Stakeholder Letter to House Appropriators on UPI Ban

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May 2, 2025

The Honorable Tom Cole, Chair

House Committee on Appropriations

2207 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Rosa DeLauro, Ranking Member

House Committee on Appropriations; and Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies

2413 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Robert Aderholt, Chairman

Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies House Committee on Appropriations

272 Cannon House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Cole, Ranking Member DeLauro, and Chairman Aderholt,

On behalf of the undersigned organizations, we urge you to reject the inclusion of outdated rider language in Section 510 of the Fiscal Year 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) Appropriations bill that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 more than 25 years, innovation and industry progress has been stifled due to a narrow interpretation of this language, included in Labor-HHS bills since FY99. 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.

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 more than $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 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.

The inclusion of Section 510 and lack of a national strategy on patient identification contributes to serious patient privacy concerns within the health system. Right now, the healthcare system faces an “inverse” privacy problem – individuals must repeatedly disclose a significant amount of individually identifiable information to each healthcare provider they see in an attempt to achieve an accurate match of the patient to their medical record. Even more worrying for patients is the risk of overlays – i.e., the merging of multiple patients’ data into one medical record, causing a patient to have access to another patient’s health information, which could result in an unauthorized disclosure under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), or even worse, a patient receiving treatment for another patient’s disease.

Removing Section 510 from the Labor-HHS appropriations bill will provide HHS the ability to evaluate a range of patient identification solutions and enable it to work with the private sector to explore potential challenges and identify a complete national strategy around patient identification and matching that protects patient privacy and is cost-effective, scalable, and secure.

While Congress prioritized interoperability and digital data exchange in the 21st Century Cures Act and other legislation, progress toward these national priorities is inhibited by patient matching and identification issues. Removing the ban that is currently preventing appropriate health information flow would assist in transitioning the US to a healthcare delivery system that focuses on high value, cost-effective, and patient-centered care.

For four fiscal years (FY20-23), the US House of Representatives removed the ban from the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill in a bipartisan manner. We urge the Committee to continue the bipartisan support for repeal in Congress and ensure that Section 510, the funding ban on a national unique health identifier, is NOT included in the FY26 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill.

We appreciate your consideration, and we look forward to working with you to pursue an appropriate solution to enable accurate patient identification and matching in our nation’s healthcare systems.

Please see the attached PDF for full list of organizational signatories.