Biometrics-for-patient-identification-and-infection-control-and-hygiene-in-healthcare

Patient Hand Hygiene Report Casts Shadow on Contact Dependent Biometric Patient Identification

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Patient Hands May Pose Greatest Threat to Hospital Acquired Infections

Is the heightened awareness on ensuring that doctors, nurses, and other clinical staff wash their hands as part of strict hospital infection control protocols missing an important element? According to a new research report published by NBC News, hospitals would be well served to address another important demographic inside a facility that could perhaps pose an even greater threat to patient safety: patients themselves.

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A recent NBC news article reported that patients carry superbugs on their hands raising concerns about whether contact dependent biometric patient identificaiton solutions support hospital infection control.

Researchers at the University of Michigan released details of a report that found “nearly a quarter of patients they tested had some sort of drug-resistant germ on their hands when they were discharged from the hospital…” The results support the theory that many healthcare experts have long asserted – patients are a major threat to spreading the germs of superbug infections. Researchers tested for a number of bugs, and reported:

“We swabbed the palm, fingers, around nails of patients’ hands. The tests were done when patients were admitted, two weeks later, and then once a month for the next six months.” (Source: http://nbcnews.to/1Xv5Rck)

The report goes on to say that patients frequently bring multi-drug-resistant organisms on their hands to a hospital environment and drew the conclusion that this increases the probability that these organisms are likely to be transmitted to other patients and healthcare workers. A concluding thought of the report was:

“Despite concerns raised by some recent studies, patient hand-washing is not a routine practice in hospitals to date.” (Source: http://nbcnews.to/1Xv5Rck)

Patient Hand Hygiene Raises Concerns About Contact Dependent  Biometric Patient Identification Solutions

As more hospitals investigate the use of biometrics for patient identification, they quickly discover that hardware options available include contact-dependent devices (fingerprint, palm vein) and non-contact devices (iris and facial recognition). Is it a healthcare organization’s responsibility to evaluate the hygiene risks of asking patients to physically touch a biometric device for identification? Do hospitals have an obligation to weigh the risks of hospital-acquired infections that could materialize from using contact-dependent biometrics for patient identification?

The NBC News report certainly calls into question the hygiene risks of deploying any type of technology solution that requires physical contact with a patient and could lead to the spread of germs and disease. Our hope is that hospitals assessing the use of biometrics for patient identification will take this into account and understand the risks involved when using contact-dependent devices and the responsibility to sterilize the device after each use if the decision is made to deploy this type of hardware.

There are many factors to consider when evaluating the use of biometrics for patient identification in healthcare. As we learned from the NBC News report, supporting hospital infection control to prevent the spread of germs and disease by using contactless biometric patient identification is important to consider.

Curious to know more about how to assess the differences in patient identification technology? Download our eBook for more details. 

blab session discusses the current state of patient identification in healthcare

IntrepidNow Radio Discusses Current State of Patient Identification in Healthcare

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blab session discusses the current state of patient identification in healthcare

Delighted at the opportunity to discuss the current state of patient identification in healthcare with Joe Lavelle (@Resultant) from IntrepidNow Radio and Jared Johnson (@jaredpiano) today via blab. Joe and I had a lengthy discussion about patient ID in healthcare at this year’s HIMSS16 trade show and Joe was gracious enough to follow up our conversation with a formal blab session addressing the topic. Here is a brief summary of what we discussed today:

blab session discusses the current state of patient identification in healthcare

Joe Lavelle from IntrepidNow Healthcare Radio interviewed us during a blab session today to talk about the current state of patient identification in healthcare.

  1. How does RightPatient® serve its customers?
  2. Clearing up some of the common misunderstandings about the use of biometrics for patient identification in healthcare.
  3. What is the current state of the patient identification market? What are the leading technologies? What are the key issues? How are customers deploying patient ID solutions?
  4. Are their privacy issues related to implementation of patient identification solutions?
  5. A recent guest on my show, a telemedicine company CEO, told Joe that his largest competition is the status quo. Is that also true for RightPatient®?
  6. Information on CHIME’s National Patient ID Challenge launched in January.
  7. What can we expect from RightPatient® in 2016?

Grateful for the chance to talk about this critical issue in healthcare and offer insight on solutions and initiatives underway. It was an excellent discussion and we were able to touch on a number of issues affected by inaccurate patient identification including: medical identity theft/healthcare fraud, duplicate medical records/overlays, identifying patients at new touchpoints along the care continuum, the advantages of using photo biometrics for patient ID, the culture of patient ID, patient privacy, and more!

