Patient safety issues occur due to patient misidentifications

July 31, 2019/5566 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, EHR, healthcare, Iris Recognition, Medical Record Mix-ups, Patient Experience, Patient Identification /by Matt Gibson

When electronic health records (EHRs) were introduced, people lauded it as the next big thing in the technological landscape of the healthcare industry. There were many reasons – it was entirely digital as the name suggests, could be accessed quickly and whenever required, reduced paperwork, among many other reasons. However, once it was widely implemented, the reality was drastically different. Instead of solving these problems, EHRs added additional ones along the way – patient safety issues.

EHRs have created many problems for patients and healthcare providers alike. They have created risks which were unpredicted at the time of their implementation, which can potentially generate the chance to make grave errors in the treatment processes for patients, specifically if the treatment involves medicines. If this seems terrible, it gets even worse. These problems associated with EHRs are much more catastrophic for children and younger patients since their prescribed drugs are age-based. A study has found that EHRs do not take age into account; thus, it does not tackle the problems associated in a pediatric environment. Other than that, patient safety issues like matching errors are synonymous with EHRs. This is where biometric patient identification systems like RightPatient come into play.

The problems healthcare providers face while using EHRs lead to misidentifications mostly. Some of the challenges EHR users face are:

Problems associated with displaying patient information, or incomplete/corrupt patient data
Issues related to patient data entries which cause delays
Problems with EHRs regarding feedback or notifications
Disruption in the workflow if data needs to be shared

So what are the actual problems associated with patient safety issues caused by EHRs?

Restricted information results in wrong medications

EHRs usually provide the hospitals with blank data fields which the latter can fill in, if required, regarding making notes making it easier for colleagues. However, they do not know whether their colleagues have access to those specific fields, which can create many problems. For example, if a doctor had made a note within the EHR regarding the medical condition of a patient, say glucose level, the nurse who will administer the medication may not be able to view this note because her access is restricted, not taking into account the medical condition. Such problems lead to a lot of medical complications. Likewise, if required fields are not available to be viewed by everyone in the hospital, the staff may get confused between patients with common characteristics like name, address, etc., causing patient matching errors.

A patient is provided with excess or wrong medication due to an entry error

This is the primary cause of confusing units – between imperial units and metric units. Thus, as it is common in the US to use pounds, and if the weight is entered in pounds, but the EHR accepts only kilograms, this will hamper with the medication. Medications are sometimes dependant on the weight, especially in the cases of children, and they may, unfortunately, receive larger doses of medicine than required, which can be fatal. Other than that, if a patient is misidentified, then this will cause the patient to receive the wrong medication as well.

Missed doses of medications occur due to problematic information displays

EHRs can usually list all the medicines that have been scheduled for patients, along with the time and dosage required. However, sometimes due to patient matching errors, they may end up with the medicines planned for some other patient, and this can be fatal for both the patients involved if someone is not cautious enough while administering the medications.

Duplicate patient IDs are created

By far, one of the most significant flaws of EHRs is consistent to this very day. News regarding patient matching errors are very common, and at least one person you know has faced it. How does it happen? Very simply – once a patient comes in and a hospital representative does not find the individual’s record in the EHR, the employee tries to save time by creating a new ID instead of searching more in-depth for the correct record. The staff thinks that this is the way to save time and effort but generates another source for losses by the employer. Sometimes even the patients are to be blamed – if they are not attentive enough while verification, the hospital staff may pick the wrong record for them. Its effects can range from being financial losses to even life-threatening. Due to this single issue, everyone involved with healthcare has suffered – patients, healthcare providers, insurance companies, and so on. Healthcare companies are now clamoring for a unique patient ID solution to eliminate these errors.

Medical ID thefts take place

Another consequence of patient safety issues via EHRs – fraudulent activities. Addicts and professional thieves can very easily misuse others’ IDs and gain access to healthcare benefits or drugs which are entitled to the actual patients, resulting in financial losses incurred by the unfortunate patients. All this happens because there was no sure way to identify whether the medical record belonged to the perpetrator, until now.

What can be the solution to patient safety issues?

As seen from the problems, all of them point in one direction – patient matching errors. From all of this, patient identification error is seen as a disease in itself of the healthcare industry. Everyone involved is affected and suffers due to it in various ways and degrees. It is a multibillion-dollar problem in the US, where fixing a single entry costs from $1000-5000.

