Rochester RHIO Reduces Duplicate Patient Records With NextGate's Patient Matching EMPI Solution

KLAS Category Leader patient ID and matching technology helps community HIE supply accurate patient information for care collaboration, efficiency, and continued cost savings for Upstate New York healthcare providers

NextGate, the leading healthcare technology company for patient and provider identification, recently announced that Rochester RHIO, a secure electronic health information exchange, has launched NextGate's MatchMetrix technology platform as their Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI) solution. The patient matching solution enables data aggregation across multiple sources to fill clinical data gaps giving Rochester RHIO's provider end-users across Upstate New York an accurate patient-centric view within their Health Information Exchange (HIE). The ability to share this data with the patient's care team will fuel effective care coordination and care team collaboration.

Rochester RHIO connects over 200 healthcare organizations in the 13-county Greater Rochester area. Member organizations are feeding clinical and non-clinical patient information to the RHIO's centralized HIE for over 1 million participating patients. 

After launching the MatchMetrix EMPI early in 2016, Rochester RHIO immediately identified and reconciled more than 500,000 duplicate patient records in their system, which now contains about 2.7 million patient records. Reducing duplicate records - the result of patients being seen in multiple settings with different medical record systems - helps to minimize medical errors, reduce billing issues, improve interactions with patients and enhance information sharing among the HIE's participants. 

"The value our HIE provides to the community gives the Greater Rochester area a tremendous edge in patient care delivery," says Ramesh Sridharan, Chief Information Officer at Rochester RHIO "Provider and patient collaboration is the key to our success, and our providers have trust that the NextGate patient matching solution is delivering the right data at the right time, further accelerating positive experiences and better coordination for our patients and providers." 

Rochester RHIO selected NextGate because they needed a more complete view of their patients, and that required better data that was free of duplicate patient records from their complex patient populations. NextGate's EMPI will provide Rochester RHIO's participating organizations additional care and cost value along with market-leading technology from a partner that is trusted by hundreds of hospitals and healthcare systems worldwide. 

NextGate's patient matching EMPI solution delivers the capability to accurately match and link patient information in the absence of a common identifier, allowing providers to achieve a single view of patients. This new partnership will allow Rochester RHIO users to obtain the desired patient-centric view across facilities and counties today, share this information for population health management, and further support its data management initiatives for the future. 

"We know that matched, accurate and complete patient data leads to higher care quality and greater satisfaction for our provider customers," says Andy Aroditis, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NextGate. "We are thrilled to extend these benefits and develop a new partnership with Rochester RHIO. Together we are able to not only deliver the right information to the HIE users, but also establish critical data management standards for future HIE growth." 

With over 20 years of experience as the leader in building and implementing master patient index solutions, NextGate's EMPI uses advanced probabilistic matching algorithms to identify, index, and resolve related patient records spread over different applications and disparate systems. It builds a comprehensive master index of patients and links them together under a Unique Enterprise Identifier. Today, NextGate's EMPI manages over 170 million lives through its No. 1 KLAS-rated patient matching product. 

About Rochester RHIO

Rochester RHIO is a secure electronic health information exchange that gives authorized medical providers access to test results, lab reports, radiology results, clinical documents and more. This nonprofit, community-run organization was created to give health care providers fast access to accurate information about patients so everyone can receive the best care possible. 

Rochester RHIO connects 70 healthcare organizations in the 13 county Greater Rochester area and provide patient information including hospitals, reference labs, radiology practices, ambulance squads, eldercare agencies, and health insurance organizations. For more information, visit GRRHIO.org 

About NextGate

NextGate helps connect the healthcare ecosystem by accurately identifying and linking patient and provider data from different applications. NextGate's iDAS (Intelligent Data Aggregation Server) solution framework leverages the company's industry-leading identity management technology to organize and relate data from enterprise systems to provide a more complete and accurate view of the total healthcare experience. 

At the core of this architecture is NextGate's KLAS Category Leader EMPI technology which currently manages more than 170 million lives. It is deployed by the nation's most successful healthcare systems and health information exchanges. For more information, visit NextGate.com.