Here is the blab session in its entirety: 

Thank you to Joe Lavelle and Jared Johnson for their time today! Stay tuned to the “Resources” section of our Web site for future podcasts, blab sessions, and video interviews. 

 

review of biometric patient identification educational session at 2016 HIMSS conference

Takeaways on Biometric Patient ID from HIMSS 2016 Conference

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review of biometric patient identification educational session at 2016 HIMSS conference
review of biometric patient identification educational session at 2016 HIMSS conference

Several educational sessions at the 2016 HIMSS conference were dedicated to patient ID in healthcare.

Like most who attended last week’s annual HIMSS conference in Las Vegas, I was a bit overwhelmed at the amount of information, activities, and traffic swirling around the Exhibit Halls and lecture rooms. It’s difficult to not get swallowed up among 40,000+ attendees and even more hard to block out the flashing lights and unbelievably cool technology on display in order to focus on what matters most, but I had a set agenda to follow and stuck to my plan. This was the third HIMSS conference I have attended and I continue to be amazed at the outstanding job that HIMSS staff does to pull off this event each year, which only seems to keep growing in size, scope, and complexity. Hat tip to HIMSS staff who work tirelessly on making this event successful!

Buried among the central themes of advancing interoperability, cybersecurity, population health, consumer and patient engagement, and connected health, there were a handful of educational sessions dedicated to patient identification in healthcare including a presentation by Dr. Raymond Aller, a Clinical Professor at the University of California entitled: “Patient Identification: Biometric or Botched?”

This was the only educational session at the conference that I could see which was 100% dedicated to the use of biometrics for patient ID in healthcare and it was well attended – I counted approximately 75 people who showed up for the session. 

Dr. Aller presented what I felt was a fair, unbiased analysis of the patient identification landscape in healthcare and a thorough analysis (including strengths, weaknesses, and deployment examples) of biometric patient identification modalities available to hospitals and health organizations. Here is a brief overview of Dr. Aller’s central themes, and what he presented:

  1.  Text based patient identification is simply no longer an efficient or safe way to ID patients: Dr. Aller began his presentation by listing the consequences of failing to properly identify a patient including the patient safety, legal, and liability issues and public relations nightmare misidentification can create. He then demonstrated the drawbacks and limitations of text based patient ID calling it “obsolete” and pointing out that in 2016, hospitals and healthcare organizations can no longer afford the risks associated with this form of identification. He even went so far as to question the viability of continuing to use a master patient index (MPI) as a patient data repository, calling it a “dangerous” and “obsolete” concept.
  2. Healthcare fraud and medical identity theft: Dr. Aller then explained the potentially catastrophic consequences of healthcare fraud, medical identity theft, and duplicate medical records from misidentifying a patient and the additional problems and risks that data merges pose stressing that too often, hospitals spend hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of dollars a year cleaning data and merging records without ever having the foresight to implement technology that will sustain patient data integrity in the future. Bottom line? Relying on names and dates of birth (“what you know”) and ID cards (“what you have’) to identify patients is simply no longer safe or sufficient. The patient identification industry is evolving to identify patients by “who they are.”
  3.  Biometric patient identification technology overview: The last third of Dr. Aller’s presentation centered on an overview of biometric patient identification technologies available including a detailed description of fingerprint, palm vein, and iris recognition (also referred to as “photo biometrics”). Although Dr. Aller left out some key points about these biometric patient identification modality options (for example, he did not mention the back end biometric matching technology behind each of these modalities and why this is important to understand), his review was fair and provided a relatively unbiased look at the strengths and limitations of using biometrics for patient identification. One interesting point that Dr. Aller made was the fact that in a clinical setting, the use of fingerprint and palm vein biometrics for patient identification creates questions about hygiene and supporting hospital infection control policies because a patient must physcially touch a device for identification – an attribute that is not a factor with iris recognition since it is contactless to the patient. 
  4. Conclusion: Dr. Aller concluded his presentation by further extolling on the strengths of biometrics for patient identification but cautioned the audience that biometrics are by no means a panacea due to select psychological, sociological, and physiological limitations. However, Dr. Aller did point out that his research indicated that when presented with the option of using biometrics to protect their medical identities and keep them safe throughout the care continuum, over 99% of patients opt-in to using the technology.
  5. Question and Answer session: Selected attendees asked some very interesting questions during the Q&A session including one woman from a neonatal hospital who lamented that it is very difficult to identify newborns with biometrics since neither palm vein or fingerprint biometrics can be used on children (photo biometrics can be used on any child 10 months or older). Another person asked what biometric technology could be used to verify patient identities over the phone when they call in requesting access to protected health information (PHI).