However, its days are numbered, it seems, as biometric patient identification systems like RightPatient are successfully eliminating it from the healthcare providers who use it. It uses iris scanning, which is easy and convenient for patients – all they need to do is look into the camera, and they are identified accurately. Another benefit of this biometric modality is that it also correctly identifies the irises of the younger patients as irises are formed within ten months of birth and remain unchanged. Patients also love it because there is no chance of getting any contagious diseases as it does not require physical touch. Over a hundred healthcare providers are using it, and they are reiterating the same thing – patient experience has improved along with patient safety due to the reduction of errors and the speed of the process.

Patient engagement apps are reducing hospital readmission rates

July 29, 2019/5969 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Connected Health, healthcare, Patient Engagement, Patient Outcomes /by Matt Gibson

According to a recent study, patient engagement technologies like patient retention apps are more likely to lead towards better healthcare outcomes. Patients who used these apps contributed to reducing hospital readmission rates compared to those patients who did not use engagement apps.

Patient engagement technologies like CircleCare, a patient retention app, have shown that they aid patients having chronic diseases to visit their healthcare providers more prudently. Rather than going to the EDs (emergency departments of their hospitals and spending a significant amount of money which could be preventable, they used these patient engagement technologies to take care of themselves and also contact their physicians whenever required, regarding their health updates and asking for assistance directly within the app. The latter is much more desirable as it saves money from a preventable hospitalization and where the patients have tools provided by their healthcare providers, thus, reducing hospital readmission rates.

According to the study, patients suffering from chronic conditions face some challenges getting a cohesive healthcare service- they need to go through several primary and supporting facilities for the full experience, thus are bombarded with different data points and care sites, which result in a disrupted and broken healthcare experience.

The research also showed that tools which provide the patients with facilities like access to their health information, tracking their activities, are helping to deliver superior quality healthcare and help the patients to stay on track regarding their post-discharge guidelines, all of which leads to only better patient outcomes.

Patient engagement tools and better patient outcomes are positively correlated- the more the use of these tools like CircleCare, the more active participation is seen from the patients, and thus, the better are the patient outcomes as hospital readmissions are fewer for these engaged patients. Even if the patients had multiple diseases, as long as they had access to the tools and were using them actively, the research showed these patients contributed to reducing hospital readmission rates.

The research was carried out by grouping patients by their chronic conditions, hypertension, diabetes, asthma, and so on. As previously mentioned, patients with chronic or complicated cases who had access to patient engagement tools were readmitted fewer times compared to those who did not have access or did not use it.

These results show that patients are becoming health conscious than ever and are opening up to useful patient engagement tools. It is a positive outcome overall, as the patients are choosing to pursue an active and healthy lifestyle and not resort to hospital readmissions, which can be expensive and inconvenient. The study also demonstrated that unless it is too severe, the patients choose to communicate with their physicians via the engagement tools instead of opting for readmissions or similar actions. This way, they can talk about any discomfort or situations they are facing and get instant advice, which helps them save a trip to the ED. Thus, patient engagement tools are taking healthcare out of hospitals and making it accessible via mobile devices, which is very much convenient for the patients themselves.

So, what are these patient engagement tools that are pushing healthcare to better heights? One of the prime examples is CircleCare, a patient retention app which doubles as a patient engagement app. It has all the features of a perfect patient engagement tool. CircleCare can track steps, schedule medicines reminders, record glucose level, blood pressure, and also provide a community where the patients can engage with one another for exchanging health tips- a social media for patients. Moreover, it is also a means for patients to communicate with their healthcare providers; thus, they can contact them whenever necessary, without any hassle. Once a hospital registers to the service, they direct their patients to download the app to their smartphones/tablets and register as their patients, and that’s it! Patient engagement tools like CircleCare not only help the patients to communicate with their physicians but also help them lead and maintain a healthy and active lifestyle, which in turn generates improved patient outcomes and results in reducing hospital readmission rates, making it a must-have engagement tool.

Patient misidentification cases are persistent as no industry-wide solution exists

July 21, 2019/7039 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, EHR, healthcare, Patient Errors, Patient Experience, Patient Identification, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Synchronizing medical information with the appropriate patients accordingly – how hard can it be, right? Well, it is precisely the opposite. It is easier said than done – patient misidentification cases are abundant. Since the introduction of electronic health records (EHRs), people thought that it would make the lives of everyone involved easier, but the reverse has happened. EHRs are filled with issues like misspellings, incomplete data, common names, outdated addresses, and so on, which overall leads to duplication of records. One of the consequences of all of this, according to a reputed organization, is the match rates being an average of 80%, sometimes even lower. It doesn’t sound all that bad, but it is the result obtained from the same healthcare provider the records have been created in!

