An article appearing in the newsletter “The Pulse” http://us1.campaign-archive1.com published by the Federal Health Architecture www.healthit.gov, points out how matching EHRs to the correct person becomes increasingly complicated as organizations share records electronically using different systems in a society where patients seek care in many healthcare settings.
Many healthcare organizations use multiple systems for clinical, administrative, claims, and specialty services. This can lead to an increased chance of identity errors when matching patient records.
So far, healthcare systems have managed this function internally with health information management professionals doing manual clean up but this effort is not sustainable or timely enough for the large-scale interoperability required.
The Office of the National Coordinator for HIT www.healthit.gov and HIMSS www.himss.org are partnering to develop a strategy to improve consistent patient data matching in healthcare. The first step will be to establish a baseline of definitions and measures. The next step will be to establish a framework where technology matching performances can be documented and industry will be able to measure data quality consistently.
Matching rates from many healthcare organizations is not always monitored, which makes process improvements nearly impossible. This project plans to create a prototype of a patient match assessment tool.
This will provide a framework for healthcare organizations to expand upon and assess their matching performance. The use of this tool will provide a means by which various settings are measured matching performance in a common manner.
ONC is working with a group of stakeholders, primarily from the clinical space, representing hospitals, HIEs, Regional Extension Centers, and ACOs. The plan is to work with the stakeholders to determine the scope of the initial tool development.
An early concept for the tool is that it will contain three main components that will use patient matching technology performance measures, data quality measures, and process proficiency measures.
ONC is seeking partners that will test the patient matching assessment tool, assist with scoping the right use cases, and develop a roadmap in which this approach can be scaled and grow to include clinical research and patient reported data.
For more information, email Catherine Costa at Catherine.costs@hhs.gov or call 202-550-2847.