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How Many Patient Identifiers Should be Used to Ensure Patient Safety?

September 17, 2020/7400 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, healthcare, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Outcomes /by Matt Gibson

The US healthcare system has always been plagued by a number of issues. One very common but often overlooked issue is that of patient identification errors. Misidentification cases continue to be quite prevalent while there continues to be a ban on the creation of a state-funded Universal Patient Identifier (UPI). While debate continues around the risks and rewards involved with a UPI, one should also be asking about its efficacy. How many patient identifiers should be used to prevent patient safety issues? Will a UPI be enough to solve this colossal challenge?

UPI’s history in a nutshell

Since the idea for a unique patient identifier was formed, it’s seen constant criticism and opposition, resulting in a ban that’s lasted for around two decades. Last year, healthcare organizations came pretty close to finally having the ban removed when the US House of Representatives voted to repeal the ban. However, the ban is still in effect with the legislation failing to gain approval in the Senate.

As for the future of the UPI, let’s look at its past. It has not been funded for around two decades due to issues like privacy concerns and growing data breach incidents that could seriously jeopardize patient safety and privacy. Thus, chances are high that the future may not be kind to the creation of a state-funded UPI.

Lack of effective patient identification is felt throughout healthcare

The absence of reliable patient identification is widely felt throughout hospitals and health systems. Patient safety issues and patient data integrity failures are just some of the many issues associated with patient misidentification. However, a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic clearly highlighted the importance of proper patient identification, impeding the ability of caregivers to provide healthcare services quickly and effectively without access to holistic patient information. Since the pandemic started, healthcare staff on the frontlines have been learning that the hard way.

Many experts are even thinking that this might be the time the UPI will finally be realized. But will it be enough? How many patient identifiers should be used to make sure it’s safe for patients and effective for providers? Fortunately, our Co-Founder, Michael Trader, has a comprehensive answer.

How many patient identifiers should be used?

Mr. Trader has stated that it’s crucial to find balance regarding a UPI and it’s equally important to establish an infrastructure that can house the UPI securely – only identifying patients accurately is not enough. Furthermore, the creation of duplicate medical records and overlays need to be prevented – they are some of the many issues that significantly hinder patient matching.

Mr. Trader adds that while the UPI will have benefits such as better interoperability as providers can share patient data more reliably, it will not mitigate issues such as duplicates, overlays, and medical identity theft. How many patient identifiers should be used, then?

Mr. Trader stated that instead of relying solely on the UPI, responsible providers will pair it with another identification system, and preferably one that is tried and tested. Linking the UPI to a photo-based biometric patient identification platform comes to mind. This touchless solution can be scaled across all encounter touch points, even enabling patients to utilize their own smartphones, making it the ideal solution in our post-pandemic world. With such a combination, patient misidentifications can be eliminated.

For years, patient misidentification has been a persistent problem for patients and caregivers alike. Providers need to eliminate misidentification as soon as possible, with or without the UPI. After all, it’s a single mistake that can cause severe consequences for both providers and patients. Fortunately, RightPatient can help providers avoid such unwanted cases.

With its photo-based patient identification platform, RightPatient has been identifying patients accurately for years. Leading and responsible providers have chosen RightPatient instead of waiting for the UPI – they know the effects of patient identification errors better than anyone else. Thus, if the UPI is created, responsible leaders will be coupling it with the leading patient identification platform, ensuring interoperability, accurate patient identification, and reliable patient data exchanges.

Dirty Patient Data Can Have Severe Consequences for Healthcare Providers

September 9, 2020/12220 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Connected Health, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, Facial Reciognition, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

The US healthcare system has always been facing problems that stopped it from realizing its full potential. These issues are longstanding barriers to providing immaculate healthcare services to patients, and thus affect healthcare outcomes for all involved. One of these issues has been the “dirty” patient data accumulating within EHR systems over the years. With the COVID-19 pandemic causing even more issues like the unprecedented financial strain, layoffs, restructuring and so on, providers need to ensure that the patient information within their facilities is accurate, consistent and relevant. Let’s look at what unclean patient data is, how it affects patients and providers and how RightPatient can ensure the cleanest patient data with accurate patient identification.

Patient data

A brief definition

In the simplest terms, patient data refers to a single patient’s medical information – medications, medical history, vitals, illnesses and so on. Such data is critical in making informed decisions regarding the patient in question. What should be the current or future course of action and how to best handle the needs of the patient are some common examples.

From the explanation, it is clear why clean patient data is important for both caregivers and their recipients. Let’s look at the other side of the coin: dirty data.

“Dirty” patient information

By now, it should be quite clear what dirty data means. Whenever the data is inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent, obsolete or corrupt, it is considered “dirty”. Unclean patient data can lead to a lot of problems for any given healthcare provider. It impacts everyday operations, makes effective data sharing difficult and impacts healthcare outcomes, among other issues. Let’s have a more detailed look at the common ones.