One out of every five patients is likely to suffer from patient identification errors and become one of the many patient misidentification cases in the US. This is not the only problem, however. Patient matching errors are like a web created by spiders – trapping all the parties who are connected to patient identification – patients, healthcare providers, physicians, insurance companies, and so on.

Patient misidentification cases are also synonymous with rising costs as patient misidentification is famous for being a persistent multibillion-dollar problem in the healthcare industry. A patient matching error costs a hospital around $2000, and if we look at the bigger picture, there are $1.5 million of denied claims for a single hospital in a given year. That is an outrageous amount of money which is completely wasted due to these errors.

As per the definition, patient matching refers to obtaining the accurate medical record for a given patient whenever necessary, to make informed decisions regarding the health of the patient. Healthcare professionals are frustrated that this is not what they experience whenever they are matching the patients with their records and are clamoring for something which will change the industry and generate accurate patient identification – something RightPatient is very good at doing.

Let’s explore more in-depth into why patient matching errors occur. Patient matching is also reliant on the hospital employees who come into contact with it – they need to fill in the gaps for the new data, or else they might need to update changes in data like a surname, address, etc. to ensure accuracy. However, errors, in this case, maybe made by either the patient, the staff, or both. A patient might not be attentive and may not check whether accurate data has been entered; likewise, an employee may not check with the patient to ensure he has put in the correct data or not. They might think that it is not a big deal, but there lies the problem. Such inconsistencies which they believe are inconsequential lead to increased waiting times, worse patient outcomes, financial losses, wrong treatments, and sometimes even result in deaths.

A reputed individual in the industry stated that to combat these errors, a lot of countries have switched to unique IDs for patients. Sadly, the US is not doing that yet, as it has no nationwide standardized patient identifier nor any effective strategy to do so. Thus, the responsibility is pushed onto the shoulders of the healthcare providers, each coming up with their own approach for identifying patients.

A lot of suggestions have been made by experts to solve these errors, like software for patient identification, improvements in data standards, and ID cards, among many other options. However, the only one which is being pursued by many and used by early adopters are biometric patient identification systems. RightPatient is the most appropriate choice to eliminate patient matching errors. It uses iris scanning to ensure that the correct patient is identified, and it does so with ease, as reported by over a hundred healthcare providers who are using it. As it is using iris scanning, it is also hygienic and safe, as it requires no physical contact, and is convenient for the patients, as all they need to do is look into the scanner to match with their records. Since it is also less time consuming than traditional patient matching, it is lauded by many for improving the patient experience as well as patient safety. Patient matching has never been easier and more accurate, according to the users of RightPatient.

Patient engagement is the key to improved patient outcomes

July 19, 2019/8404 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, healthcare, Mobile, Patient Engagement, Patient Outcomes /by Matt Gibson

Why might any healthcare provider contact their patients after their discharge? It’s simple – to encourage patient engagement so that the patients can be proactive and thus healthier, which in turn causes improved patient outcomes and lowers readmission rates, simultaneously reducing costs.

There’s a catch to this – if it’s so easy, why is effective patient engagement still out of reach for most healthcare providers? Let’s analyze.

A recent survey consisting of several healthcare systems sheds light on some interesting facts – 70% of the participants stated that less than half of their patients are involved in engagement activities, whereas a mere 9% said that they observe more than 75% effective patient engagement.

Why are some successful and some unfortunate? It mostly reflects the fact that many are still confused by what patient engagement means. Many think that patient engagement refers to just giving a patient a scheduled time and making sure they know the patient’s name, and that’s all – but that is a far cry from what patient engagement entails.

Patient engagement refers to the healthcare provider learning about the patient’s interests, medical records, background, and anything relevant that is there to know about the patient as much as possible. What do the healthcare systems do with such data? They provide customizable tools to the patients which can be used for active patient engagement – to ensure improved patient outcomes and experience. There are many tools already available at the disposal of the healthcare providers to use for active patient engagement like CircleCare. Thus, patient engagement means providing a patient with tools and facilities which the patient can then use or participate in, if he/she chooses, to ensure better health and lead a healthier lifestyle, with its primary goal being improved patient outcomes and better patient retention rates.

Even large and reputed healthcare systems sometimes need the assistance of such tools for patient engagement, which is reflected in the survey’s findings. There are many examples that tell the same story repeatedly – a reputed healthcare system thinking that it was providing entirely satisfactory patient engagement until it started looking at the results and then teaming up with an external party who understands patient engagement better, and later on, the healthcare system actually seeing marked improvements because of using the new tools.

