It’s Time to Get Patient Addresses Straight

Healthcare IT Today March 29, 2024
Andy Oram

Amazing how a trivial detail such as a postal address can cause so many headaches and so much waste. But in health care, a lack of address standardization is a major barrier to important aspects of care, including the sharing of patient records demanded by our trend to value-based care.

Part of the problem is provider laziness, because the US postal service offers a standard addressing process called CASS, and several services draw on it to ensure the correct use of abbreviations, ZIP codes, and other elements of the address. But many providers just enter into the databases and EHRs whatever the patient put down on a form during intake.

But each system also has its own fields for storing...

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