HIMSS to Congress: Nationwide patient identifier needed

The Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) submitted three recommendations to Congressional leaders during the HIMSS 10th Annual Policy Summit last week in Washington, D.C., and emphasized the need for a nationwide patient identifier.

The HIMSS Asks Task Force and Public Policy Committee requested that Congress make three recommendations its top priorities:

1. Congress should continue its bipartisan support for health IT. HIMSS said that health IT is essential to achieving healthcare delivery and payment reforms, including the timely, accurate collection and dissemination of patient information in a privacy-protected and secure manner.
2. Congress should also preserve investments being made in the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Meaningful Use Incentive Program as a key part of the healthcare transformation process. HIMSS said the program serves an important role in healthcare transformation efforts started by former President George W. Bush and continued by President Barack Obama. The program enables further health IT investments, which are essential to transforming the healthcare delivery system, including rewards for quality and efficiency of care and payment reform.
3. To ensure that a constituent is the right person getting the right care at the right time, HIMSS recommended that Congress support the development of a national patient identifier and lifting current statutory prohibitions.

One of the largest unresolved issues in the safe and secure exchange of health information is the need for a nationwide patient identifier that allows accurate, timely and efficient matching of patients with their healthcare data. Congress has placed a priority on the healthcare community adoption of interoperable EHRs and other health IT, and increased health information exchange (HIE) capabilities.

Furthermore, HIMSS said that in 1996, Congress created HIPAA, mandating that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) address the need for a unique individual healthcare identifier. However, a 1999 Omnibus Appropriations Act prohibits the use of federal funds to “promulgate or adopt any final standard… for a unique health identifier for an individual until legislation is enacted specifically approving the standard,” HIMSS said. “This language, which has been carried forward in every Labor Appropriations bill since 1996, is an impediment to the adoption of EHRs and HIEs.”

HIMSS said a national-level patient identity solution does not mean a national identity number or card. “Instead, technological advances allow for more sophisticated solutions to patient identity and privacy controls, including patient consent, voluntary patient identifiers, metadata identification tagging, access credentialing and sophisticated algorithms,” HIMSS added, encouraging Congress to reconsider its prohibition and take steps that could lead to a nationwide standard that facilitates health information exchange, optimizes patient-data matching, and enhances patient safety, privacy and security.