April 22, 2024
| The Honorable Patty Murray, Chair | The Honorable Susan Collins, Vice Chair |
| Senate Committee on Appropriations | Senate Committee on Appropriations |
| 154 Russell Senate Office Building | 413 Dirksen Senate Office Building |
| Washington, DC 20510 | Washington, DC 20510 |
| The Honorable Tammy Baldwin, Chair | The Honorable Shelley Moore Capito, Ranking Member |
| Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies | Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies |
| Senate Committee on Appropriations | Senate Committee on Appropriations |
| 141 Hart Senate Office Building | 172 Russell Senate Office Building |
| Washington, DC 20510 | Washington, DC 20510 |
Dear Chair Murray, Vice Chair Collins, Chair Baldwin, and Ranking Member Capito,
On behalf of the undersigned organizations, we urge you to reject the inclusion of outdated rider language in Section 510 of the Fiscal Year 2025 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) Appropriations bill that prohibits the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from spending any federal dollars to promulgate or adopt a national unique patient health identifier standard.
For over 25 years, innovation and industry progress has been stifled due to a narrow interpretation of this language, included in Labor-HHS bills since FY1999. Without the ability of clinicians to correctly connect a patient with their medical record, lives have been lost and medical errors have needlessly occurred. These are situations that could have been avoided had patients been able to be accurately identified and matched with their records. This problem is so dire that one of the nation’s leading patient safety organizations, the ECRI Institute, named patient misidentification among the top ten threats to patient safety.
The lack of a national strategy on patient identification also causes financial burdens to patients, clinicians, and institutions. The expense of repeated medical care due to duplicate records costs an average of $1,950 per patient inpatient stay, and over $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 healthcare system over $6.7 billion annually. In a recent survey by the Patient ID Now coalition, 72% of respondents agreed that there are delays in billing and reimbursement due to inaccurate patient information, and 70% indicated that patients undergo or receive duplicative or unnecessary testing or services due to difficulties in managing patient identities.
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