In the letter, addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Pew health IT project director Ben Moscovitch wrote that the country’s plans to reopen during the pandemic require effective contact tracing efforts and widespread distribution of an eventual vaccine. However, both rely on having the correct patient demographic data.
Public health officials at the front lines of contact tracing often lack necessary information to accurately identify and communicate with COVID-19 patients, according to the letter. Research shows that labs often don’t send phone numbers to public health officials, and when they are included, the numbers often belong to an ordering physician and not the patient.
Once a vaccine is developed, clinicians and public health officials will rely on immunization registries to track vaccination dosages. To do this, they must be able to look up an individual’s correct medical record; clinicians use demographic data, such as name, birth date and address, but if there was a typo inputting the record or change of address, the records will be difficult to locate.
How to address potential issues with national vaccination efforts, according to Pew:
1. Add more data elements. Congress should require that HHS ensure all demographic information including phone numbers, email addresses and previous addresses used for patient matching in EHRs should also be applied to lab systems and pandemic response registries.
2. Standardize data elements. While many immunization registries have switched over to standard USPS address format for patient matching, elements such as addresses and phone numbers may not be standardized across health IT systems. Research shows that standardizing specific data elements can improve match rates; particularly, the USPS address format can improve matching records by about 3 percent. Congress should encourage USPS to make its address standardization web tools available for free to healthcare so EHRs and other tech systems use the same standards and help support accurate patient match for COVID-19 vaccination efforts.
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