Effects of unclean patient data

Inaccuracy and inefficient operations

Imagine if a patient goes to their healthcare provider for a checkup. The registrar types in the patient’s name: several medical records pop up on the screen, all pertaining to the same patient. Understandably, this can confuse the registrar. They are faced with a difficult choice: either go through all the patient records and find out the accurate one or create a new one entirely. The former case will take up a lot of time, while the latter will just create another duplicate medical record within the system. Both of these are consequences of having unclean data within the system.

Huge losses

According to Gartner, unclean data can cost an organization anywhere from $9.7 to $14.2 million. For US healthcare providers, however, it’s an entirely different figure. AHIMA stated that duplicate medical records can cost up to $40 million for any given provider, while a health system having several facilities can house up to 20% duplicate records.

Imagine if a patient is treated with another patient’s medical information. When the record holder gets the bill for services they did not use, they’ll simply contact their insurance provider regarding the matter. This will lead to a denied claim. Thus, inaccurate data can lead to denied claims as well – costing around $4.9 million on average for the average health system.

Patient safety is compromised

One of the biggest issues of unclean data is that it impacts patient safety. One patient will receive inaccurate and even dangerous treatment because they are being treated based on an entirely different patient’s medical record. Even if it is the same patient, if there are multiple records under their name, each record will have inconsistent and incomplete information about the patient, leading to improper care, medications and procedures. All in all, healthcare outcomes will not be as expected as patient safety and quality of care is jeopardized severely. This can affect a provider’s ratings as well. Patients will not be happy if they are not receiving unreliable healthcare services. Thus, clean data is critical to improving quality and safety in healthcare.

Non-compliance issues

This one is quite new. However, most healthcare providers know this and are working on it: e-notifications support.

The CMS rule mandates that all caregivers having EHR systems must ensure they support e-notifications by May 1st, 2021. During any ADT event, the provider needs to send e-notifications to the patient’s caregivers, whether they be established primary care practitioners, post-acute providers & suppliers or any other entity primarily responsible for the patient’s care. This is done to boost positive healthcare outcomes and improve care coordination. If the data is unclean, providers will end up sending false alerts either to the wrong provider or the wrong patient.

In any case, unclean data will cause non-compliance issues, penalties and might even jeopardize CMS provider agreements.

Lower ROI

Health systems and hospitals have been investing significantly in population health management, big data, analytics and similar projects they find promising. The efficacy of these systems depends on high-quality data being fed into them. When data is corrupted due to duplicate and overlay records, those investments are diluted, leading to lower ROI.

Keep patient data clean with RightPatient

One of the best ways to ensure that patient data integrity is maintained is by identifying the accurate patient record from the get-go. That’s where we can help.

RightPatient is the leading patient identification platform that ensures data integrity is maintained within EHRs. It is a touchless, photo-based platform used by leading healthcare providers.

By making sure that you identify your patients accurately every time, you can avoid duplicate medical records, prevent medical identity theft, eliminate financial issues related to dirty data, improve patient safety and quality of care. Also, you can send out proper e-notifications to the accurate caregivers, eliminating any non-compliance penalties.

By ensuring accurate and consistent data that can be used by the aforementioned investments (population health management, big data, analytics, etc.), RightPatient improves ROI for healthcare providers, creating a win-win scenario for everyone.

Contact us now to know how RightPatient works and how we can help you ensure the cleanest data via positive patient identification.

CMS Compliance Requires Identifying Patients Correctly – Are you Ensuring it?

August 25, 2020/10968 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Connected Health, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, healthcare, Infection Control, Medical Record Mix-ups, Patient Experience, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

From the title, it is quite clear what this is about. The changes made to the Medicare CoPs (conditions of participation) have attracted attention within the US healthcare system, especially after the introduction of mandatory e-notifications during every ADT (admission, discharge, or transfer) of a patient. While providers are more focused on e-notifications, most of them forget about one very important prerequisite: identifying patients correctly. While we have already touched upon the topic regarding CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) Interoperability & Patient Access Final Rule, this time, we will focus more on the practical aspects and how patient identification is a crucial component that is absolutely necessary for e-notifications to work properly as well as CMS compliance. Without further ado, let’s dive deeper into the topic at hand.

A brief refresher

A few changes have been made regarding the CMS Interoperability & Patient Access Final Rule. As the name suggests, it has been done to boost interoperability efforts within the caregivers of the patients. Let us look at why it is required within the healthcare system.

There are many cases where a patient is not restricted to a single healthcare provider; especially if they have complications, multiple ailments and so on. Such patients need to visit and consult with multiple healthcare providers in order to receive the best patient care. For this to be effective, caregivers need to have access to the patient’s medical record, history, medications, vitals and other necessary information. In order to make the caregiving process seamless and boost interoperability, the Final Rule was introduced.

The “companion final rule” states that e-notifications must be sent out by healthcare providers (such as acute care, psychiatric, critical access providers, etc.) during every ADT to the appropriate recipients, i.e., the other caregivers (post-acute providers & suppliers, established primary care practitioners, or any other entity primarily responsible for the patient’s care). This rule applies to inpatient admissions as well as ED admissions.

