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Healthcare organizations must proactively address the challenges of patient matching, but new analysis of a survey published earlier this year reveals gaps in their processes for ensuring accurate patient identification.
In the survey, conducted by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), 45 percent of respondents said they did not know their duplicate medical record rate. What's more, while 72 percent said they work on mitigating duplicate records on a weekly basis, the researchers noted that there is a general lack of resources available to adequately correct duplicates.
Only 47 percent of respondents said they have a quality assurance step in their registration process. Meanwhile, just 4 percent said they use biometrics during registration, technology that could help prevent identity theft and fraud.
“HIM professionals must take steps to address ‘how’ organizations can accurately identify a person in a market where ‘perfect’ does not exist, nor will it exist even in the world of biometrics or the establishment of a national patient health identifier,” note the authors, who represent consulting firms, AHIMA itself and various provider organizations, among other entities.
They offer suggestions for getting ahead of the problem, including:
- Data governance to develop standard practices and have consistency in data collection. Long a priority for AHIMA, it refers to efforts at the departmental level to ensure data is accurate, trustworthy and used appropriately within the organization.
- Standardized policies on how patient data is collected at registration. AHIMA backs both biometrics and a voluntary national patient identifier.
- Standardization of primary and secondary data elements such as date of birth and current address (primary) and driver’s license number or place of birth (secondary).
- Monitoring the medical record duplicate rate. Beyond just how many duplicates are created, this should include location and time of day they’re created, as well as who is responsible for duplication.
- Education and re-education of staff.
- Measuring and assessing identified duplicates for trends.