Several other educational sessions during HIMSS were centered on patient identification in healthcare with several common themes emerging:

  1. The healthcare industry is slowly shifting from credential based to identity centric patient ID.
  2. A central reason that more hospitals aren’t researching how to more effectively identify patients are competing priorities. Healthcare simply has to drop the “wait and see” attitude to more effective patient identification. 
  3. 198,000 deaths annually can be contributed to patient misidentification.
  4. Patient misidentification resulted in $77 billion Medicare and Medicaid fraud and improper payments.

If I had a crystal ball, I’d venture to say that patient identification will continue to be a hot-button topic in healthcare during 2016 and beyond, largely because so many other elements of care along the continuum are contingent upon it and so many back-end processes and functions (e.g. – revenue cycle management) depend on getting it right. 

What lessons did you take away from any of the HIMSS 2016 educational sessions dedicated to patient ID in healthcare?

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AHIMA Survey on Patient Matching Illustrates HIM Burdens, Frustrations

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The following post was submitted by Brad Marshall, Enterprise Development Consultant with RightPatient®

AHIMA Sheds Light on Patient Matching Problems in Healthcare

The American Health Information Management Society (AHIMA) released details of a survey yesterday that revealed over half of Health Information Management (HIM) professionals still spend a significant amount of time reconciling duplicate medical records at their respective healthcare facilities. The survey went on to reveal some very interesting statistics on patient matching and linking patient records, illustrating the burden that duplicate medical records have not only on HIM staff, but the dangers care providers face who increasingly rely on access to accurate, holistic patient data to provide safe, quality care. One particular stat that jumped out at us was:

“…less than half (47 percent) of respondents state they have a quality assurance step in their registration or post registration process, and face a lack of resources to adequately correct duplicates.”

Accurate-patient-matching-in-healthcare-through-reconciling-duplicate-medical-records

A recent survey of HIM professionals by AHIMA illustrates the problems that duplicate medical records have on accurate patient matching in healthcare.

This is an area of particular concern due to the fact that our research has shown that many healthcare facilities spend tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars per year reconciling duplicate medical records but very few have technology in place to prevent duplicates in the future. It’s encouraging that accurate patient matching in healthcare seems to finally be getting the attention it deserves, due to the digitization of the industry, the shift change from fee-for-service to a value based payment system and a burgeoning healthcare ecosystem laser focused on improving both individual outcomes and population health. AHIMA’s survey supports this assertion by stating:

“Accurate patient matching “underpins and enables the success of all strategic initiatives in healthcare…”

Equally concerning is the fact that less than half of HIM professionals surveyed have any type of patient registration quality assurance policy in place and only slightly over half of survey respondents could accurately say what their duplicate medical rate actually is. Not to mention the fact that HIM professionals spend entirely too much of their time reconciling duplicate medical records, with 73% reporting that they work duplicates “at a minimum of weekly.” 

As more healthcare organizations and facilities begin to understand that accurate patient matching has a major impact on other downstream activities, it is encouraging that the issue is finally getting the attention it deserves helped in part by the efforts of AHIMA, and CHIME’s national patient identification challenge which is scheduled to kick off this month.  It’s clear that the healthcare industry is slowly coming to the realization that many new initiatives borne from the HiTech Act and Meaningful Use (e.g. – population health, ACOs, health information exchanges, interoperability) don’t really have any hope to succeed in the absence of accurate patient identification. 

Duplicate Reconciliation Unnecessary Burden on HIM?

Early last year, we wrote a blog post on How Accurate Patient Identification Impacts Health Information Management (HIM) which highlights the exorbitant amount of time HIM spends reconciling duplicates and the opportunity cost this brings. For example, time spent on duplicate clean up and reconciliation could instead be allocated to coding for reimbursement and preparing, indexing, and imaging all paper medical records – a critical component in the effort to capture and transfer as much health data as possible to a patient’s EHR.

The fact of the matter is that as health data integrity stewards and medical record gatekeepers, HIM professionals are better served spending their time ensuring proper and accurate reimbursement and medical record accuracy then reconciling duplicates which should have never been created in the first place. HIM staff perform one of if not the most critical functions in healthcare by ensuring health data integrity, especially in light of the increasing reliance of often disparate healthcare providers need to access a complete medical record that includes as much information as possible.