Who needs to ensure it?

Applicable healthcare providers are those who use digital medical records like EMR or EHR systems. They need to ensure compliance and have proper systems set up by May 1, 2021 so that they can send out e-notifications during ADTs.

While that’s a succinct summary of the most recent change in the CoPs, every healthcare provider needs to ensure that they are sending out e-notifications. Otherwise, they can face undesirable consequences such as receiving penalties for non-compliance, or worse, jeopardizing their CMS provider agreements. But how is identifying patients correctly related to CMS compliance regarding e-notifications?

Identifying patients correctly is required for CMS compliance

As previously mentioned, the CMS rule requires healthcare providers to send out notifications during ADTs. But there’s a catch.

Identifying patients correctly is quite important for e-notifications to work. Think about it: if a patient is not accurately recognized or is misidentified as a different patient, the healthcare provider risks sending alerts to the wrong caregivers. Worst of all, the provider risks that they won’t be able to answer alerts other caregivers are requesting.

Without a reliable way to identify patients, things can escalate quickly. If a provider cannot fulfill alert requests or sends too many incorrect alerts, care coordination teams will start to lose faith and miss opportunities to improve patient outcomes. Noncompliance will also incur CMS penalties, which can result in hefty fines. After COVID-19, nobody can afford such costs.

While healthcare providers are busying themselves by deciding how to best implement e-notifications, they should also assess the effectiveness of their patient identity matching systems. Clearly, the former is dependent on the latter. Those who are struggling with patient identification need to upgrade their systems to futureproof, easy-to-use and hygienic ones.

RightPatient helps identify patients correctly

We ensure that patients are always identified correctly with our industry-leading touchless biometric patient identification platform.

How it works

After making an appointment, patients receive an SMS or email to validate their identity. During this process, the patient takes a photo of their driver’s license and a selfie. RightPatient automatically matches the selfie photo with the photo on the driver’s license to ensure a proper identity match. If the patient is not already in the system, RightPatient assigns biometric credentials to the new patient.

This is how we prevent patients from registering under a different identity or medical record mix-ups. There’s no need to worry about name changes, mistakes when entering a patient’s name or other common issues. Patients are recognized with their selfies.

We have been helping prominent health systems like TGMC, CMC and CHSLI fight the battle against patient misidentification for years. With RightPatient, responsible healthcare providers can send e-notifications and comply with CMS without worrying about faulty alerts.

If we haven’t convinced you by now, why don’t you try our free trial? No gimmicks – it’s really free!

Providers Must Protect Patient Information to Enhance Patient Trust

August 13, 2020/9234 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, COVID-19, Cybersecurity, Data Breach, EHR, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

The US healthcare system has always been the one attracting attention for all the wrong reasons – it is inundated with a plethora of issues. Lack of price transparency, interoperability issues, lack of proper patient identification, archaic laws governing the overall system, and prevalent medical identity theft cases are just some of the many problems that plague providers and prevent them from giving optimal patient care. One of the more prominent problems faced is healthcare data breaches – something that happens regularly nowadays. With the pandemic in mind, healthcare providers need to do all they can to enhance patient trust and improve patient safety – something they can do if they protect patient information. This is critical because it will boost inpatient volumes and can help offset the ongoing losses due to COVID-19. Let’s see how RightPatient can help by ensuring accurate patient identity verification.

What does the data say?

A recently released study by the Journal of General Internal Medicine has shed some light on patients’ perceptions about their EHR security and privacy.

According to the report:

The respondents who fear that their EHRs will be jeopardized due to a cybersecurity incident are three times more likely to hold back information from their caregivers, compared to those who do not share the same feeling, especially during the transmission of said EHRs electronically.
Out of the respondents who trusted that their EHRs were safe and secure, chances of concealing information from their providers were around half compared to those who had privacy concerns.
Older, married, and employed patients were less likely to withhold information.

This study was conducted with keeping the growth of telehealth in mind and how a lack of patient trust will cause problems, especially during the pandemic. Thus, healthcare providers need to rethink their strategies and boost patient confidence. Not only will it help provide better healthcare services, but it will also increase patient retention – patients will not switch to other caregivers if they see that their providers protect patient information effectively.

Protect patient information by ensuring compliance

With the electronic transmission of PHI (protected health information), HIPAA compliance is the first thing that pops up on the minds of providers. The aforementioned study suggests the same: providers should address patients’ concerns by addressing security gaps. This can be done by providing proper training for internal data breaches and do’s and don’ts during PHI transmission, conducting internal audits to detect security issues, and keeping relevant employees on the same page regarding HIPAA compliance. HIPAA Ready is a robust HIPAA compliance software that can address all that and more, helping you protect patient information in the process. Simplify HIPAA compliance and reduce your administrative burdens with HIPAA Ready.

