National patient identifiers were back in the news this week after the House of Representatives approved the bipartisan Foster-Kelly Amendment as a piece of the six-bill FY2021 package. The Amendment, which is being led by representatives Bill Foster and Mike Kelly, aims to remove Section 510 of the Labor-HHS bill, which would allow federal funds for the creation of a unique patient identifier.
What is a national patient identifier?
Essentially each healthcare patient would receive a unique and permanent ID number.
Why are they looking to overturn the bill?
Many see the national patient identifier as a possible solution to help solve the patient-matching issues the healthcare industry faces. From a treatment standpoint, if a physician is viewing an account with incorrect information, it could have huge impacts on their quality of care. On the financial side, when records are inconsistent, hospitals are wasting time on merging records and seeing increased costs associated with duplicates and claims being denied.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought patient matching to the forefront again. It has become increasingly important the correct patient data is matched to the patient’s account so public health offices can have the data they need to make national response decisions.
Privacy has been a large topic of conversation for this amendment, however, a unique patient identifier wouldn’t be like a social security number. It would be shared with multiple parties and healthcare organizations wouldn’t be using it as the only verification method to authenticate a patient.
Ben Moscovitch, Project Director for Health IT at the Pew Charitable Trusts explained, "Unique identifiers would certainly improve match rates, but they wouldn't be a panacea.” Patient matching is a complex issue that healthcare has faced for decades, and requires a combination of process improvements related to data.
If the amendment passes the Senate, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would work with the healthcare industry to work to develop a US-wide patient-matching strategy, which would likely take years to implement.
Here at Extract we have developed a solution to solve the patient matching workflow issue. Our HealthyData platform uses optical character recognition, or OCR, to identify all of the text on your faxed and scanned documents, retrieves only the discrete data you want, and then automatically matches and enters it into a patient’s medical record or other downstream system.
HealthyData allows for workflow automation, giving staff the time to focus on what is important, their patients, rather than manual data entry, error correction, and sorting through duplicate records and files. If you’d like to learn more about how we can improve your workflows and receive data more efficiently, please reach out today.
Source:
https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/house-votes-overturn-unique-patient-identifier-ban
About the Author: Taylor Genter
Taylor is the Marketing Specialist at Extract with experience in data analytics, graphic design, and both digital and social media marketing. She earned her Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Marketing at the University of Wisconsin- Whitewater. Taylor enjoys analyzing people’s behaviors and attitudes to find out what motivates them, and then curating better ways to communicate with them.