient records," Alizondo added. "AHIMA looks forward to the passage of this critical legislation."

Hannah Nelson has been covering news related to health information technology and health data interoperability since 2020.