RightPatient helps protect patient information

RightPatient has been helping to protect patient data for years now. Moreover, even if you face a data breach, you can still safeguard patient information. Here’s how it works.

Once a provider deploys RightPatient, patients receive an SMS or email to validate their identity after scheduling an appointment. The patient provides a selfie and a photo of their driver’s license, and RightPatient matches the photos to ensure a proper match. Patients new to the platform are provided with new biometric credentials.

During inpatient visits, all patients need to do is look at the camera. The platform identifies them by matching the photos, ensuring accurate patient identification.

Another reason why RightPatient is a must

The aforementioned study is also related to the updated Medicare CoPs. Since the study talks about sending EHRs to other caregivers, the recently introduced e-notifications come to mind. With the looming CMS compliance deadline (May 1st, 2021), healthcare providers need to ensure accurate patient identification so that they can send out accurate e-notifications during ADTs. If they fail to send out notifications to the proper channels, it can cause noncompliance issues and can risk their CMS provider agreements. RightPatient is a must-have solution to avoid such cases and ensure that the proper caregivers are notified.

Patient Identification Policy Impacts Data Integrity and Patient Safety Issues

August 10, 2020/7993 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Errors, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Let’s face it – patient identification errors are nothing new and it is a much-discussed topic among healthcare leaders. For instance, just a month ago, a new coalition was formed to urge Congress to develop a UPI (unique patient identifier) to be used nationwide. Sadly, such formations are quite common – groups, competitions, and alliances have formed for years for the same reason. The result is that no UPI exists yet and patient identification errors are still wreaking havoc. However, many healthcare providers are reaping the benefits of accurate patient identification – it boils down to the patient identification policy used by the caregiver. Let’s take a closer look at how patient identification errors can cause a multitude of problems, why accurate patient identification is so crucial, and how platforms like RightPatient can help ensure just that.

Patient misidentification

It is quite self-explanatory. Patient identification errors occur whenever a healthcare facility fails to accurately match the patient with their appropriate medical record present within the EHR system.

It happens for a number of reasons. As already mentioned, it is nothing new and has been the result of years of human errors and improper patient data maintenance like duplicate medical records, overlays, and missing, incorrect, and/or incomplete information, leading to low patient match rates.

To put it into perspective, AHIMA stated that health systems can house up to 20% duplicate records within their EHR systems. The financial impact? It can go as high as $40 million for any given healthcare facility.

Effects of patient misidentification

Low patient match rates is just the tip of the iceberg! Patient misidentification leads to several problems. Let’s look at the more prominent effects of patient misidentification.

Whenever you incorrectly identify a patient, it means that one patient’s data will get written into someone else’s medical record – creating patient data integrity issues. This leads to a lot of problems – incorrect medications, repeated lab tests, incorrect medical procedures, inaccurate patient history – the list just goes on. Both the patients will receive inaccurate care by the caregiver as a direct consequence of patient misidentification, hampering patient outcomes.

Naturally, patient misidentification leads to patient safety issues – these are bound to happen if your treatment is based on the wrong medical record. Consequences can be delays in treatment, worse patient outcomes, irreparable damages, and sometimes, patient misidentification can even result in deaths. According to a report by John Hopkins University, medical errors can cause up to 250,000 avoidable deaths per year, many of which happen due to patient identification errors.

Thus, the million-dollar question is how can healthcare providers ensure accurate patient identification across their facilities?

It depends on a provider’s patient identification system

The accuracy of patient identification is as good as the patient identification policy used by the hospital in question, and there are many options hospitals can choose from. Responsible leaders, in any case, must choose the patient identification system that ensures accurate patient identification, provides a seamless experience, and provides a safe and hygienic environment for all involved.

There are a plethora of options available that hospitals can use as their primary patient identification policy. Sadly, many are still choosing the most obsolete one – inundating patients with questions. Whenever a patient arrives, officials ask them questions to find the correct medical record. This policy is slow, outdated, and extremely insecure – anyone can pass themselves off as the patient. In fact, this leads to medical identity theft – fraudsters buy stolen medical records from the black market and have all the information to pose successfully as the victim.

One other policy is to use patient ID wristbands. While this is a tad more secure than asking questions, it can still be taken off a patient and used for fraudulent purposes. Moreover, it is a contact-based solution, and that’s not something hospitals would want after the COVID-19 crisis – everyone is extremely aware of infection control issues now.

The most secure solution is using an identification policy where the identifier cannot be transferred or stolen – biometric modalities come to mind. There is a caveat though – patients would be quite reluctant to accept touch-based solutions such as fingerprint or palm-vein scanning.

Implement a touchless patient identification policy

The best option has been left for last – touchless patient identification platforms. RightPatient is the leading photo-based biometric patient identification system used by progressive healthcare providers.

Locking the medical records of patients with their photos upon registration, returning patients only need to look at the camera and the platform matches the photo with the one saved alongside their medical record, ensuring accurate patient identity verification.

There are many patient identification platforms available – be the responsible leader by choosing the one that shares the common goal of improving patient safety and quality of care at your facility.

