Reps. Kelly, Foster introduce MATCH IT Act to streamline Americans' health care

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, U.S. Reps. Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Bill Foster (D-IL) introduced the Patient Matching and Transparency in Certified Health IT (MATCH IT) Act of 2024, bipartisan legislation that would improve patient safety and privacy by decreasing patient misidentification and promoting interoperability, all without increasing burdens to providers and health systems. This would improve standardization of patients’ demographic elements entered into certified health IT products, and create an anonymous, voluntary system to measure patient match rates across the healthcare ecosystem.

In previous Congressional sessions, Reps. Kelly and Foster introduced amendments similar to the MATCH IT Act, which were passed by voice vote in the House of Representatives.

You can read the full bill HERE.

"For too long, patient misidentification has put Americans within the U.S. health care system at risk. Patient matching errors has led to unnecessary expenses, medical mistakes, and even patient deaths,” said Rep. Kelly. “This bipartisan legislation works to improve interoperability between health care systems and decrease these fixable matching errors, all while protecting patient privacy. I want to thank Rep. Foster for joining me on this critical legislation that will improve both patient care and patient outcomes.”

"I’m proud to introduce this legislation with Congressman Kelly that would help to decrease instances of patient misidentification that cause thousands of unnecessary deaths every year in the United States," said Rep. Foster. "This legislation would promote interoperability of patient matching systems, which would protect patients and decrease burdens on health care providers,” said Congressman Foster. “I also look forward to continuing to work with Congressman Kelly to eliminate barriers to unique patient identifiers so we can prevent medical errors and ensure patients receive the correct treatment.”

BACKGROUND

Patient misidentification within the U.S. health care system has long been a threat to patient safety, patient privacy, and a driver of unnecessary costs to patients and providers. The inability of clinicians to ensure patients are accurately matched with their medical record has caused medical errors, and even patient deaths. Patient misidentification has been named a recurrent patient safety challenge in multiple years by ECRI. Patients must undergo unnecessary repeated medical tests because of the inability to ensure accurate matches to their medical record. Further, the expense of repeated medical care due to duplicate records costs an average of $1,950 per patient inpatient stay, and more than $1,700 per emergency department visit. Thirty-five percent of all denied claims result from inaccurate patient identification, costing the average hospital $2.5 million and the US health care system more than $6.7 billion annually.

The current system of matching patients to their records also leads to increased privacy violations. Overlaid records, caused by merging multiple patients’ data into one medical record, may result in unauthorized disclosures under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), as well as the risk of a patient receiving treatment for another patient’s condition.

The MATCH It Act would create an industry standard definition for the term "patient match rate."

WHAT THEY'RE SAYING

“The American Health Information Management Association® (AHIMA®) commends Representatives Mike Kelly and Bill Foster for prioritizing patient safety and for continuing to champion the issue of patient matching,” said AHIMA President and Board Chair, Mona Calhoun, PhD, MS, Med, RHIA, FAHIMA. “The MATCH IT Act would help decrease rates of misidentification, improve patient privacy and patient care through a standardization of patient information, and allow records to be matched more accurately. AHIMA looks forward to the passage of this critical legislation.”

"On behalf of our members, which include chief information officers and other digital health leaders from hospitals and healthcare providers across the globe, we appreciate the leadership of Representatives Mike Kelly and Bill Foster in introducing the MATCH IT Act. This bill will make a meaningful impact on patient misidentification through the standardization of patient information and builds off important work by CHIME and the other organizations in the Patient ID Now coalition to improve patient matching,” saidCassie Ballard, Director of Congressional Affairs, CHIME.

“HIMSS is a proud supporter of the MATCH IT Act, which would improve patient safety and enhance care coordination by tackling a critical issue affecting our healthcare ecosystem - patient misidentification,” said HIMSS President & CEO Hal Wolf. “We applaud Representatives Mike Kelly and Bill Foster for their continued leadership on this important issue and urge Congress to prioritize patient safety by passing this important legislation.”

“[T]his legislation will address our nation’s current inability to consistently and accurately identify patients to their health records. Improved standardization of patient demographic data will lead to more accurate patient matching, which in turn will produce advances in patient safety, more complete information for clinical care, and cost savings from reducing the need for repeated medical care, among other benefits. Intermountain Health salutes long-time congressional champions on patient matching, Representatives Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania and Bill Foster of Illinois," said Craig Richardville, MBA, CHCIO, Chief Digital and Information Officer at Intermountain Health.

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