MATCH IT Act of 2026

Key Points

• The bill responds to a widespread problem where patients are not reliably matched to their own medical records, sometimes because there is no shared national definition of what counts as an accurate match.
• Some hospital matching rates run as low as 80 percent, meaning roughly 1 in 5 patients may be missing pieces of their own medical history when they see a new provider.
• HHS must set a uniform definition of "patient match rate" and the National Coordinator must build a minimum data set aimed at reaching 99.9 percent matching accuracy, which then gets folded into national health IT interoperability standards.
• Medicare providers can opt into a new bonus payment measure for hitting at least a 90 percent accurate patient match rate, but the program is voluntary and providers who skip it won't be penalized.
• Congress estimates that misidentified patient records already cost the U.S. health care system more than $6.7 billion every year through denied claims and duplicate care, a cost this bill aims to shrink over time.