Illinois General Assembly - Full Text of SJR0057

SJ0057 LRB104 21146 LAW 35472 r

SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, Illinois Health Information Management Association (ILHIMA) represents health information management (HIM) professionals across the State who work at the intersection of healthcare delivery, data quality, privacy, and compliance in hospitals, physician practices, public health, payer organizations, and health technology companies; and

WHEREAS, ILHIMA members are directly involved in patient identification, record integrity, and information governance across the healthcare continuum; in their daily work, HIM professionals are responsible for safeguarding the accuracy, privacy, security, and integrity of health information that supports patient care and informed policy decisions; and

WHEREAS, As an organization, ILHIMA supports a collaborative, research-based approach that brings together stakeholders from healthcare organizations, public health, technology vendors, payers, and education; and

WHEREAS, Accurate patient identification is foundational to safe, high-quality, and efficient healthcare; and

WHEREAS, In Illinois, healthcare organizations continue to experience challenges related to patient matching across disparate systems, settings, and data sources, and these challenges can contribute to duplicate records, incomplete information, administrative burden, and potential patient safety risks; and

WHEREAS, It is imperative that such issues be studied across Illinois healthcare and related sectors in order to ensure more accurate patient identification and data integrity, and ILHIMA would be the most capable and competent to handle such an undertaking; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE ONE HUNDRED FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES CONCURRING HEREIN, that we urge Illinois Health Information Management Association (ILHIMA) to form a working group to evaluate the following:

(1) Patient identity challenges across care settings, including acute care, ambulatory, long-term care, public health, and others;

(2) Data quality issues that impact matching accuracy, including data capture, standardization, and governance;

(3) Operational, workflow, and policy factors influencing patient identification;

(4) Interoperability and information exchange considerations;

(5) Workforce, education, and best-practice gaps; and

(6) Existing state and federal initiatives related to patient identity; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge this working group to focus on drafting a comprehensive set of recommendations that includes potential legislative suggestions designed to improve and expand on the aforementioned items for evaluation in relation to patient identity, data quality, privacy, and information governance; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we request the working group's findings and recommendations be presented to the Illinois General Assembly to help inform legislative efforts aimed at better supporting the needs of ILHIMA and patients while ensuring patient safety, privacy, and data integrity.