As we noted in the post last January:

“…many hospitals have expanded responsibilities vis-à-vis Meaningful Use, EHR implementation, and meeting Affordable Care Act requirements, and it has become disadvantageous to continue devoting any time at all to duplicate medical record and overlay reconciliation. Biometric patient identification solutions open the door to re-allocation of HIM FTEs to more critical functions such as coding, reimbursement, and reporting. Simply put, implementing biometrics during patient registration is opening the door for HIM departments across the industry to provide a larger and more productive support role to meet the shifting sands of reimbursement and address the need to move towards quality vs. quantity of care.”

Conclusion

We could not have summed up the issue of duplicate medical record creation and reconciliation and inaccurate patient matching in healthcare more succinctly than this quote from AHIMA in the survey summary:

“Reliable and accurate calculation of the duplicate rate is foundational to developing trusted data, reducing potential patient safety risks and measuring return on investments for strategic healthcare initiatives.” 

Trusted data. Isn’t this the backbone of the new healthcare paradigm? Certainly we can’t expect to achieve many of the purported advances in healthcare in the absence of clean, accurate health data. It’s time to eliminate duplicate medical records forever, and establish cohesive, quality assured patient matching in healthcare.

What are your biggest takeaways from the AHIMA report on accurate patient matching in healthcare?

Brad Marshall works for RightPatient - the industry's best biometric patient identification solution.Brad Marshall is an Enterprise Development Consultant with RightPatient®. With several years of experience implementing both large and small scale biometric patient identification projects in healthcare, Brad works closely with key hospital executives and front line staff to ensure project success.

 

biometric patient identification in healthcare

Our Top Five Biometric Patient Identification Blog Posts of 2015

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biometric patient identification in healthcare

2015 was an important year of growth and innovation for RightPatient®. We started this blog two years ago to help educate the healthcare community on the importance of establishing secure, accurate patient identification in healthcare and to establish a trusted resource to help understand how the use of biometrics for patient ID has proven to be an important tool to help increase patient safety, eliminate duplicate medical records, improve revenue cycle management, and prevent medical identity theft and fraud. 

biometric patient identification in healthcare

Read through some of our most popular blog posts on biometric patient identification in healthcare during 2015

Throughout our journey, we have shared many important posts demonstrating how our hospital partners have successfully implemented biometrics for patient identification and provided real life examples of the post deployment benefits realized. Among the dozens of posts the RightPatient® team posted during 2015, the following posts were the most popular:

  1. Uniting Accurate Patient Identification with Secure Single Sign-On (SSO) to Improve Data Integrity in Healthcare: In an effort to help continue increasing patient data integrity in healthcare, we announced a new partnership with Healthcast,  the #1 ranked single sign-on solution (KLAS, 2014) to increase patient safety and secure access to patient data. 
  2. RightPatient® Prevents Healthcare Fraud at University Health System: Healthcare fraud and medical identity theft are two rising concerns for healthcare organizations because they jeopardize patient safety, raise the cost of care, and could lead to non-reimbursable medical procedures. University Hospital in Augusta, GA recently was able to prevent healthcare fraud in their ER through the use of the RightPatient® with photo biometrics.
  3. Removing the Word “Scan” from Iris Recognition for Healthcare Biometrics: Fueled by Hollywood sensationalism, iris recognition biometric identification is often depicted as “scanning” a person’s eyes with visible light. The fact is, no visible light is used with iris recognition and instead of a “scan,” iris biometrics takes a high resolution digital photograph. 
  4. Identify Unconscious, Unknown Patients with Biometric Identification Technology: The difficulty to identify an unconscious or disoriented patient jeopardizes patient safety in healthcare. Biometric patient identification has emerged as a technology capable of identifying patients in these conditions, but did you know that not all biometric patient ID solutions have the ability to identify unconscious or disoriented patients? 
  5. Biometric Patient Identification Implementation Should Be Higher On The Priority List: Despite the fact that accurate patient identification affects so many downstream clinical and financial activities, hospitals and healthcare organizations are still not placing enough emphasis on evaluating implementation and use of this technology as a priority. 

We will continue to research and write educational and informational posts during 2016 about the rising use of biometrics for patient identification in healthcare including case studies and examples of how our technology is helping hospitals around the world to: eliminate duplicate medical records, prevent medical identity theft and fraud, increase patient data integrity, and improve patient safety. 2015 was a year of significant growth for RightPatient® as we continue working toward our mission to offer the most innovative and comprehensive patient identification solution that increases patient safety, reduces costs, improves the quality of care, and enhances the patient experience. 