With the extensive knowledge and technical know-how of such third parties regarding patient engagement technologies, these healthcare providers saw that instead of using conventional facilities like patient portals, which can be clunky, unresponsive, and tedious to use, the patients used tools like apps which are available for both tablets and smartphones. The patients not only use it for better health and checking their records, but they also use it to communicate with their providers, exchanging crucial information, if required.

According to a healthcare official, patient engagement is very integral to their services, and they need it to ensure they have a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship with their patients. Such tools like CircleCare provide the window to ensure active engagement. Using CircleCare, patients can easily communicate with their doctors to let them know of any discomfort or updates in real-time.

CircleCare is a patient retention app which doubles as a patient engagement app. It ensures maximum patient engagement, as it has features like tracking steps, recording blood glucose level, recording blood pressure, and also scheduling and reminding one about medicine. Not only that, it has all the features previously mentioned above, like communicating with physicians, exchanging information in real-time, and so on. Best of all, if the patient maintains an active, healthy lifestyle, which is shown as the patient completes “goals” and earns points within the app, they can also win exciting prizes which they can exchange with the coins. Once a healthcare provider subscribes to the app, they can direct the patient to download and use them for active patient engagement, ensuring lower patient readmission rates due to positive outcomes.

Patient identification error causes yet another grave mistake

July 17, 2019/7511 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, healthcare, Iris Recognition, Patient Errors, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Another day, another mistaken patient identification error. However, it was a bit different in this case. Two sisters were informed that their brother was on life support and that is the premise of the whole fiasco.

The sisters, Rosie Brooks, and Brenda Bennett-Johnson received a call from an official that someone they believed to be their brother Alfonso was breathing with the help of a ventilator at Mercy Hospital and Medical Center of Chicago. However, the sisters stated that they didn’t talk much to their brother. The call started with someone enquiring about relatives of Alfonso, and Brooks replied that she was the sister, and then the official broke the news – that he was fighting for his life in the ICU, explaining that he was beaten quite severely, especially the face.

The Chicago police had found the man beaten to a pulp, and according to reports had neither clothes nor any means of identification on his body. A police spokesperson said that witnesses of the incident identified the injured man as one Elijah Bennett. Later on, he was rushed to the hospital and was on life support.

During his time in the hospital, as nobody came looking for him, the hospital staff had to take the help of the police in identifying him. The spokesperson said that their database had no “Elijah Bennett,” however, they did find “Alfonso Bennett.” The police later on handed over a picture so that the hospital could help identify any family members of the unfortunate patient. All these events led to the call to Brooks, yet another patient identification error.

When the sisters rushed to the hospital, they failed to identify the man as their brother Alfonso. However, CPD kept saying that it was their brother. According to the nurse, police used the help of mugshots to identify him, but due to budgetary issues, a proper ID could not be made.

However, the patient’s situation was worsening, and the sisters faced a challenging situation – whether or not to remove his life support. With immeasurable sadness, they had to sign papers stating that this man was their brother and to remove his life support, and as expected, the man passed away, unfortunately.

After this series of events, the story did not end. After the untimely death of the “brother,” the sisters started making preparations for his funeral, to give him a proper sendoff. Before they could carry out the planning, however, what happened next was a scene out of a dramatic movie – the brother, Alfonso, walked right through the front door of the house of the one sister! She shouted over the phone to her other sister, exclaiming that the brother they had thought was dead is very much alive and healthy and that it almost gave her a heart attack.

However, this newfound relief and happiness quickly turned into sadness, regret, and remorse – they realized that they had given the green light to end the life of a stranger, thinking it was their brother. They shared how they felt with the media and that they were extremely remorseful about deciding everything about someone unknown. However, the police, later on, identified the person with the help of fingerprints and started looking for his family. Everyone involved was deeply disturbed by this incident and thinking that there are no procedures or strategies to ensure such cases do not happen again in the future. However, this is not an isolated incident, as a very similar situation occurred in 2018.

Many people are worried that as these incidents are recurring, there is no way to avoid this. They are wrong. RightPatient would have helped the situation in reducing such errors. It is a biometric patient identification system which, and with the help of iris scanning modality, it reduces not only any kind of patient identification error but is also safe, convenient, and quick. Since no physical contact is required, all it needs is a glance from the patient for registration and matching – thus being hygienic and easy to use for both patients and physicians. All these features help to enhance patient safety as well as improve the patient experience, reducing claims by 35% and saving a lot of costs of healthcare systems in the process.

Can hospitals achieve better patient outcomes through patient engagement tools?

