Patient Identity Management Services

We have a couple options. Originally, we had most of our customers who did archival, elected to just simply take the original patients and put in the data source or application archive using either the existing MPI, they had patient identity or ID or they used the existing and account number simply and loaded that as we approach patient consumerism. There’s really a need to make sure that we have a true 100% patient ID match. So, our second kind of a good better approach. The better approach is to take the demographic information from the source application and bounce that off the go forward EHR’s MPI engine in the case of Epic or Cerner as an example. And then our team will back load that MPI into our archive. So, that during single sign on there’s an identity match and a 1:1 link between the patient from the go forward EHR to the archive record. Now, as that approaches a lot of times there’s still a mismatch or like 3% to 5% match, duplicates or erroneous MPI match as an example. So, the best approach actually is there’s some providers in the marketplace that do what’s called referential patient ID matching, which is really kind of the gold standard if you will, which in that case, it looks across the whole patient identity, across the whole health system comes up with a better matching criteria and algorithm so that you really can get to100% match. And why is that important? It’s a little bit more work, probably a little bit more expensive. But at the end of the day, when you have to send patient data to the exact patient, you want to make sure you have that 100% match. So, it’s really kind of an option. So again, better best approach, if you will to be able to do that and Harmony can handle all three of those approaches for you depending on what your appetite is for that patient matching scenario. So originally, customers were doing that first approach where they weren’t really interested or didn’t matter as much because the search criteria in our application would let them find the patient easily. But as folks are getting familiar with the Cures Act and the requirements that are coming for patient engagement and patient data sharing directly to the patient, that interest levels increase more to. Like I mentioned that kind of better approach. And then the best approach early again, customers are becoming more familiar with what the current acts entail. They’re really looking at their productions, but we’re bringing awareness to a lot of those systems. You’re going to have to go back to 2016 for that data. And a lot of our customers were kind of in the gap of migrating to their go forward application past that period. So, it’s important to look at historic archive data as well as they’re looking at that strategy.

Patient identity management is really a key component to FHIR interoperability. In fact, most FHIR resources have a required search parameter for patient identifier, so we want to make sure that the master patient identifier exists in the legacy EHR system and also the legacy archive therefore, we have a 1:1 match. If our clients don’t have a master patient identifier that already exist in their system, we have strategic partnerships with experts in the master patient identity field that can help our clients create a master patient identity and then also create a process to sync that identity up once the systems are up and live.