Curious to know more about the use of biometric patient identification in healthcare? Is there a topic that you would like to learn more about? Drop us a message at: jtrader@rightpatient.com with your ideas and suggestions!

Thank you for being a part of our blog community!

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Patient Identification in Healthcare: The Year in Review

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2015 was another breakout year for the healthcare industry. From the transition to ICD-10 to advancements (or lack thereof) in interoperability to the expanding role of big data, 2015 demonstrated that healthcare continues to be in the throes of a major transition spearheaded by rapid digitization of the industry. While the jury is still out on exactly what type of lasting impact the events of 2015 will have, one area that stands out is the increased attention of establishing accurate patient identification.

There are simply too many downstream activities affected by accurate patient identification in healthcare to continue pushing the issue to the back burner of priorities, so we were quite pleased that 2015 seemed to be the year where the topic of accurate patient ID is finally getting the attention it deserves at the front of the line.

Patient-identification-in-healthcare-year-in-review-RightPatient

Did accurate patient identification in healthcare receive more attention in 2015?

Here is a recap of notable and influential patient identification news and events that we identified as the most impactful in 2015:

#1 – CHIME flexes its clout. Big time.

  • The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) issues national patient ID challenge: Few things get people excited about an initiative than monetary incentives. In March of 2015, CHIME issued a challenge to help discover the most innovative solution to patient matching. The incentive? 

RightPatient-can-save-millions-with-patient-identification

Our take: CHIME’s national patient ID challenge is flat out smart. Dangling the financial carrot to the healthcare industry will surely spur innovative approaches to solving this issue and motivate health IT vendors to step up and address the challenge. Wholeheartedly backed by a coalition of influential organizations and individuals in healthcare, the challenge is poised to foster creative approaches to solving this dangerous and festering problem in healthcare.  

“We must first acknowledge that the lack of a consistent patient identification strategy is the most significant challenge inhibiting the safe and secure electronic exchange of health information. As our healthcare system begins to realize the innately transformational capabilities of health IT, moving toward nationwide health information exchange, this essential core functionality – consistency in accurately identifying patients – must be addressed. As data exchange increases among providers, patient data matching errors and mismatches will become exponentially more dangerous and costly.” (CHIME’s letter to Congress, May 7, 2014 http://bit.ly/1NVNvzk)

Our take: CHIME’s letter to Congress could be a watershed moment to finally push accurate patient identification into the forefront of priorities for the healthcare industry. Since CHIME is a very influential organization that Captiol Hill pays attention to, their public push to move forward on finding a viable solution to accurate patient identification in healthcare could prove to be the tipping point to solve this serious issue. In addition, at a Congressional hearing in June, CHIME publicly stated in a hearing convened by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) that advancing accurate patient identification in healthcare will, “radically reduce medical errors and save lives.”

#2 – AHIMA adds their voice and influence to push for a patient identification solution

Our take: As more well established and influential healthcare organizations lend their voices to solving the patient identification issue, the odds of discovering a solution will precipitously increase. Long viewed as a conscientious problem with too many complexities to solve, many healthcare professionals are finally coming to the conclusion that patient identification in healthcare is a single catalyst that directly influences the success or failure of many other initiatives in the industry: interoperability, health information exchange, and mHealth to name a few. We are pleased that AHIMA is more openly wielding its impact as a respected and trusted organization on such a critical issue in healthcare.

#3 – FHIR is great, but will interoperability never work without a national identifier

“There’s people out there who think that with FHIR we’ve solved all the problems. We haven’t, because we’re not authorized to solve lots of the problems” (Graham Grieve on frustrations of the moratorium Congress enacted to block funding research on a national patient identifier: http://bit.ly/1O3HbGK) 

Our take: Without sounding like a broken record or belaboring the point, for quite some time we have voiced concerns about advancing interoperability in healthcare without first addressing the need to establish accurate patient identification.  When you hear a quote like the one from Graham Grieve above from someone battling on the front lines of interoperability, it lends even more credence to the argument that it seems rather pointless and futile to continuing spending millions to advance interoperability in healthcare without having the ability to accurately identify patients in disparate health systems.

#4 – Biometric patient identification deployments continue to rise

  • More on this topic in next week’s post, but 2015 was a banner year for biometrics in healthcare. From single sign-on to access control to accurate patient identification, we observed a rapid increase in the deployment of biometrics at hospitals across the globe. Research firm Tractica forecasts that the nascent global healthcare biometrics market revenue will hit $3.5 billion in revenues by 2024, foreshadowing the tremendous potential of this technology and making it one of the most promising opportunities for the biometric industry.

