HHS Releases Project US@ Draft Technical Specification Version 1.0 for Comment

Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) in collaboration with standards development organizations and a broad community of experts recently released the Project US@ (‘USA’) Draft Technical Specification Version 1.0 for public comment.

Project US@ was created to develop a unified, cross-standards, health care industrywide specification for representing patient addresses to improve patient matching.

“With a clear target and industrywide commitment, it’s been amazing to see how much progress has been made in six short months,” says Steve Posnack, deputy national coordinator for HIT. “We really appreciate everyone’s efforts thus far, and we encourage additional comment on the draft specification.”

The unified approach to Project US@ comes from a wide collaboration of industry stakeholders and standards development organizations including Health Level 7 (HL7), the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP), X12, and other members of the Health Standards Collaborative. The Project US@ Technical Workgroup that developed the draft specification included contributions from, for example, the United States Postal Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, developers of patient matching and other HIT applications, health information exchanges and networks, standards development organizations, and other subject matter experts.

The comment period for the draft specification will be open from July 1 through July 31, 2021, and will be released by NCPDP, X12, and HL7. The final version 1.0 of the Project US@ Technical Specification is expected to be released later in 2021.

In addition to submitting comments on the Project US@ specification, ONC encourages state agencies, public health organizations, payers, HIT developers, advocacy and research organizations, health care providers, and all other interested stakeholders to become Project US@ Partners. Partners will be expected to follow and support the project; encourage wider participation among colleagues; engage in the comment periods at NCPDP, X12, and HL7; and commit to adopting and implementing the final specification or updated standard.

More information can be found in the ONC Health IT Buzz Blog titled “Comment Period for the Draft Project US@ Specification to Open Soon” and on the Project US@ Confluence site.

Source: Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology