A METHOD FOR LINKING DE-IDENTIFIED PATIENTS USING ENCRYPTED AND UNENCRYPTED DEMOGRAPHIC AND HEALTHCARE INFORMATION FROM MULTIPLE DATA SOURCES

摘要

A longitudinal database of de-identified patient healthcare transaction datarecords linked by longitudinal linking tags (IDs) is provided. A newhealthcare transaction data record, which may include alphanumericidentification code attributes, third party attributes and/or demographicattributes, is assigned an linking ID associated with a previous healthcaretransaction data record based upon successful comparison of either adesignated set of identification code attributes or a designated set ofdemographic attributes. The longitudinal data base is assembled by a matchingprocess in which a new data record is compared level by level with previoushealthcare transaction data records through a hierarchy of a first series ofmatching levels each defined by a designated set of alphanumericidentification code attributes and a second series of matching levels eachdefined by a designated set of attributes including demographic attributes andthen assigned the ID associated with a successfully matched reference datarecord.