Pew Urges Congress to Promote Patient Matching in Electronic Health Records to Address COVID-19

The Pew Charitable Trusts sent a letter May 4 to the leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives urging them to support improved patient matching in electronic health records to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter highlighted how the use of additional demographic data elements such as phone numbers and email addresses, along with standardizing how existing elements such as mailing addresses are recorded, could improve match rates. Those elements, in turn, could assist with both contact tracing from new cases and a future vaccination campaign.