Is It Time for an Informed Nation-wide Patient-Data Matching Solution?

Frequent mismatches between patients and clinical data are a serious and growing patient safety issue.  Incorrect information or linking the wrong clinical information to a person is a potentially deadly patient safety issue, and incurs huge additional costs to the healthcare system.   Estimates are that the frequency of patient–data mismatches may be 10-15 percent and costing millions of dollars every year to correct.

 In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandated a Unique Individual Identifier for healthcare purposes.  In 1998, due to concerns over privacy, Congress prohibited the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from using the authority provided by HIPAA to promulgate a final rule or standard (the 1999 Omnibus Appropriations Act).  This prohibition has been carried over in every Labor, HHS, Education and Other Agencies appropriations bill since 1999.

Since Congress enacted the prohibition in 1999, health information technology has made gigantic strides toward improving clinical care, enhancing patient outcomes, and controlling costs.  Significant healthcare reform is virtually impossible without meaningful, system-wide adoption of electronic health records and health information exchange. 

An informed national-level patient-data matching solution would enhance, not compromise, the privacy and security of patient health information.  An informed national-level patient-data matching solution does not mean a national identity number or card.  Technological advances now allow for much more sophisticated solutions, including patient consent, voluntary patient identifiers, metadata identification tagging, controlled segmented access, access credentialing, sophisiticated algorithms, and other technologically advanced solutions.   

Without an informed national-level patient–data matching solution, the states health IT Regional Extension Centers (RECs), large health plans, various consortiums and  individual electronic health record vendors have had to develop their own solutions.  The multitude of different solutions and lack of a national, coordinated approach to patient-data matching pose major challenges for our health information infrastructure.  Patient safety, privacy, and security depend on getting this core element right and soon.   

A nation-wide informed patient-data matching solution:

• provides unambiguous identification,
• is cost effective, and
• can be tremendously effective in reducing patient-data mismatches.

Informed national-level patient-data matching solutions are absolutely essential to obtaining the full benefits of health information exchange and ensuring patient safety, and can substantially enhance patient privacy and security.

Question:  Is it time for Congress to enable the advancement of a nation-wide informed patient-data matching solution?

Share your thoughts here on the HIMSS Blog.