7% of Medical Records are Mismatched or Duplicates

According to a 2014 report, 7% of Medical records are either mismatched or duplicates. #Healthcare #HIMSS16 #Patient pic.twitter.com/1kLVbgs0Ti

— Meridian HealthCare (@Meridian_MHC) January 15, 2016

Anyone that’s worked in healthcare knows that patient matching is a major problem. It’s interesting to see that ONC has quantified the problem as 7 out of 100 medical records having issues. It’s not hard to see how this can, will and does lead to medical errors. Doctors need the right information at the right time. If they are missing information or have the wrong information, then it can lead to deadly consequences.

One challenge I have with this problem is that I’ve heard many suggest that the reason this is such a problem is that we don’t have a national patient identifier. Next week CHIME is going to announce the details of their $1 million National Patient ID Challenge. We should have Anne Zieger onsite to report on the event, but here’s the challenge:

Ensure 100% accuracy of every patient’s health info to reduce preventable medical errors and eliminate unnecessary hospital costs/resources.

While I applaud CHIME’s efforts to push the national patient id forward, the issue of patient matching won’t just be solved by having a national patient ID. We’ll see what the challenge produces, but the challenge is so complex that I don’t think anyone will be able to achieve 100% accuracy. While I don’t think we’ll ever be perfect when it comes to patient matching in healthcare, I do think we can do better. Maybe CHIME’s efforts will help inspire organizations to do better.