Welcome to Global Patient Identifiers, Inc., sponsor of the Voluntary Universal Healthcare Identifier
VUHID — the Solution for Secure, Accurate, Inexpensive Patient Identification and Improved Clinical Information Privacy
The American healthcare system is in an ongoing crisis. We outspend virtually every other country, yet we have the highest number of uninsured citizens in the world. The costs of providing healthcare benefits are forcing employers to offer dramatically more expensive and more restrictive programs, with employees paying an increasing share of those costs — and, in many cases, rising healthcare costs are simply driving employers away from offering healthcare benefits or out of business altogether. There is literally no sector of our economy that is not affected by this crisis.
This problem has been the subject of debate for many years as well as a top priority in recent political campaigns. A variety of solutions have been proposed, all of which share these objectives:
- improve the quality and efficiency of medical care;
- decrease the incidence of medical errors;
- improve the privacy of patient information;
- and make access to care safer and more convenient.
A key component to help achieve these goals has been stalled for years — a universal patient identifier. Work on this aspect of a reformed US healthcare system has been held hostage to concerns over estimated costs to develop and manage universal patient identifiers, as well as objections from privacy advocates concerned that such identifiers could potentially compromise the security of sensitive healthcare information. Now, Global Patient Identifiers, Inc. (GPII) offers the Voluntary Universal Healthcare Identifier (VUHID) project as the solution to these challenges.
VUHID will impact virtually every constituency in the healthcare continuum. It is essential that each group receive education and information on how VUHID works to protect sensitive personal information and improve the accuracy of patient identification thus ensuring that healthcare providers have the right data on which to base important clinical decisions.