AHIMA: Patient matching a significant problem

More than half of health information management professionals routinely work on mitigating patient record duplicates at their organization and 73 percent of those do so weekly, according to a survey conducted by AHIMA.

Contributing to the issue, less than half (47 percent) of respondents said they have a quality assurance step in their registration or post registration process, and face a lack of resources to adequately correct duplicates.

The association surveyed its members to learn more about patient matching. 815 people responded to the survey, which revealed the following five key points:

• 43 percent of respondents are measuring data quality as it relates to patient matching. 
• 47 percent of respondents have a quality assurance step in their registration or post registration process. 
• 55 percent of survey respondents were able to communicate the duplicate medical record rate within their organization, but additional questions relating to how the duplicate rate was calculated indicate a lack of a standard definition for duplicate rate calculation. For example, only 42 percent knew the numerator and 42 percent knew the denominator that factored into their organization's duplicate rate.
• 57 percent of respondents work possible duplicates regularly. Of those respondents, 73 percent work duplicates at a minimum of weekly. 
• The top five challenges identified by survey respondents in managing the MPI/EMPI are: Registration staff turnover; record matching/patient search terminology and/or algorithms; lack of resources to correct duplicates; inadequate information governance policy support and lack of executive support. These challenges "showcase the diversity and complexities confounding resolution of this key component for sharing information," according to AHIMA.

AHIMA plans to use the information generated from the survey to help shape its future goals and advocacy efforts in accurate patient matching.

The survey shows the need to measure, monitor and inform the marketplace of the need to better match patients to their specific health information, according to the authors. Accurate patient matching is essential to patient-centric initiatives, and implementing quality assurance measures are critical steps to improving performance, the authors said.

“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,” the survey authors wrote.