Industry group offers $1M for patient ID matching solution

A health IT industry group plans to award $1 million for the development of a solution that tackles a long-standing problem with matching patients to their electronic health records. The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) Jan. 19 launched its National Patient ID Challenge. The group will award the prize money in February 2017 to the developer of a system that ensures any hospital can accurately match patients with their electronic records. Mismatching health records can lead to serious medical errors, a researcher told Bloomberg BNA Jan. 19. The issue could derail federal efforts to reduce health spending through the use of health IT.