The Sequoia Project https://sequoiaproject.org along with a stakeholder workgroup has examined and revised best practices for patient matching occurring between health information exchange partners. The document titled “A Framework for Cross-Organizational Patient Identity Management 2018” features a matching maturity model, a detailed case study, and specific practices for a national patient matching framework.
Sequoia convened the Patient Identity Management Workgroup which was charged with developing final recommendations for improved patient identity management. In addition, to developing the draft guidance, the workgroup incorporated new proposals to support the unique patient identifier challenges of pediatrics.
There is currently no widely employed naming convention for newborns, specifically for babies that are patients who have not yet received their legal name and still have a temporary name. This happens because babies do not have social security numbers or other government assigned identification at the time of birth. This issue is further complicated with multiple births such as triplets and the need for in-utero procedures.
“This paper provides a roadmap for advancing our national patient matching strategy. We hope to see organizations adopt these minimal practices and maturity model for patient matching with their external health information exchange partners,” said Eric Heflin, Chief Technology Officer for The Sequoia project and Lead Author of the whitepaper.
He suggests, “If we can standardize, in practice, how EMRs and HIOs leverage existing standards, we will increase patient match rates dramatically even in the absence of having a national unique patient identifier.”
Go to https://sequoiaproject.org/framework-for-cross-organizational-patient-identity-matching for the full report or go to The Sequoia Project website at https://sequoiaproject.org.