What’s your take on the year on patient identification in healthcare? What moments or events stand out to you? Leave us a note in the comments section!

Next week: RightPatient® – The Year in Review — a short post of our major accomplishments during 2015. Stay tuned!

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RightPatient® Prevents Healthcare Fraud at University Health System

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RightPatient-prevents-healthcare-fraud

Healthcare Fraud Jeopardizes Patient Safety and Raises the Cost of Care
Emergency Departments (ED) can be subjected to healthcare fraud from individuals without insurance seeking care, especially those with manageable chronic conditions. These patients often go to hospital EDs because they don’t have access to any source of care and in a large number of cases, attempt to defraud the healthcare system by providing different names, dates of birth, or other demographic information during registration.

Hospital patient access staff on alert for healthcare fraud often must strike a tricky balance of ensuring a patient receives timely care with the need to identify and prevent these individuals from illegally obtaining medical services that could raise liability and possibly harm the patient.

University-Health-Care-stopped-healthcare-fraud-in-the-ED-with-RightPatient

Through the use of photo biometrics, the University Health System was able to catch a patient attempting to commit healthcare fraud in the ED.

Patients who may be trying to defraud the system can raise the cost of care for all of us with most of the cost to treat these individuals passed on to insurance providers that raise premiums to subsidize care provided to the uninsured. It’s a persistent problem in healthcare that jeopardizes patient safety.

Medical Identity Theft and Healthcare Fraud are Persistent Patient Safety Problems in Healthcare
The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) estimates that the financial losses due to health care fraud are in the tens of billions of dollars each year. The Ponemon Institute released a study earlier this year that reported a 21.7% increase in medical identity theft cases since the previous year’s study.

A costly and often complex and time consuming issue to resolve, healthcare fraud and medical identity theft often financially decimate victims and healthcare institutions and can have a ripple effect that negatively impacts provider reputation. Add to that evolving patient expectations that healthcare providers are taking the necessary steps to protect their identities and ensure the privacy of their protected health information (PHI), and it’s clear that this is a festering problem in the industry that deserves immediate and swift preventative action.

Implementing Biometric Patient Identification to Identify Potential Healthcare Fraud

When University Health System staff sat down to address the problem of healthcare fraud and began to assess patient authentication technology options that had the potential to prevent it, they decided to deploy RightPatient® biometric patient identification as part of an overall strategy to increase patient safety, eliminate duplicate medical records, and prevent medical identity theft and fraud throughout their network. Using photo biometrics as their preferred modality, University launched the RightPatient® patient identification system in the summer of 2015 at both hospitals in their network and began registering patients and linking their unique biometric credentials to a single electronic health record (EHR).

RightPatient-prevents-healthcare-fraud

Through the use of photo biometrics, the University Health System was able to catch a patient attempting to commit healthcare fraud in the ED.

Thusfar, the deployment has been a resounding success, with over 99% of patients opting in to ensure the safety and privacy of their PHI. University placed a great deal of emphasis to ensure their staff understood why the RightPatient® solution was implemented and meticulously trained patient access personnel on how to properly use the system prior to launch.

Their efforts paid off.

Recently, a patient was registered through the ED in the RightPatient® system, and then returned to the same ED days later claiming a different date of birth and a different last name. Following hospital registration protocol, the patient access representative took the patient’s photo with an iris camera and the RightPatient® system immediately flagged the patient’s medical record and instantly notified staff that the patient had previously enrolled with their biometric credentials already linked to another unique EHR. University staff then realized that the patient was attempting to assume another identity and took action to prevent it.

Even if this patient had enrolled in the RightPatient® biometric patient identification system at another location within University’s network, they still would have been flagged as a potential fraud case if they returned to a different facility due to the fact that RightPatient® seamlessly integrated with University’s Epic EHR system and can be used at any point along the care continuum, regardless of the patient’s physical location within the network (RightPatient® can even be used to authenticate an identity on patient portals and mHealth applications!).

Conclusion

The persistent and dangerous problem of medical identity theft and healthcare fraud is a direct threat to patient safety but also has repercussions that impact many other facets of care delivery. Implementing modern patient identification technologies that have the unique ability to prevent healthcare fraud should be a key goal for any medical facility set on improving safety, lowering liability, and raising the quality of care. The University Health System case clearly demonstrates that RightPatient® deters medical identity theft and healthcare fraud throughout the care continuum by linking a patient’s unique biometric credentials to one medical record.

Thank you to the staff at University for allowing us to share this story with our community!

