Accurate Patient ID – The Big Bang Of Quality Healthcare

By John Trader is Director of Communications for RightPatient®, the healthcare industry's most advanced patient identity management and data integrity solution.

Connect with John on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google +.

The Big Bang – What Stared It All
As most of us know, The Big Bang Theory is the prevailing cosmological model for the early development of the universe based on the idea that at a point in time, all of the matter in the universe was contained at a single point and then slowly expanded to allow formation of the essential elements that created our universe. It was the single focal point of our existence from which everything we know came into being, and also helps to offer a comprehensive explanation for a wide range of observed phenomena.  The Big Bang was arguably the sole catalyst for our existence and was the basis for the expansion and development of everything we are and everything we know.

Like the universe, the healthcare industry is, and always will be, in a constant state of change, and constantly expanding. The recent digitization of the industry in particular has unquestionably transformed care delivery, and promises to continue the rapid pace of change for years to come as we bear witness to the fruits of its labor – electronic health records, mobile devices, wearables, digital imaging, wireless sensors and devices, and telemedicine, to name a few.

Searching for Constants in the Healthcare Industry
As with most change in our lives, we are always searching for constants – familiar processes that help us make sense of change, helping to define it in a way that aids our understanding of its meaning and purpose. Not many would disagree with the idea that this rapid pace of change in healthcare (albeit slow, clunky, and inefficient at times) is in the spirit of improving our own health and the health of the entire population. For example:

• Health Information Exchanges have been designed to more easily share data across disparate networks to eliminate errors, cut costs, and improve care
• Electronic medical records store protected health information (PHI) for instant access to data
• Mobile health applications improve our ability to do anything from communicating with our caregivers to tracking our caloric intake

The list goes on.

If the industry needed that “constant” to help realize the potential effectiveness of the new healthcare paradigm, they need look no farther than the concept of accurate patient identification. Perhaps an element of the subconscious for some, accurate patient identification is the genesis of setting the tools of medicine in motion.  If you think about it, accurate patient identification is the sole catalyst behind the effective delivery of quality care, at any level.

Think about that for a moment in the context of modern care delivery.  Taking a patient’s vital signs and screening them for medical history? Of little value unless you are positive that the patient is who they claim to be. That shiny new $1 million MRI machine? Completely unusable unless results are matched with the correct patient. The lab tech who successfully identities atypical antibodies for a patient? Worthless information unless the data is attributed to the correct patient. Blood transfusions, x-rays, EKG’s, lab tests, and even routine examinations are just a few examples of care delivery that are solely contingent on the accuracy of identifying a patient.

When put into context, think about how each encounter with a patient is essentially their own “care universe.” In this sense, ensuring accurate patient ID is the “big bang” that enables all subsequent elements of their care universe to fall into place, setting the stage for the most optimal outcome.

Let’s set aside the fact that the Joint Commission has listed accurate patient identification as the #1 national patient safety goal since 2003. Temporarily forget the dangers that are associated with patient misidentification, as evidenced by data from the Institute of Medicine and the Joint Commission, that in the U.S., nearly 60 percent of the 200,000 deaths per year caused by medical errors are cases of mistaken identity. Try to block out the stats that say most CIOs support standards to enable the most accurate record-matching across health systems and define best practices for patient matching.

Now that your mind is clear to conceptualize the basics of accurate patient identification, think about the core fundamentals of the industry – providing safe, quality patient care to advance individual and population health. This clearly can’t be accomplished without understanding the importance of accurate patient identification and how it directly affects all aspects of patient care.

Patient ID is the Big Bang of Quality Healthcare
No one will deny that there are few working environments as fast-paced, dynamic, and decision-specific as modern hospital systems, where medical staff and clinicians must constantly adjust and balance their attentions and priorities to match both the flow of patients and the severity of their conditions. This fast pace is one of the many reasons that accurate patient identification has drawn such scrutiny within the industry and remains the key linchpin to prevent medical errors and to save patient lives.

When you think about achieving accurate patient identification in healthcare within the context of the healthcare environment, you understand more about the difficulties that make it challenging. However, patient identification accuracy deserves to be treated as the origin, the starting point, the foundation of any meaningful and productive healthcare interaction regardless of conditions or location. Addressing this essential element of quality patient care with a sense of urgency is a critical sustainability metric of any healthcare provider, no matter who they are.

Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), and the concept of interoperability present another interesting argument that accurate patient identification is the key to achieving the goal of increased information sharing across disparate networks to advance individual and population health. Because HIEs rely solely on demographic information contained in a patient’s individual record to match their clinical information among multiple providers, any errors made in the collection and documentation of demographic data hampers the effectiveness of interoperability.  Duplicate medical records or overlays that are created during registration from inaccurate patient identification further complicates and inhibits successful HIEs, adding credence to the idea that the push for healthcare interoperability will never attain the expected level of success unless more action is taken to implement stricter patient identification protocols across the entire industry. In fact, it seems pointless to continue work on achieving true interoperability until the problem of inaccurate patient identification and the ramifications it enables is addressed.

The healthcare industry is rapidly changing. As we witness it’s transformation into a more efficient, streamlined entity and we try to digest the new model of digital care, we can’t afford to marginalize the importance of accurate patient identification in delivering high-quality, cost-effective care.

Accurate patient identification truly is the big bang of delivering quality healthcare within every patient’s universe.

About the author
John Trader is Director of Communications for RightPatient®, a patient identity management and data integrity solution. Connect with John on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google +.