Universal Patient Identifier

1053 Words5 Pages

Universal patient identifiers can safely enhance efficiency to connect patients to their healthcare records. Although, many patients evade the anguish from adverse events due to a misidentification from the existing patient-matching technology, however misidentification in patients can have inflated financial ramifications to hospital systems. “Denied claims can become a huge waste of time and money for any practice manager; per a recent MGMA Connection article the average cost to rework a claim is $25. When you multiply that cost by dozens of denied claims, it quickly adds up”. (Taufen, A., MA., 2014). Moreover, organizations associated with healthcare risk squandering money due to patient misidentification consequently resulting in claim …show more content…

The following paper will debate and itemize how UPIs can judiciously enrich healthcare proficiency through its technology for patient information distribution. The paper will detail how a functioning UPI system will produce reduction in unnecessary cost to hospital systems, circumvent health record duplication, guarantee healthcare providers that they are handling patients with precise and modernized medical information, and expand interoperability and information sharing amongst health facilities. Additionally, strategies will be comprised as approaches to surmount barriers or healthcare stakeholder uncertainties. Universal Patient Identifiers and Connecting Patients to Health Information Universal Patient Identifiers encompasses assigning a personalized tailored number to individuals that will then be sourced to distinguish a patient within the entire U.S. healthcare network, pointedly this will permit patient data sharing. Sharing data amongst networks is sheltered through policies that unambiguously protect patient data. Protection of personal health information (PHI) is the foremost component in the healthcare industry. It is momentously obligatory to conform to the policies of …show more content…

Its determination is to associate patients to their data to improve the capability to generate a simplicity in sharing this data amongst the multiple health facilities patients visit. UPIs engendered by Electron Health Records (EHR) data can be manipulated by other healthcare systems including hospitals, pharmacies, insurance companies, patients, clinical research firms or diagnostic medical devices. These entities allocate data to be encapsulated, assembled, managed and then interconnected together universally. According to the article, Registries for Evaluating Patient Outcomes: A User 's Guide, “PIM has become crucial in order to (1) enable health record document consumers to obtain trusted views of their patient subjects, (2) facilitate data linkage projects, (3) abide by the current regulations concerning patient information–related transparency, privacy, disclosure, handling, and documentation,2 and (4) make the most efficient use of limited health care resources by reducing redundant data collection.” (Gliklich, R. E., & Dreyer, N. A., 2010). Currently, UPIs have previously become embedded into the U.S. healthcare system to some degree. An existing example of UPIs today are the medical numbers

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