ONC releases data standard for patient addresses: 4 things to know

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology on Jan. 7 issued Version 1.0 of Project US@, its healthcare specification for representing patient addresses to improve patient matching.

Four things to know:

1. Standardizing patient addresses and improving patient matching will support safety, interoperability, decreased costs, privacy and security, according to a news release issued by the agency.
   
    
2. The effort came after studies, such as the 2019 study conducted by researchers at Bloomington-based Indiana University, concluded that using the U.S. Postal Service's address format can improve patient matching by up to 3 percent.
   
    
3. In 2021, the ONC partnered with industry experts to draft policies standardizing addresses in EHRs to promote patient matching. The agency received feedback and engagement from 18 standards development organizations, 17 health IT developers, 11 federal agencies, 10 healthcare providers, eight payers, seven state agencies and 12 research, advocacy and public health organizations.
   
    
4. The agency encourages providers, payers, public health organizations, state and federal agencies and other healthcare stakeholders to implement the specification.