July 15, 2019/5433 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, healthcare, Patient Engagement, Patient Outcomes /by Matt Gibson

Let’s face it – no patient thinks about going home and logging into a web portal. It is ancient at this point. During a recent event focusing on all things related to healthcare improvement, that was the opinion shared by a respected healthcare official. The rest of the executives from different healthcare systems who were participating with him nodded in agreement. On the contrary, they laughed, because they are accepting the fact that patient portals are just not practical. Not only for this small group of officials but by now, it is common knowledge that such patient portals did not turn out to be one of the effective patient engagement tools as they were once hoped to be. Where did it go wrong? What’s next? If this didn’t push patient engagement, what kind of patient engagement tool will? These are the questions on the minds making up the healthcare system.

During the event, the group sat down and had a lengthy discussion regarding healthcare and patient engagement tools, and the following are some of the critical things that were revealed.

Patient engagement is of utmost importance

This was stated by all of the executives present. Patient engagement is one of the top three organizational objectives for them. They also believe the fact that their organization’s value patient engagement as they see patients who are more participative to have better health outcomes than those who don’t, along with increased satisfaction, retention, and revenue.

Priorities are not reflected in the results

Another notable finding during this discussion was that there is a massive difference between the amount of importance healthcare systems place on patient engagement and the level of results they deem successful – they interpret 15% as a good number. One may then ask, how can such a vast difference between objectives and results be possible? One official from a healthcare system said that they need to be completely digital regarding everything being done in their hospital – from the moment the patient decides to use their services until the follow-ups are complete. Naturally, they require a patient portal which the healthcare providers have, and they observe approximately 15% of patient engagement through it, which they believe is more than an acceptable number.

Even though considering such a small number as success is very peculiar, it is not uncommon. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology states that less than one-third of the patients who had access to portals used it only one or two times per year. The ones who did not use the portals had a variety of reasons – they wanted to speak with their healthcare providers directly, did not deem it necessary enough to view their records online, were worried about the safety and privacy of the portals, or could not use them due to various issues.

Not enough advancements in patient engagement tools

The healthcare officials who were present in the event think that the motivation for effective patient engagement needs to come from the patients themselves. However, as the findings specified already, it is not always in the hands of the patients themselves, but in the hands of the healthcare providers – the latter are the ones who develop the patient engagement tools, strategies, and technologies to support them. For instance, no matter how participative a patient is willing to be, he/she will not be able to effectively engage with the healthcare provider if the patient portal is complex, faulty, or inefficient. Another drawback the officials stated was the perception of patients regarding the portals’ contents and features – if they were inconsistent and irrelevant, patients would not use them.

Another official added that even though patient engagement is a top priority for any healthcare system, the ones running them do not utilize the tools available to make better use of technology and come up with something more innovative and productive than patient portals. They do not invest in the necessary places and do not hire the people who can bring about a change to patient engagement tools.

Is patient engagement actually possible?

Yes, of course. Patient portals may be clunky, complicated, and the fact that people use their browsers less nowadays does not help the matter. No, the solution lies somewhere else. People are always on their phones using apps, and this is the key – a patient engagement app like CircleCare. The patients do not need to go to browsers and sign in; all they need to do is unlock their phones and tap on the app – they are in! CircleCare is an app which helps the patient stay fit – it can track their steps, schedule alerts for their medicine, and record their blood glucose level as well as their blood pressure, thus, helping them to stay proactive and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Not only that, but the app also connects the patients with their physicians so that they can communicate with each other whenever required – to share critical information, updates, tips, and additional information regarding their health can be exchanged. Once the hospital subscribes to the app, all the patients need to do is download it and use it, which will not only help them maintain a healthy lifestyle, but also ensure active patient engagement, and as a result, hospital readmission rates will go down due to better patient outcomes and active patient engagement.

Process Improvement Methodologies are used for Patient Experience Improvement

June 18, 2019/5085 views / 1 Comment/in BLOG, healthcare, Patient Engagement, Patient Experience, Patient Outcomes /by Matt Gibson

Healthcare organizations are continually pursuing ways to improve their processes to enhance the patient experience they provide. However, the biggest problem is that they need to measure patient experience improvement, and there is no specific way to do so. The challenge is to gain access to timely and relevant data. Nevertheless, in spite of this roadblock, they have found another way to measure their success.

According to a survey, the participating healthcare systems have stated that the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) or similar CMS surveys are their most preferred tools to track the patient experience provided. These are followed by phone calls made before a patient’s discharge and assistance from third-parties, or non-CMS surveys.

