An End-to-End Approach to Patient Data Integrity
By Lora Hefton, Executive Vice President, Harris Data Integrity Solutions
From cybersecurity threats and patient self-registration to increased merger activity and the ongoing quest for a 1% maximum duplicate rate, maintaining the integrity of patient data is more complicated than ever. To achieve a secure, accurate and duplicate-free MPI/EMPI requires a multi-pronged approach that protects data from the point it enters the system and ensures it remains pristine with every touch along the way.
A costly problem
According to AHIMA, hospitals have an average duplicate record rate of 5%-10%. This figure likely underestimates the true scope of the problem, given one recent study that put the duplicate rate at 18%. Couple high duplicate rates with estimates that 1 in 5 records are incomplete – including an estimated 40% of demographic data missing from commercial laboratory test feeds for COVID-19 – and what appears on the surface to be a relatively innocuous problems morphs into something much more serious.
In its 2020 white paper “A Realistic Approach to Achieving a 1% Duplicate Record Error Rate,” AHIMA noted that duplicates contribute to misidentification errors that drive administrative inefficiencies, serious injuries, and death. Missing data also hampered pandemic mitigation efforts, hindering contact tracing, vaccination, and public health reporting efforts.
The financial toll is equally serious; misidentification costs the average healthcare facility $17.4 million per year in denied claims and lost revenue. Further, while progress is being make on both fronts, the lack of patient identification standards and a unique patient identifier exacerbate the overall problem.
End-to-end protection
A growing number of hospitals and health systems are turning to technology to help address those patient data integrity issues that are within their control. For example, a study by Johns Hopkins Hospital found that 92% of errors resulting in the creation of duplicate records over the course of a year take place at registration – errors that can be prevented by deploying modernized patient identification technologies that provide important protections against front-end contamination of the MPI/EMPI.
In the case of mergers and acquisitions, which AHIMA reports can boost duplicate rates to 20%, leveraging technology to conduct clean-ups before data is merged helps eliminate the patient misidentification and safety issues created by contaminating the now-shared MPI/EMPI with “dirty” data. Solutions that provide ongoing monitoring for newly created duplicates ensure they can be eradicated before contaminating downstream systems – something that is especially important with the uptick in patient self-registration for telehealth visits and COVID-19 vaccinations and testing.
Thus, to provide end-to-end protection of a facility’s MPI/EMPI, what is needed is a suite of solutions that guards against creation of new duplicate records at the point of registration and maintains a pristine MPI/EMPI environment, all while supporting rapid and accurate patient identification. This need was the driving force behind the recent partnership between Harris Data Integrity Solutions – powered by Just Associates and QuadraMed – and RightPatient.
The partnership enables RightPatient’s HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based photo biometric patient identification to be integrated with Harris Data Integrity Solutions’ CuraMatch™ Automated Duplicate Resolution, SmartIX™ Enterprise Master Patient Index and a state-of-the-art suite of identity management services for customized one-time and ongoing MPI clean-up. Combined, they ensure accurate patient identification at any point along the care continuum while protecting medical records against unauthorized access, ransomware attacks and other data breaches – securing patient information and minimizing the ongoing cost of maintaining quality patient data.
How it works
The Harris Data Integrity Solutions-RightPatient suite addresses and resolves patient misidentification issues beginning with the registration process by leveraging RightPatient biometrics to collect photos along with patient information to create the patient record within the MPI. That data within the Harris SmartIX™ EMPI Platform is analyzed and cleaned before going back to the RightPatient Integrity Platform along with a copy of the patients’ photos and corresponding medical record numbers (MRNs).
Meanwhile, Harris Data Integrity’s CuraMatch™ runs continuously in the background to detect any new duplicates using HIM workflow and dashboard tools that help identify more true duplicates than systems relying on basic and intermediate patient matching algorithms.
This approach to MPI/EMPI protection works in multiple environments. For example, during on-site registration, the patient’s photo is taken and attached to their unique medical record. During remote registrations, the patient is sent a text message with links to take and submit a selfie and photo of their driver’s license, which the system uses to search for any matches before assigning biometric credentials to new patients.
When these end-to-end solutions are integrated into the EHR, healthcare organizations can prevent duplicate record creation and ensure remote patient photo capture and authentication during registration and provide clean patient data across the care continuum. The result is improved patient safety, improved interoperability, reduced misidentification-related medical errors, fewer write-offs and denied claims and reduced cybersecurity threat risks.
Ultimately, an end-to-end approach to EMPI/MPI management and patient identification addresses one of healthcare’s most intractable problems by reducing the volume of potential duplicate medical records while securing patient information and minimizing the ongoing cost of maintaining quality patient data.