AHIMA 2023 Advocacy Summit Update

Melissa Zavadil and Bryce Miller, ArHIMA’s President and President-Elect respectively, represented Arkansas as AHIMA members from 40 states and Puerto Rico held 169 meetings on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, as part of the 2023 AHIMA Advocacy Summit March 20-21. AHIMA members urged their members of Congress to support policies on patient identification and social determinants of health to improve healthcare in the US. Summit participants conveyed two priority messages or “asks” to Congress. First, remove a legislative barrier that has been blocking the development and use of a national unique patient identifier since 1999. Second, consider introducing legislation to provide federal funding to support workforce training on the collection, coding, and use of social determinants of health (SDOH) data to improve health at the individual and population level.