These healthcare providers have also increased their use of social media monitoring because of their needs for accurate and timely patient experience data, which is why using these methodologies do not seem that surprising. The number of healthcare systems utilizing process improvement methodologies is higher than the ones who do not use it, and the former ones stated that HCAHPS or CMS surveys are their preferred way of both tracking and measuring their organization’s success or failure regarding the patient experience they provide.

Moreover, the number of respondents who said they use tracking and are using it for process improvement methodologies is higher compared to those respondents who do not, with in-house surveys being an exception. This shows the amount of emphasis placed on performance measurement by process improvement, which no doubt the respondents believe leads to patient experience improvement.

They may have used several process improvements, like enhancing the patient identification system, since patient identification is a recurring problem in most healthcare systems, as 8% of the medical records are duplicates on average. Some hospitals are utilizing biometric patient identification like RightPatient, which does enhance the whole process, as physicians can focus on more critical tasks rather than take time identifying the patients. All of this ultimately leads to the healthcare systems providing a personalized patient experience.

These healthcare systems are correct in placing their trust in process improvement methodologies, and the report reflects that. It is favorable for patients and healthcare providers alike, as 87% of the respondents stated that their organizations had experienced significant improvements in the HCAHPS scores or similar measurements, which is a clear indicator of the efforts they have made to enhance the patient experience in response to their previous scores.

The report’s breakdown is as follows: 13% of respondents have observed significant improvements, 44% have noticed moderate gains, and 30% have experienced minor improvements, while 5% saw no increase.

However, the results reveal another aspect – there is a positive correlation between patient experience improvement and the use of such process improvement methodologies. A large number of respondents (16%) have stated that they experienced significantly improved HCAHPS scores after using the methods compared to those who did not use them (6%). Likewise, moderate improvements were noticed by a large number of respondents (47%) who used the process improvement methodologies compared to those who did not (36%). Accordingly, the respondents who did not use such methods are far higher in number (10%) than those who used it (3%) and reported that they did not see any improvements.

How are the healthcare systems improving their patient experience significantly? Other than process improvements, they can also utilize technology to enhance the patient experience further. They can use apps like CircleCare. It is a patient retention app used by hospitals for active patient engagement. Once a hospital subscribes, they can instruct the patient to use it for various purposes like communication with the hospital, keeping track of their steps, recording their glucose levels, scheduling their medicine, and receiving valuable health tips within the app. All these activities not only help to improve patient engagement but also cause patient experience improvement, resulting in an increase in patient retention rates due to better patient outcomes.

Patient Engagement and Patient Experience help reducing hospital readmissions

June 11, 2019/5174 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, healthcare, Patient Engagement, Patient Experience /by Matt Gibson

Patient engagement refers to the concept of the patient’s behavior where he/she proactively participates with the healthcare provider, whereas patient experience is a concept which encompasses the range of interactions that patients have with the different tiers of the healthcare system such as interactions with doctors, nurses, and staff in hospitals, or basically the whole healthcare system. Some people use it interchangeably because both are linked together and are used towards achieving a common goal – reducing hospital readmissions.

Patient Engagement

Patient engagement is a concept which deals with patient activation, which is mostly empowering the patient so that the patient feels like they can take an informed decision about their healthcare to improve treatment outcome, lower costs, and also help provide more efficient patient care. This also rests in the hands of the healthcare system, as they are the ones who encourage patient engagement in the first place. There is also a framework for patient engagement, which is as follows:

Shared Decision-Making Stage: In this stage, the patient is informed about his/her condition, and the patient participates in the decision-making process along with the healthcare provider. This approach is used mostly for patients whose situation is more preference sensitive.
Patient Activation: In this stage, the patients are more aware and understand their situation as they know their condition. Research among 30,000 patients at Fairview health services in Minnesota suggests that patients with a lower level of understanding about their condition incurred 8% – 21% more costs in healthcare. Thus, this step of active involvement of the patient to treat their situation is the stage called patient activation. However, it does require the assistance of the healthcare systems, as they have accurate information regarding the patients.
Broader Patient Engagement: This step is more about mass awareness creation and social interpretations of patient engagement. The concerned parties are to influence patient participation in such a way that it helps the masses; they try to educate the masses about their conditions so that they can make informed consensual decisions about their healthcare with respect to their healthcare providers.

Patient Experience

Patient experience refers to the number of interactions patients have with the healthcare system. It includes their care from health plans, and doctors, nurses, and staff in hospitals, physician practices, and other healthcare facilities. It is a core aspect of healthcare quality and is used to help measure a healthcare system’s ranking – the better the patient experience, the better the healthcare system, and vice versa. It also consists of components which patients value highly, like appointments, the hospital itself, the care they receive – basically everything associated with the healthcare provider. This is the basic concept of the patient experience. Healthcare providers use a combination of tools to enhance the patient experience. For example, to have an edge over other healthcare systems, many uses biometric patient identification like RightPatient, which matches the patient with their EHRs using iris scanning.