Patient Data Protection is Ensured by Responsible Healthcare Leaders

August 7, 2020/8240 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Cybersecurity, Data Breach, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Experience, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes /by Matt Gibson

Healthcare providers in the US have a lot on their plates. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, they had their hands full with issues like patient identification errors, cybersecurity threats, HIPAA compliance issues, an abundance of duplicate medical records, medical identity theft, a distinct lack of patient safety, and more. Whatever the case may be, progressive healthcare leaders need to ensure patient data protection at all costs. In fact, many of the aforementioned problems can be mitigated by protecting patient data – leading providers have been doing that constantly. But why is it so important? How can providers safeguard patient data? Let’s dive in.

Patient data protection

Patient data protection has been one of the oldest and most important requirements for healthcare providers, and rightfully so – a patient shares critical and sensitive information with their caregivers. Names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, contact information, addresses, facial photographs, medical history, and ailments are just some examples of the information stored within patient records. If these get compromised and land in the wrong hands, such cases can have disastrous consequences – healthcare insurance fraud, litigation costs for providers, and hampered patient safety are some common results. Thus, protecting patient data is crucial for any caregiver. Let’s take a look at a few more reasons why protecting patient data is necessary for hospitals and health systems.

Reasons to protect patient data

Ensuring Compliance

Concerns regarding data privacy are more common than ever – even more so when it comes to patient data. The frequency of healthcare data breaches proves that. However, providers, along with other healthcare organizations that deal with patient data, need to have safeguards in place to protect sensitive information.

HIPAA, also known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, was introduced back in 1996 and is primarily used for patient data protection. It mandates that all healthcare organizations who deal with PHI (protected health information) must ensure that the data is protected at all times. If an organization fails to do so or violates HIPAA in any other way, they will face heavy scrutiny and hefty fines – up to $1.5 million per year. On top of that, the person committing the violation may face criminal penalties – fines and even jail time. Data breaches can cost up to $ 6 billion for the healthcare industry, and the US also tops the list of most expensive data breaches, besides Germany.

HITECH, or the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, compliments HIPAA. It was created to make sure that healthcare information technology is adopted and utilized appropriately. Privacy and security concerns are addressed by HITECH as well.

Thus, patient data protection is a must to ensure compliance with the laws and regulations that are in place. While HIPAA compliance can be cumbersome and challenging, healthcare organizations can simplify compliance management and reduce HIPAA-related administrative burdens. There are solutions available to ensure HIPAA compliance – organizations should choose one that is simple but powerful and gets the job done effectively. HIPAAReady is such a solution. A robust HIPAA compliance software, HIPAAReady ensures training management and scheduling, reduces administrative burden, and keeps all HIPAA compliance documents in a centralized location. Organizations can even detect security gaps by conducting internal audits with HIPAAReady.

Preventing medical identity theft

One of the more crucial reasons why protecting patient data is so important is because failure to do so leads to medical identity theft. Let’s see how that happens.

Cybercriminals are always trying to breach the security of healthcare providers, and when they finally do so, they steal sensitive patient information and sell it on the black market for high prices. Fraudsters buy the data and assume the identity of the affected patients – committing medical identity theft, pushing off the expenses on the victims, and fraudulently obtaining healthcare services.

Medical identity theft can lead to lawsuits, demand significant time and costs from patients and/or providers to rectify the issues, and compromise patient data integrity. That leads us to the next reason for protecting patient data.

Enhancing patient safety

Failure to maintain patient data integrity means that the data is not accurate anymore. When a provider fails to protect patient data, it leads to medical identity theft. When the fraudster uses the victim’s healthcare services, he/she contaminates the patient data – the fraudster’s data gets written onto the victim’s patient record, rendering it inaccurate. If such cases remain undetected or unfixed, they can severely hamper patient outcomes. Medical errors, delays in treatment, incorrect procedures, and even deaths – these are just some of the numerous consequences of compromised patient data. Thus, patient data protection is critical for enhancing patient safety.

Protect patient data now

Protecting patient data is a huge challenge, but it is achievable. One of the first and foremost things providers can do to protect patient data is to ensure positive patient identification at each encounter. That’s where we can help.

RightPatient is the leading patient identification solution chosen by progressive providers. It is a photo-based and touchless biometric patient identification platform with common goals shared by caregivers – to enhance patient safety, to ensure accurate patient identification, and to prevent medical identity theft.

It locks the medical records of patients upon registration with their photos. Returning patients look at the camera and the platform matches the photos and provides accurate records within seconds. Even with healthcare data breaches, RightPatient protects your patients and their data as the platform will red-flag fraudsters during patient identity verification.

Protect patient data, prevent medical identity theft, ensure positive patient identification, and more – with RightPatient.

How Can Medical Identity Theft Occur During Telehealth Visits?