 

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RightPatient® Helps Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital Fight Healthcare Fraud

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RightPatient-for-patient-identification-prevents-healthcare-fraud

Prescription Drug Abuse

Eliminating fraud is a pressing issue in healthcare that continues to threaten patient safety. The FBI states on their Web site: “With no signs of slowing down, healthcare fraud is a rising threat, with national health care expenditures estimated to exceed $3 trillion in 2014 and spending continuing to outpace inflation.” On average, healthcare fraud accounts for 10% of our nation’s annual healthcare expenditure.

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Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital recently used photo biometrics to prevent healthcare fraud.

One form of healthcare fraud seen in emergency departments at hospitals around the country is individuals attempting to commit identity theft in order to obtain prescription medication. With approximately 8.76 million people in the U.S. abusing prescription medication and the lion’s share of those medications coming from a doctor’s prescription, medical facilities are proactively stepping up their efforts to implement stronger patient identification safeguards to ensure that the problem is addressed. After all, many patients may not understand the health dangers and risks of someone stealing your identity and inaccurate health data being attributed to your medical record – it is extremely dangerous and could result in serious injury, even death should a clinician act on incorrect protected health data (PHI) in your medical record. 

Just how bad is the problem of prescription drug abuse in the U.S.? Consider the fact that every day in the United States, 44 people die as a result of prescription opioid overdose. Fortunately, there are tools available to catch identity fraud at the point-of-service in hospitals before harm is done.

Using Photo Biometrics to Deter Healthcare Fraud

Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital implemented the RightPatient® patient identity management solutionusing photo biometrics to help support patient safety, eliminate duplicate medical records, and prevent and deter medical identity theft. Recently, a patient arrived at the Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital emergency room seeking treatment for an injury that according to the patient had just occurred in the prior hour. The patient signed in under a fraudulent name, date of birth, address, invalid marital status, a disconnected phone number, invalid employment status, fraudulent emergency contact, and an invalid social security number. The patient proceeded with registration, and signed all admission paperwork under the fraudulent information.

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Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital recently used photo biometrics to prevent healthcare fraud.

During the registration process, the registration clerk used the RightPatient® photo biometrics solution to enroll the patient since this was (according the patient) the first time they had ever been to the hospital. The RightPatient® system worked just as it was designed, sending the registration clerk an alert that indicated the patent had been previously enrolled and that their biometric credentials had already been linked to another unique electronic medical record, providing the medical record number the patient had been registered under.

The clerk was then able to access the medical record the patient had been previously registered under and after review, Hugh Chatham was able to see other visits for that same day in other clinic/practice locations. A decision was made to contact local authorities.

Thanks to the RightPatient® software and the efforts of this staff member, Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital was able to securely identify the patient, avoid duplicate medical records, prevent identity theft and associated healthcare costs, and help maintain a safe environment for patients. 

Conclusion

Encouraging healthcare facilities to implement safeguards that ensure accurate patient authentication through technologies such as photo biometrics has been our mission since we founded RightPatient®. We will continue to share our success stories with others to help educate and inform in the overall effort to remove fraud and increase patient safety in healthcare.

Have a story on how the use of biometrics prevented a potential case of healthcare fraud? Please share it with us in the comments!

Bethesda-Health-implements-RightPatient's-biometric-patient-identification-solution

Bethesda Health Implements Iris Biometrics for Patient Identification

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Bethesda-Health-implements-RightPatient's-biometric-patient-identification-solution

Excited to announce that another hospital system has implemented our biometric patient identification solution using iris biometrics to help raise patient safety standards, safeguard patients from medical identity theft and fraud at the point of service, and prevent the creation of duplicate medical records.

Bethesda-Health-implements-RightPatient's-biometric-patient-identification-solution

Bethesda Health becomes the latest hospital system to implement the RightPatient® biometric patient identification solution using iris recognition.

After carefully evaluating several biometric patient identification solutions, Bethesda Health chose to deploy iris biometrics due to it’s non-contact, hygienic form factor which supports hospital infection control initiatives plus, implementation of RightPatient® poises Bethesda Health to eventually extend the use of the technology to any patient touchpoint along the care continuum that requires patient identification accuracy to ensure optimal outcomes. This is critical foresight by Bethesda staff who recognized that accurate patient identification in the new healthcare paradigm extends far beyond in or outpatient registration within their facilities and should now be addressed holistically by providing secure and accurate patient ID at any point along the care continuum where patients have access to medical care or sensitive personal health information (e.g. patient portals, mHealth apps, home health, etc.).

