Dive Brief:
- A survey released by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) finds more than half of its responding information professionals report routinely trying to mitigate patient record duplicates at their facility, with most (72%) doing so weekly.
- Only 47% said their facility has a quality assurance step in its registration or post registration process.
- The respondents reported a lack of resources available to adequately address the issue of correcting duplicates.
Dive Insight:
The AHIMA membership survey utilized 815 respondents using 12 different EHR systems in the summer of 2015, with the goal of shaping the association's future advocacy efforts toward accurate patient matching.
Accurate matching "underpins and enables the success of all strategic initiatives in healthcare,” an AHIMA press release states.
Among the survey's key findings were five top challenges reported by professionals in managing their master patient index (MPI) or enterprise master patient index (EMPI). These were identified as:
- 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.
“We cannot sit around and wait for others to correct this problem,” the survey authors argue. “As healthcare professionals, we need to embrace the challenge and collaborate to develop scalable solutions to assure patient information is available when and where it is needed.”