PHIMA e-Alert — July 22, 2022

Your Advocacy Makes a Difference!

During Patient ID Week, Pennsylvania was in the top 10 states using AHIMA’s contact your legislator in support. Our members also tweeted/shared using their hashtag #PatientIDNow to bring attention to the subject. Thank you for all your efforts in support of this!

AHIMA and the Patient ID Now coalition is advocating for the removal of Sec. 510 from the appropriations bill, which is a ban on the use of federal dollars for the creation of a unique patient identifier. The appropriations bill came out of committee having removed Sec. 510 for the fourth year in a row. The House has not passed this bill yet but they continue to work on passing FY 2023 Appropriations bills. House appropriations’ initial markup included approximately 25 million dollar increase for ONC with 5 million designated to support patient matching efforts.

The Senate has a separate process and we are looking for their version soon. The Senate Appropriations committee’s goal is to release the bills to the public by the end of July.

We’ll continue to update you as this progresses until the passage of the FY 2023 Appropriations bills.

Did you know?

• You can find links to find your legislator and the PA General Assembly session information on our website.
• There is also a Legislative Contact Form you can complete to let us know if you have contacted or met with your legislator.
• You can find AHIMA’s advocacy agenda and updates at https://ahima.org/advocacy/advocacy/.

We want to hear from you. Please let us know what issues are important to you and share those discussions on the PHIMA Access Community.
#advocacy #PHIMAAdvocacy