July 29, 2020/9168 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, COVID-19, Data Integrity, EHR, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety, Photo Biometrics, Telehealth /by Matt Gibson

Telehealth has been around for years, but it has only been growing exponentially for the past few months. One of the biggest propellers that caused the surge in telehealth usage is the coronavirus pandemic, while the other reason is its benefit of taking healthcare out of the regular setting and setting up safe and remote environments for the patients and caregivers. While many predict that telehealth is here to stay after seeing how it can benefit caregivers and patients, health systems and hospitals need to focus on another important aspect – how can medical identity theft occur during telehealth visits, and is it preventable? Fortunately, it can be – with RightPatient. Let’s dive deep.

Telehealth skyrocketed due to COVID-19

Since telehealth was introduced, experts in the US healthcare system have been busy debating its pros and cons, affecting its growth and questioning its capabilities. However, as the pandemic has shown, telehealth has been extremely crucial for the US healthcare system during its ongoing battle against the pandemic. It has helped reduce the risk of more COVID-19 cases as non-COVID-19 patients were recommended to use telehealth instead of inpatient visits.

As previously mentioned, the biggest benefit of telehealth is that it enables patients and caregivers to engage in healthcare remotely. All they need is a good internet connection and devices to communicate with each other – eliminating any chances of contracting the virus as opposed to inpatient visits during the pandemic. Thus, it is no surprise that telehealth demand has been sky-high, with experts predicting over one billion visits during 2020 alone. While providers are quickly adapting to the changes and using telehealth, hospitals and health systems must also think about a serious problem – how can medical identity theft occur during telehealth usage?

Medical identity theft is all over the place

Medical identity theft is nothing new. Hackers steal valuable patient information through healthcare data breaches. They sell it for up to $1000 per record on the black market to fraudsters. Since healthcare is quite expensive, these fraudsters prefer buying patient information from hackers for a much cheaper price, shifting the healthcare costs onto the shoulders of the victims.

Medical identity theft is becoming quite prevalent. In 2019 alone, more patient records were breached in comparison to the previous three years combined. Medical identity theft leads to lawsuits, patient safety issues, settlement costs up to $250,000, unwanted attention, and loss of goodwill. Thus, it becomes increasingly necessary to ensure that medical identity theft is prevented, even during telehealth visits.

But how can medical identity theft occur during telehealth? Well, the stolen information can be easily used by the fraudster to bypass the obsolete patient identification systems most hospitals have – just like inpatient visits. Moreover, many patients sometimes even give their credentials to their family members or friends willingly – aiding them in medical identity theft.

Such cases lead to added costs like medical record clean-ups, lack of patient data integrity, and patient safety issues, among other problems. Hospitals are facing huge losses already due to the pandemic, and they need to recover their losses if they want to survive in the future. One of the best ways to do all of that is by ensuring positive patient identification.

Accurate patient identification with RightPatient

RightPatient is the healthcare industry’s leading touchless patient identification platform. It locks the medical records of the patients with their photos upon enrollment. Whenever the patient comes, all he/she needs to do is look at the camera and the platform matches the photos and provides the correct medical record within seconds. RightPatient seamlessly integrates with the major EHR systems, enhancing the experience for providers as well. It is hygienic too, enhancing patient safety and reducing infection control issues.

While it has been ensuring accurate patient identification for providers for years, RightPatient brings the same expertise to telehealth. It can also be used to remotely validate a patient’s identity. Patients receive an SMS or email after scheduling an appointment, after which they need to take a selfie and photos of their driver’s license. RightPatient automatically matches the photos of the driver’s license and the selfie to validate patient identity – preventing medical identity theft in the process.

RightPatient has been successfully protecting over 10 million patient records and preventing fraudsters from harming patients while reducing healthcare costs, denied claims, lawsuits, and boosting the bottom lines in the process. Protect your patients – even during telehealth visits – with RightPatient.

Hospitals Might Lose $323 Billion – Reduce Yours by Ensuring Patient Data Security

July 24, 2020/8441 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, COVID-19, Cybersecurity, Data Breach, Health Care, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Healthcare around the world has been arguably facing one of its biggest challenges yet, and the US healthcare system is no exception to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. While there are spikes in COVID-19 cases, things are looking quite bleak for the financial performance of hospitals this year. To be exact, over a staggering $323 billion could be lost only in 2020! Is there any solution to mitigate the losses? RightPatient might be the answer – as it ensures patient data security and prevents medical identity theft in real-time. Let’s explore.

Unimaginable hospital losses

It is quite simple – due to the pandemic, hospitals had to focus more on the overwhelming number of COVID-19 patients, and thus, stopped treating regular patients. While this was expected, the financial losses are still huge.

According to the American Hospital Association, healthcare providers have reported declines of 34.5% in outpatient volume and 1.5% in inpatient volume, on average. Projected losses for the duration of March–June 2020 have been around $202 billion. Moving forward, the AHA estimates that the second half of 2020 will incur a loss of around $120.5 billion for providers – leading to an unprecedented sum of $323 billion in losses for the year 2020. However, the AHA does warn that this might be an understatement – the numbers might go even higher.

