Patient identification and patient identity matching (PIM) blunders carry consequences that vary from simple nuisance thought to be trivial issues initially to outcomes that can be catastrophic.

From common consumers to providers, most often mistaken the two terms – patient identification and patient matching. These are often used interchangeably but refer to different processes. Patient matching is the process where demographic data elements are leveraged, often within a single health system, to link an individual patient’s unique medical history/records prior engagement. On the other hand, patient identification is the process of correctly identifying an individual and sharing accurate information about the patient by matching it to an intended treatment throughout the continuum of care.

Real-life Incidents

Let’s look at two scenarios that could have been avoided by a unique patient identifier. The same physician who used to treat two siblings accidentally wrote a note in the wrong sibling’s chart. This blunder happened when a medical assistant did not check for multiple identifiers for one of the siblings and documented it in the wrong file. Luckily, the mistake was caught early resulting in no harm.

On the other end of the spectrum, a not so lucky patient was devastated by a blunder when her test results were accidentally filed in the chart of a deceased patient at the same time. This tragic story was recently collected by AHIMA and CHIME is as follows – the patient, after undergoing a routine mammogram, did not receive any further calls about the results. Naturally, she thought no calls means good news and went on about her usual daily life. One year later after returning for a regular annual physical examination while making remarks to the physician of how relieved she was, she realized that there had been a blunder. Not only she discovered that she had breast cancer but it had advanced to the last stage and is incurable. 

Let’s look at some expert opinions

According to Julie Pursley Dooling, MSHI, RHIA, CHDA, FAHIMA, director of HIM practice excellence at AHIMA, variation in capturing common identifiers like date of birth, phone numbers, postal addresses and SSNs (social security number) can lead to discrepancies. Consumers are also not willing to share their SSNs due to the rise in medical ID thefts and health insurance frauds. 

According to Karen Proffitt, MHIIM, RHIA, CHP, vice president of industry relations for Just Associates, 35% of all denied claims are caused by patient misidentification and on average costs $1.2 million per year in general. 

She continued, that there are additional costs associated with the management of duplicate records and other data integrity tasks carried out by full-time employees. Not to mention, costs associated with dedicated clinical and IT staff that deals with re-entering orders and sorting out overlaid records is also a piece of excess baggage.

RightPatient- a unique biometric patient identification platform

RightPatient is a unique biometric patient identification system that is helping several progressive hospitals by providing the platform to identify patients accurately, eliminate mismatches and prevent duplicate medical records.

Mode of use

RightPatient locks the patient’s medical records with their biological characteristics such as face, fingerprints or iris pattern during enrollment. Next time, when a patient comes to the hospital the platform captures their biometrics and matches it to their medical records within seconds. 

A problem worth pondering upon

With all kinds of technological advancement it makes you wonder, where did these hospitals fall short? Heartbreaking incidents caused by patient misidentification that are occurring nation-wide can easily be avoided if only a unique patient identification platform had been in use. That is where RightPatient performs its task.