Becker's Hospital Review

64 Executive Briefing Reality Check: Why it is Time to Address the Patient Identification Process at the Source to Stop Bleeding Money and Putting Patients at Risk P atient identification errors jeopardize patient safety and result in costly and long-lasting ramifications for pro- viders. The Joint Commission lists improving patient identification as its top national safety goal for hospitals, and, in its 2014 Patient Identification and Matching Final Report, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT urged provid- ers to adopt technological solutions to help reduce the number of patient misidentifications. Effective technologies can and should address patient identification problems, but many healthcare providers are still seeking the right technological solutions. Providers are incen- tivized to use electronic medical record-keeping systems, but no ubiquitous, interoperable records platform exists. Providers are making significant investments in EMR systems, sometimes spending millions on implementations, yet methods for gather- ing patient information remain imprecise. Many facilities still rely on rudimentary oral registration pro- cesses to enter patients' information into sophisticated elec- tronic systems — relying on judgement at the point of registra- tion to pull the right medical record for the patient checking in. Vocally relaying and manually entering private patient identifi- cation information leaves ample room for error by the patient, the registration desk or the computer system itself. Whether unintentional (consider the patient who has a new record cre- ated since the registrar did not think to associate them with a previous record under a maiden name) or intentional (consider the patient who is using a relative's insurance card fraudulently to get care), mistakes made in the registration process contrib- ute to serious lapses in patient safety, costly record duplication and security concerns. At the source, patient identification errors exist because most healthcare organizations have yet to find an effective way to uniquely identify each patient at the point of care. To ad- dress this issue, leading healthcare organizations are deploying a proven patient identification solution that uses innovative biometric technology to accurately and securely identify each patient and integrate with providers' existing patient record databases. Following an easy and secure enrollment process, the biometric technology solution, provided by a Massa- chusetts-based company called Imprivata, creates a one-to- one link between patients and their individual digital health records. This is how it works: a patient places his or her hand over a near-infrared light scanner. The scan captures the unique vein pattern in the patient's palm and produces a biometric tem- plate, a digital representation of the vein pattern. During the initial enrollment process, Imprivata PatientSecure automatical- ly associates this unique biometric template with the patient's medical record. The scanner generates a single biometric identifier for every patient, creating a link between individual patients and their unique medical information across each of the EMRs and clinical applications that the patient interacts with. Once enrolled, returning patients simply provide their date of birth and scan their palm to identify themselves at any location within their health network, directly within an EMR or another registration screen. Patient safety Applied at the registration desk, palm vein identification technology saves lives by allowing providers to immediately identify unconscious patients who arrive without family mem- bers, those who have received care in a different facility or unaccompanied children who may not have identification. With the scan of a patient's hand and their birth date, the solution links up to a single medical record, giving providers the infor- mation they need, including allergies, medications and medical history. This enables the care team to deliver the proper care — and to do so faster. "The main driver for our clients has consistently been patient safety," says David Wiener, general manager of the Imprivata PatientSecure products group. "In order to provide proper care for patients, the provider's job requires that they have full insight into their patient's correct medical history. Proper patient identification is the lynchpin of the care process, and it is unsettling how often this fundamental step in the care process is compromised." In fact, 7 percent to 10 percent of pa- tients are misidentified during medical record searches, and 6 percent result in an adverse event, according to a 2012 report published in The Wall Street Journal. It is possible for patients to have several medical record numbers assigned to them, which increases the likelihood of patient data matching errors, duplicative tests and services, medication errors and other risks to safety. Establishing a unique identifier that is biometrically linked to the patient makes it possible to prevent the creation of duplicate medical records or the misidentification of a patient with the wrong medical record. Bennett Cheramie, vice president of information technolo- gy at Baton Rouge (La.) General Hospital, says, "Sometimes our patients come into the hospital and we can't get their names right away. By getting their palm vein scan we can access all their medical record information to treat them effectively. Without our biometric solution, we may have to wait a number of days before the patient recovers and is able to give us their patient information." Tim Tindle executive vice president and CIO of Harris Sponsored by:

• Cover