Providers do not expect losses to reduce for the rest of the year either. The AHA’s president has even stated that the US healthcare system is facing the biggest financial crisis in its history due to the pandemic as well as reduced patient numbers.

While the US federal government has provided over $170 billion as emergency funding for the providers, many fear that it might not be enough to overcome the heavy losses.

Medical identity theft is on the rise

While COVID-19 and its long-lasting effects are raging on, that has not stopped hackers from attempting to steal sensitive patient data through healthcare data breaches. Security experts have stated that there is a huge opportunity for hackers to steal patient data since it is rich with valuables like Social Security numbers, insurance information, and so on. Moreover, they can sell patient records for up to $1000.

Healthcare in the US is expensive, and that is the reason why medical identity theft is so common. Fraudsters simply buy the patient data from the black market, and do not need to worry about any more healthcare expenses – the fraudulent bills are passed on to the shoulders of the victims. As can be seen, ensuring patient data security is quite important.

Medical identity theft not only hampers the patients financially – it affects patient safety as well. When a fraudster uses the patient data to gain access to healthcare services such as expensive procedures, medications, and equipment, their data is recorded into the victims’ patient records. Thus, the patients might further suffer from incorrect medications and procedures based on an altered medical history, making patient data security a topmost priority, even during the pandemic.

Ensure patient data security with RightPatient

RightPatient has been protecting millions of patient records for leading healthcare providers for years. It is a touchless biometric patient identification platform that locks the medical records of the patients with their photos upon registration. After enrollment, all the patients need to do is look at the camera and the platform matches the photos and provides the correct patient record within seconds. Thus, if a fraudster comes by, he/she will be red-flagged, preventing medical identity theft.

Moreover, due to the pandemic, patient identification in hospitals needs to be upgraded to a touchless platform like RightPatient to prevent infection control issues and enhance patient safety. RightPatient meets all the requirements for any given health system or hospital by preventing medical identity theft, ensuring patient data security, enhancing patient safety, and preventing duplicate record creation, boosting the bottom lines. Reduce your losses by using RightPatient and protecting patient records now.

Optimizing Revenue Cycle Management in Healthcare is More Important Than Ever

July 9, 2020/7637 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Clinical Efficiency, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, healthcare, Patient Identification, Revenue Cycle Management /by Matt Gibson

While the US is still suffering from the effects of the highly contagious COVID-19, it has arguably hit its healthcare system worse than anything else. Around 1.4 million people working in healthcare have lost their jobs. The number itself is quite shocking, however, what makes it worse is that the pandemic has changed everything. For instance, the US healthcare system used to be unaffected by any recessions, but COVID-19 has shown otherwise. This is because numerous hospitals have declared layoffs, furloughs, or are even shutting down due to unimaginable financial pressure. With that in mind, as hospitals are opening up, they need to reduce their losses right off the bat, otherwise, it will be hard for anyone to survive. Thus, revenue cycle management in healthcare is more crucial than ever now.

The numbers are drastic

It has already been mentioned that over 1.4 million healthcare professionals lost their jobs. That’s not where it stops, though. Since hospitals made the difficult but necessary choice to prepare for the overwhelming amount of COVID-19 patients by shutting down non-emergency care at their premises, they became financially crippled. The American Hospital Association stated that hospitals are losing a mindboggling $50 billion a month, due to the fact that they are seeing an extremely low number of patients – as low as 70%. Revenue cycle management in healthcare has always been a much-discussed topic, however, as the numbers show, it is of utmost importance now to optimize revenue cycles by reducing costs and mitigating losses – something that RightPatient can help healthcare providers with. But how does optimized revenue cycle management help hospitals deal with the financial crisis?

Benefits of optimized revenue cycle management in healthcare

Reduced denied claims

A streamlined revenue cycle depends on the level of accurate data present within the system. If there is a high level of accuracy, it reduces the chances of denied claims. Usually, denied claims occur when there are mistakes in payment claims. One example is when patients are mistakenly charged for services they have not used. RightPatient ensures that the patient is accurately identified from the beginning to the end of the process – substantially reducing denied claims.

Enhanced patient experience

An optimized revenue cycle means that the FTEs will spend less time on redundant tasks such as rechecking coding and billing for errors and focus more on providing better care to the patients – enhancing the patient experience.

Higher and faster collections

It is quite simple – if the revenue cycle is optimized, there will be higher collections with a lower number of errors. FTEs, thus, do not have their hands full of coding and billing errors – giving them the time to focus on the remaining collections, improving efficiency in the process.

Accurate patient information

An optimized revenue cycle means that you are ensuring patient data integrity; that is, from the beginning of caregiving to collections, the correct patient has been identified. This can be easily achieved using an accurate patient identification platform like RightPatient.

Better financial returns

One of the most vital parts of a healthcare provider that everyone scrutinizes, other than treating patients, is its financial performance. After all, these are the indicators as to how well a provider is doing. An optimized revenue cycle means that there are increased clean claims, faster collections, lower lost claims, and accurate patient data – all leading to improved revenue of the provider.

