With a Hopeful Eye on Washington, Providers Continue Work on Patient-Matching Solutions

摘要

In June 2019 the U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal a 21-year ban on funding for a national patient identifier. For many who work in the health information management space, this development was long overdue. Health systems continue to struggle to link patients to the right record on every visit, and attempting to match records between hospitals can fail up to half the time, which harms patients, wrote Shaun Grannis, M.D., John Halamka, M.D., and Ben Moscovitch in a July STAT opinion piece. "The administrative costs for fixing mismatched and duplicate records can be enormous. The Mayo Clinic, for example, found that it cost at least $1,200 to untangle each mismatch and correct a patient's record," they added. Yet even though the House vote signals that change may be in the offing, in the immediate future health systems and health information exchanges still have to work through their patient-matching headaches for themselves. One large Texas-based organization reportedly has nearly 2,500 patients with the name Maria Garcia, and approximately 200 had the same birthdate. Healthcare Innovation spoke with several executives about their efforts to address patient matching in clinical and public health settings.