The link between Patient Engagement and Patient Experience

There are several factors which can interlink patient engagement and patient experience amongst them. A few are mentioned below:

Better patient engagement and experience lead to better patient satisfaction.
Better patient engagement and experience offer better value for patients’ money.
Better patient engagement leads directly to better patient experience.
Better follow up results in positive patient experience.
Patient engagement makes having a better patient experience more comfortable for the patient.
The liability of informed consent is divided between the patient and the caregiver, which affects the patient experience positively.
Better patient experience and better engagement go hand in hand in the financial aspects of the healthcare system as they help reducing hospital readmissions.

Effects on the hospital readmission rate

Better engagement and experience relate to better reputation buildup of the hospital, which affects readmission rates by reducing hospital readmissions.
Better engagement leads to more effective treatment, which reduces risk-standardized readmissions.
Better overall patient experience will result in the patient choosing the hospital over other hospitals in case of another condition of him/her or a family member.
Better engagement and experience lead to patient satisfaction, which results in a reduction of risk-based readmissions and increases reputation-based readmissions.
With better patient engagement, patients are acquainted with the treatment plans and procedures correctly, which results in lowering risk-based readmission as well.
Involvement of the hospital staff leads to better mental satisfaction in the patient as well, which results in better word of mouth reputation, and also leads to more effective treatment, which helps in reducing hospital readmissions.

Many healthcare providers are very successfully providing both positive patient experience and increased patient engagement. For enhanced patient experience, RightPatient is the choice of many for biometric patient identification, which speeds up the overall process, helping the hospital staff to save significant time identifying the incoming patients so that they can put resources to better use in critical tasks. Patient engagement has a lot of tools, as well. However, the recent trend is to use apps like CircleCare, a patient retention app with a lot of benefits for both the patients as well as the healthcare systems. It can track steps, provide reminders regarding medicine, record glucose levels, blood pressure, as well as help the patients communicate with their healthcare providers. After the hospital subscribes to the app, the patient only needs to download it and use it, not only to communicate with their physicians but also for better health, which will help with patient engagement as well as provide better patient outcomes by reducing hospital readmissions, creating a win-win situation for all.

Hospitals are Prioritizing Patient Matching Accuracy

June 2, 2019/7264 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, healthcare, Iris Recognition, Medical Record Mix-ups, Patient Experience, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Patient identification has been haunting the healthcare industry since its inception. Using the existing practices in the industry, accuracy rates are significantly low and cannot be used to exchange health data effectively, as reported by officials from different healthcare systems such as hospitals and physicians. The industry is in dire need of patient matching improvement.

However, the above report is not the only one – other statements point towards the same conclusion of requiring patient matching improvement, as per the research brief from Pew Charitable Trusts. A study was conducted by Pew researchers along with Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (MAeHC) that sought to identify the current situation of patient identification in the healthcare industry. They did so by collecting information from different healthcare executives with the use of interviews. Another aspect of the study was to identify how to achieve patient matching improvement. The sample of this study was healthcare experts and influential figures from various practices and sizes who served numerous patients in diverse regions all over the country.

A vast majority of the sample expressed the same view – patient identification and matching were quite inaccurate and desperately needs an overhaul, thanks to the increasing demand for interoperability.

Healthcare providers are now motivated to exchange more health data due to the recent CMS Promoting Interoperability program. That’s not all! CMS is also going to be granting incentives to accountable care organizations (ACOs) who will show savings through activities which support care coordination.

According to the Pew researchers, healthcare systems like hospitals and clinicians eligible for these programs need to exchange information with others so that all of the parties have the latest patient data from other various institutions.

The hospital officials stated that it is quite challenging to measure the match rates, resulting in their efforts being ineffective to examine and improve the patient identification rates. They also had difficulty providing a number when asked for the identification rates within their organizations. This was because many hospitals only keep a record of the duplicates identified through EHRs, whereas others do not know which files are relevant and which are unlinked. Thus, without knowing the actual number of correct matches, these healthcare systems cannot determine their match rates. Therefore, only the amount of misidentifications was provided by them, thus summarizing the research.

It was also identified that healthcare systems could easily match patient identities when asked by organizations they are in constant contact with. Both automated and manual processes are utilized to link records to the correct individual.

