The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives address the need for patient identification, quality measurements and more in recent recommendations to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
The committee has been meeting with industry professionals to devise ways to improve electronic health records and sharing of health information.
In its comments, CHIME says that the biggest challenge to the secure exchange of heath data is deficit of a patient identity matching strategy. Without this, "patient data matching errors and mismatches will become exponentially more problematic and dangerous," President and CEO Russell Branzell and board chair Charles Christian write.
The group also maligns lack of a unified strategy for quality measure reporting, and calls on the committee to make that a priority. Letter (.pdf)