Modern Healthcare January 27, 2020
While a national patient identifier could help ease patient-matching woes among providers, it’s not the ultimate solution, experts shared during the 2020 annual meeting of HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
“We know unique identifiers would be helpful, but not a panacea,” said Ben Moscovitch, project director for health IT at the Pew Charitable Trusts, during a panel discussion on unique patient identifiers Monday. “It would be used in addition to the other demographic data already in use today for matching.”
For decades, Congress has prohibited HHS from allocating funds for developing a national patient identifier—which would give patients permanent, unique identification numbers—citing issues related to privacy and security. But the discussion has been reopened in...