NPI movement gains ground

The debate over the national patient identifier (NPI) is reappearing. A Modern Healthcare article recounts the saga that began with the 1996 HIPAA legislation and was put on hold in 1998. Most vendors are using some type of probabilistic matching to identify patients--a technique using names, birth-dates, zip codes, etc. But several vendors don't think that solution works. Neal Patterson of Cerner has been outspoken about the need for a real NPI. Now RAND, which has done work on healthcare IT sponsored by Cerner before, is looking at the economics of using an NPI versus other techniques. Meanwhile, the Markle Foundation spent a year looking at the NPI a few years back and largely decided that it was unworkable. Of course in a world of identity theft, Congress may be very unwilling to look at the NPI issue again.

- read this article from Modern Healthcare