Unique Patient Identification

Solution for: EMPI, Single View, Cross System Identification

Patient data exists in most every application system in a healthcare environment. Unfortunately, the information is not always consistent, complete, or accurate, even when it comes to capturing the patient’s name! Each system maintains data in an application-specific format, enforces a different level of minimum requirements, and typically uses its own numbering scheme to assign identifiers to the patient.

This is ok, as long as you are working within that same application. However, when the need arises to share patient data between systems, the consequences of inaccurate patient information become painfully apparent. How can you be certain that patient “Jane Smith” in the scheduling system is the same as “Jayne Smithe” in the HIS?

You can’t. The tried and true solution to this situation is to implement a vendor-independent Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI). “Vendor-independent” and “Enterprise” because it needs to be able to accommodate any numbering scheme and data format from any information source in the connected environment: HIS, ER, EMR, Scheduling, Billing, PMS, etc.

The EMPI is designed to cope with variances in the data and cross-reference patient identifiers from multiple information systems to create a centralized, trusted registry of uniquely identified patients. As part of this process, duplicate patient records can be “merged” automatically, or flagged for review.

With an EMPI managing the correlation and resolution of patient data, the enterprise will continually improve the quality of its data, regardless of persistent data entry errors or contaminated content from less trustworthy sources.

As a result, the enterprise can confidently exchange data internally or externally, develop solutions that generate “single views” of data, and improve the overall efficiency of the system. And that leads to reduced costs and better customer experience.