CHIMA is holding a National Patient Identifier Challenge and so far, the response has been “tremendous,” said 2016 Board Chair Marc Probst, CIO at Intermountain Healthcare.

The goal for participants is to “ensure 100 percent accuracy of every patient’s health information to reduce preventable medical errors and eliminate unnecessary hospital costs/resources.” $1,000,000 is up for grabs.

“This is one of those things where traditional thinking may not be the solution,” said Probst, speaking with Clinical Innovation + Technology. “I am betting this is going to come from some very creative thinking and process that’s going to get us to this level of identification.”

Language in the Omnibus spending rule of 1999 prevented the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from researching or implementing a national patient identification solution, said Matthew Weinstock, CHIME’s director of communications.  That language has carried forward in every spending and appropriations bill since 1999 but “a lot has changed since then.”

AHIMA, the professional association for health information management professionals is currently hosting a White House petition to change the language. The petition could be generating some interest in CHIME’s challenge, which to date has registered 269 innovators from 29 different countries, Weinstock said. “The more attention we can draw to this issue, the better it is for the challenge but, more importantly, the better for the industry and patients.”

If the ban can be lifted, he added, the people at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and HHS “would love to solve this problem and be able to get into the discussion.”

A solution doesn’t depend on a lifting of the ban, however, said Probst. “Ultimately, for it to be successful it’s going to need to be adopted by the government so I think that’s why there is some questioning of the ban. The government is going to want to play as well if we get the solution we think we will from this challenge.”

But, CHIME has noted conversations happening in Washington around this issue. “A lot of pieces had to fall into place for the discussion to hit the point it has,” said Probst. Meaningful Use had to happen because it raised awareness within a much broader spectrum of our country of the importance of medical records; just how much data can help in improving care and lowering the costs associated with healthcare.” That has led to discussions after EHR adoption about interoperability, data science, digital healthcare and much more that couldn’t have happened six years ago.   

“I’m encouraged because the Hill is talking about it,” he added.

CHIME announced the challenge at the annual HIMSS conference in 2015. It’s taken this long to build it, “painstakingly looking at the criteria and working with experts in the industry on what a challenge should look like,” said Weinstock.

The “Concept Blitz” submission deadline is April 27 with those winners expected to be announced early in June. Not everyone has to enter this round—innovators can enter the final submission round between June and November. The final winner will be announced next February.

“We’re not really putting any caveats on this,” said Weinstock. “It could be combination of solutions such as some sort of algorithm that identifies you mixed with biometrics, for example. We’re trying not to prejudge what they come back with.” After first phase, he said, teams may find each other and collaborate which is when two ideas could mix together.

Once there is a grand winner, Probst said getting the solution into practice could happen very quickly “because we deal with these systems all the time. If we get a winner and we can start getting agreement across industry that this is a great solution, then we could quickly start moving this into our systems. Two or three years seems like a reasonable window to me.”

The need is urgent, he added. Intermountain spends about $5 million a year on this problem—“simply dealing with misaligned records and cleaning them up. It’s true waste.” That doesn’t include the cost and poor outcomes associated with the patient safety issues caused by inaccurate information.