Since COVID-19 is still affecting the financial performance of providers, they need to ensure that their revenue cycle is as optimized as possible.

Optimize revenue cycle with RightPatient

Optimized revenue cycle management in healthcare means that you need to have the correct data for the patient and you are ensuring that he/she is being billed accurately throughout the whole process. Thus, for a better revenue cycle, you need to ensure accurate patient identification. This is where RightPatient can help you.

It is a touchless biometric patient identification platform and is used by leading healthcare providers for a number of reasons. It prevents medical identity theft, optimizes the revenue cycle, reduces denied claims, prevents duplicate record creation, enhances patient safety, and more – leading to improved financials, boosting the bottom lines in the process.

Upon registration, RightPatient locks the medical records of the patients with their photos. Whenever an enrolled patient comes in, all he/she needs to do is look at the camera and it identifies them within seconds, providing the correct patient record to the EHR user and ensuring accurate patient identification. This ensures that the correct patient is identified right from the start – reducing billing errors and denied claims and optimizing revenue cycle in the process. This is something that every provider needs to ensure to survive during this unprecedented situation.

RightPatient has years of experience and has been helping protect over 10 million patient records. Duke Health and Community Medical Centers, among others, are using RightPatient to ensure safe, hygienic, and accurate patient identification. Are you optimizing your revenue cycle sensibly?

How to Prevent Medical Identity Theft During COVID-19 as Experts Predict Rising Cases

July 9, 2020/5705 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, COVID-19, Data Integrity, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Identification, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

The world has been drastically changed due to COVID-19 – it seems as if the whole thing was adapted from a sci-fi horror story. While many parts of the world have been opened up with precautions, it looks like the coronavirus pandemic has yet to complete its significant mark on humanity. For instance, new cases are surfacing in the US – over 2.6 million Americans have been infected as of June 29th, 2020. However, that will not stop hackers from attempting to steal patient data, which ultimately leads to medical identity theft. In fact, experts have warned that such cases will rise due to the pandemic. That being said, everyone within the US healthcare system is working hard to survive, serve patients, and open up. With all these overwhelming odds, one might even not have time for the answer to the question, “How to prevent medical identity theft even during the pandemic?” Fortunately, there is an answer – RightPatient, but more on that later.

Rising medical identity theft

Medical identity theft is nothing new – it has been around for quite some time now. In fact, more than 2.3 million Americans are victims of medical identity theft each year, whereas healthcare providers might be forced to pay settlement costs of around $250,000. However, a security expert like Randy Pargman, an ex-senior computer scientist of the FBI, has stated that there will be more cases of medical identity theft during the pandemic as there is a lucrative window of opportunity for hackers.

But why is that so? Mr. Pargman has stated that since the patient information contains valuable and sensitive data like Social Security numbers, insurance information, DOB, names, and addresses, these can easily be used by actors. They can simply pretend to be the patients and obtain medical services while the victims are billed fraudulently. Cases like this will be quite common unless healthcare providers know how to prevent medical identity theft. Thankfully, RightPatient does that effectively. It also helps to improve quality and safety with its platform.

Why are such cases so common?

The answer is quite simple – medical records are the most profitable forms of stolen information. To put it into perspective, stolen credit card information sells for up to $110 on the dark web, whereas stolen patient records sell for up to a whopping $1,000!

Thus, it is quite natural that hackers would target healthcare providers more, as they can sell the records for far more money. Fraudsters can also obtain expensive medical services, unobtainable drugs, and medical equipment for a mere $1,000. They are saving thousands of dollars – healthcare can get quite expensive. It is simple economics – wherever there is demand, there will be supply.

While providers are required to protect patient data due to laws like HIPAA, they usually implement inadequate security, ultimately leading to healthcare data breaches and medical identity theft. As previously mentioned, not everyone is facing such cases. Healthcare leaders have taken it upon themselves to protect their patients from medical identity theft and saving themselves from unnecessary costs due to HIPAA violations. Saving costs is even more necessary during the pandemic. So, how are the leaders answering the question, “How to prevent medical identity theft?”

How to prevent medical identity theft with RightPatient

RightPatient has years of experience with leading providers. A touchless biometric patient identification platform, RightPatient solves a number of issues. But before that, how does it work exactly?

It locks the medical records of the patients with their photos during registration. After enrollment, the platform simply takes a photo of the returning patients, matches it to the one saved within the record, and provides the appropriate EHR within seconds. The best part is that it does so without requiring a single touch from the patient, making it the most hygienic patient identification platform.

Thus, if a fraudster comes in assuming the identity of someone else, RightPatient will immediately red flag the person – preventing medical identity theft in real-time. RightPatient also prevents duplicate record creation, reduces denied claims, and enhances patient safety. All these lead to boosting the bottom lines of hospitals – something which is very much needed for providers currently to survive.

So, how can you prevent medical identity theft during and after the pandemic? The answer is RightPatient.