Mismatched Patient Records Are a Major Barrier to the Pursuit of EHR Interoperability

I have blogged extensively about the urgent need for EHR interoperability to support patient movement across different health systems (see, for example:Integration and Interoperability Are Essential for Growth of Digital Pathology). However, I probably have focused too much on technical and strategic barriers to interoperability and spent insufficient time addressing faulty patient identification problems as a barrier to interoperability. Here's the link to my note on this issue (see:The Quest for a Fail-Safe Patient Identification Solution in the U.S.) and below is an excerpt from from that note:The search for as solution to the patient ID problem has been exacerbated by the broad adoption of EHRs with a single system spanning a large health system and scores of people responsible for the correct patient ID when entering data....The sole solution to the problem is the adoption of universal health identifier such as that being used in countries likeAustralia but there is little chance of such a system being adopted in the U.S. A recent article discussed how patient mismatching hinders data exchange (see:Pew and Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative Find the Frequency of Patient Mismatches Exceeds ‘Desirable Levels for Effective Data Exchange’) with an excerpt from it below:EMPIs may help clinical laboratories ensure their patients and medical records are properly matched with medical laboratory test results and specimens Mix-ups between patients and th...

Source: Lab Soft News - August 17, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Pathology Informatics Preventive Medicine Public Health Source Type: blogs