However, whenever it is an organization with whom the healthcare system is not in contact with regularly, match rates are inclined to be lower. This is because these unsolicited requests introduce more blockades because the healthcare system may not have a record of that individual, and the healthcare system uses automated processes for such applications. On top of that, the research also showed that urban areas require better identification rates compared to rural areas as not much-sharing activities take place in the latter.

Some healthcare executives also think that improved patient identification matching requires significant costs. However, many believe that biometric patient identification is the solution to improve matching rates and is worth the cost. Some hospitals are even utilizing iris scanning solutions like RightPatient to identify all their patients and pull their relevant data from their EHRs and show a significant change. They report that it is fast, accurate and improves the overall patient experience as well as speeding up the whole process and saving valuable time of the physicians so that they can concentrate on more critical tasks such as the patients themselves.

Hospitals Need a Better Patient Matching System to Identify “John Does”

May 31, 2019/6911 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, healthcare, Iris Recognition, Medical Record Mix-ups, Patient Errors, Patient Identification, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Patient identification or lack thereof is a topic which we hear about every day. We always read news about mistaken patient identities due to mix-ups, frauds, insufficient patient matching system, etc. What about those who arrive at the hospitals and are never identified? Let’s look at these John Does but from a different angle – from the perspective of the emergency hospital staff who receive and treat them rather than from the outside viewer.

Imagine this: A man in his 50’s arrived in the emergency room, wheeled in by paramedics, shaven head, brown eyes, unconscious. To make matters worse, he had no materials on him that could have helped the staff with his identity for crosschecking with their patient matching system – no wallet, cellphone, papers, or anything at all. To top it all off, he did not have any distinguishing features such as a tattoo or scar. This incident was back in 2017 – a car hit him in January, and he was rushed in with a fatal brain injury to Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center. He did not have any visitors, nor was he ever reported missing. Sadly, he passed away being a John Doe, no one ever knowing who he was.

This is just one example of how serious and pressurizing it is for the hospital staff to deal with such emergencies regarding patient matching systems, primarily when they consist of a John Doe. In these cases, they are required to become a form of detective in order to determine the identities of these unknown patients when they arrive at the hospitals. This is done for several reasons: firstly, finding the identity helps with the treatment – the staff can then determine the patient’s medical history and whether he/she has any complications or not. Also, it allows them to find and contact a next of kin or close one to make any critical decisions if it becomes necessary. The identity also helps the hospital to contact the insurance company or government health programs, whichever the patient is associated with, regarding payment of their services.

However, there is a catch – federal laws concerning privacy make it difficult for the hospital staff to determine the unknown patients’ identities. In the previously mentioned example as well as in many similar cases, the team along with the social workers frantically rummage through whatever a John Doe brings with him – bag, clothing, phones without passwords, receipts, or whatever piece of document or device which can help them identify the individual and proceed to their patient matching system. Their efforts don’t stop there – they also question the paramedics and dispatchers. Tattoos, piercings, and scars are duly noted, and when all else fails, dental records are checked against the individual. However, because the police can only access fingerprints, it is often left unchecked, mainly because the police only involve themselves only when a criminal element is present in the situation.

These John Does are usually the ones hit by vehicles and had unfortunately left their IDs back at home, and can also be poor people with cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Other times, they are overdosed individuals. Unsurprisingly, socially isolated individuals like homeless people are the ones who are the most difficult to identify, and sadly, they are the ones who are the most common John Does in recent years.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was made to ensure the privacy of an individual’s medical data. However, in cases of these John Does, it can make patient matching increasingly difficult as the hospitals cannot release any information to those searching for missing family members regarding these patients. For instance, a patient with Alzheimer’s was admitted to a NY hospital with the name “Trauma XXX.” The police and his family members went in search for him several times at the very same hospital, but they were told nothing. Weeks later, a doctor while watching television saw that man in the news and identified him as the patient “Trauma XXX.” Afterward, when charged with why the hospital hid the patient, the staff said that they did not ask about “Trauma XXX” specifically.

Due to this incident, a lot of rules were set up and changed regarding information requests about missing persons. It consisted of following over twenty steps for hospitals, starting from notifying the reception, to taking DNA samples.

All of this could have been avoided if a fast, accurate, and reliable patient matching system was used. RightPatient is one such patient identification system that utilizes biometrics and AI. Through this, it uses iris scanning to quickly match the patients with their EHRs so that the whole patient experience can be enhanced. It also helps the physicians focus on more critical tasks such as the patients themselves instead of going through matching patients. Thus, not only is it beneficial for the patients, but it is also beneficial for the hospitals as well, creating a win-win situation for all and ensuring patient safety through the enhancement of the whole patient experience.