Dive Brief:
- Kathleen Lusk, chief health information management and information officer at Children's Health System of Texas, told an audience at the American Health Information Management Association's annual convention a patient matching strategy must be put into effect for data exchange and interoperability to work successfully.
- Linking a patient across multiple healthcare organizations has traditionally been accomplished manually with high costs. "A lack of standardization of data can be at the root of inaccurate care with the potential harm for patients," Lusk said in a news release.
- Lusk provided an example of the last name "Smith," which about 1% of Americans share. If 1% of all births are categorized as "Baby Boy or Baby Girl Smith," the potential for health data being incorrectly linked to the right patient is about 1 in 40,000.
Dive Insight:
Lynn Thomas Gordon, AHIMA CEO, told Healthcare IT News in a Sept. 30 interview, "This next year, our advocacy efforts will be around a voluntary health safety identifier because part of the information governance is making sure you've got the right patient." Lusk concluded, "Nationally we are struggling with using health information exchange technology tools due to inability to link patient records. The cost of healthcare cannot be managed if we are unable to communicate."