Source: The Pew Charitable Trusts
New policies and standards have not only made it easier for health care providers to access patient records more easily and accurately, but have also helped patients obtain their own information. Informed by research that Pew commissioned, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)—the federal agency that regulates EHRs—in 2021 updated the U.S. Core Data for Interoperability, a set of information that all EHR systems must be able to share with each other. Among the updates made in 2021, ONC included data on social determinants of health, which can help improve care for patients who face socioeconomic challenges. The research also supported ONC’s effort to standardize patient addresses, a critical piece of information in EHRs. Small differences in data—for example, using “Street” in one record and “St.” in another—can make it harder for health care providers to access patients’ medical histories from different facilities. Standardizing addresses can help health care providers match tens of thousands of additional patient records each day. Fortunately, ONC is officially standardizing addresses for EHRs through Project US@, an effort focused exclusively on this issue.