We welcome Bethesda Health as a trusted partner in the effort to increase patient safety, reduce duplicate medical record rates, eliminate medical identity theft, improve revenue cycle efficiency through the use of our biometric patient identification platform using iris recognition. 

RightPatient-improves-revenue-cycle-efficiency

For more information on the deployment, please visit the news release section of our Web site. 

Learn more about the advantages of using biometrics for patient identification by visiting the Resources section of our Web site.

accurate patient identification in healthcare discussed during 09/11/15 #HITs,m tweet chat

#HITsm Tweetchat Highlights Progress, Obstacles for Patient Identification in Healthcare

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accurate patient identification in healthcare discussed during 09/11/15 #HITs,m tweet chat
accurate patient identification in healthcare discussed during 09/11/15 #HITs,m tweet chat

Healthcare professionals from around the world discussed the dilemma of achieving accurate patient identification in healthcare during the 09.11.15 #HITsm tweetchat. (Photo courtesy of HL7 Standards)

We had the honor of hosting the weekly #HITsm Twitterchat this past Friday centered on the topic of patient identification in healthcare. For those not aware of the #HITsm weekly chat, the HL7 Standards Web site deftly describes it as:

“…#HITsm is an acronym for “healthcare IT social media” and we focus on current topics that are influencing healthcare technology, health IT, and the use of social media in healthcare.” (courtesy of: http://www.hl7standards.com/hitsm-chat/)

The chat demographic spans a wide range of healthcare professionals — vendors, doctors, patients, industry experts, and even national professional healthcare organizations — all coalescing for one hour each week to discuss a wide range of topics related to health IT. 

Considering the importance of establishing accurate patient identification in healthcare and it’s ripple effect to many other aspects of care delivery, interoperability, accountability, and improving individual and population health, we selected this as a topic for the weekly discussion. Included in the discussion was an evaluation and assessment of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives’ (CHIME) national patient identity challenge to determine if it will actually produce a solution that will eradicate the burdens of matching patient data and bring us closer to establishing higher data integrity, reducing medical errors, and improving care.

Topics for the chat included:

1. Establishing a national patient identifier continues to be a hot debate – will it ever materialize? Are there tangible benefits to a national patient identifier?
2. Will @CIOCHIME’s national patient ID challenge eradicate the burdens of matching patient data and bring us closer to establishing higher data integrity, reducing medical errors, and improving care?
3. Will true healthcare interoperability ever be realized in the absence of fixing the problem of inaccurate patientID?
4. Do patients now have an inherently larger role to ensure the accuracy of their medical records?
5. Does the explosion of mobile devices, telehealth, & mhealth tools raise the urgency level for healthcare providers to implement stronger patient ID technology?
6. What new patient identification technologies show promise to help improve patient matching and interoperability?

Responses, comments, and opinions to these topics were insightful and intelligent. Here is a list of select responses and feedback to some of the topics:

Topic 1: Establishing a national patient identifier continues to be a hot debate – will it ever materialize? Are there tangible benefits to a national patient identifier?

Topic 2: Will @CIOCHIME’s national patient ID challenge eradicate the burdens of matching patient data and bring us closer to establishing higher data integrity, reducing medical errors, and improving care?

Topic 3: Will true healthcare #interoperability ever be realized in the absence of fixing the problem of inaccurate #patientID?

Topic 4: Do patients now have an inherently larger role to ensure the accuracy of their medical records?

Topic 5: Does the explosion of mobile devices, telehealth, & mhealth tools raise the urgency level for healthcare providers to implement stronger patient ID technology?

          T5: Again, use case specific. Many of the use cases today won’t benefit from national pat id… BUT… not say to they won’t #HITsm

Topic 6: What new patient identification technologies show promise to help improve patient matching and interoperability?

           #HITsm T6 In healthcare, I would expect less fraud w biometric ID’s. Solves unconscious patient problem and the form time problem. #HITsm

A copy of the complete chat transcript can be found here.

As you can see from the selected tweets, the topic of achieving accurate patient identification in healthcare is not easy especially in the context of identifying a solution that can be used as a universal credential. We were pleased that the #HITsm tweet chat participants provided pragmatic, intelligent comments and insight to our questions demonstrating their keen ability to identify the root causes of achieving a national patient identifier and their tacit support for CHIME’s contest and prowess to thrust this complex issue into the national spotlight.

Our thanks to @OchoTex and @michenoteboom for providing us the opportunity to host their weekly #HITsm chat on patient identification in healthcare and for all of the healthcare professionals who participated!