VUHID Benefits

Benefits for Consumers

Participation in the VUHID system is intended to be voluntary. Each patient must decide to participate based on the benefits they anticipate receiving. GPII will work with RHIOs and HIEs to provide educational materials so patients understand the benefits of having a VUHID identifier.

• Convenience — Once a VUHID identifier is issued, patients should no longer have to repeatedly supply identifying information, even when seeing a new physician for the first time. The VUHID identifier will enable registrars to retrieve identifying information directly from the EMPI and accurately link each patient's encounters and clinical information. Because the EMPI represents the single source of accurate information for a patient, any updates to patient information such as a new address, new telephone number, or name change due to marriage will only have to be submitted one time by the patient and from that time on all healthcare facilities will have access to that updated information.

• No patient identification errors — VUHID reduces EMPI demographic matching errors, estimated to occur 8% of the time. A matching error could mean that medical information associated with a patient might not be available when it is needed by a physician. Even worse is the possibility that some other person's medical information might be mixed with the patient being seen. Both of these are dangerous possibilities in situations where incorrect or missing information can impede good medical decision-making. VUHID identifiers ensure that physicians have complete medical information, and the right medical information from the patient's comprehensive medical record.

• Reduced risk of identity theft — Participating in the VUHID system means that each patient's medical information will be linked using his or her unique identifier — not names, addresses, birth dates, social security number, telephone number, etc. This eliminates the potential breaches of confidentiality associated with demographics-based exchange of such vital data. This substantially decreases the risk of identity theft. If a VUHID identifier becomes compromised — for example, an ID card is stolen — there is a process to retire that identifier and issue a new, unrelated identifier. For participants in the VUHID system, their VUHID identifier may be at risk but their identity is not.

• Better control of your medical privacy — A key benefit of the VUHID system is the ability to provide private identifiers (PVIDs) to an individual. Private identifiers are anonymous. They work by enabling electronic linkage of various types of clinical information without revealing who that information is about. For example, suppose a physician orders an AIDS test but does not want anyone to know who that test is for. A PVID can be attached to the sample and the laboratory would return that result to the physician using only that PVID for identification. No one else in the chain of people who process that sample ever knows the patient with whom that sample, or the test result, is associated. Only the patient, the physician and the EMPI are aware of the identity of the person. Similar situations might apply for psychiatric information, genetic information — anything that a patient chooses to treat as private healthcare information. Using VUHID PVIDs, the patient has much better control over the privacy of his or her information.

• Better medical care — In support of the vision of a nationwide health information network (NHIN) — the beginnings of which are seen in the good work of RHIOs and HIEs around the country — the VUHID system makes it feasible for physicians to have complete and accurate medical information available at the point of care. It has repeatedly been shown that a physician equipped with complete medical information is able to provide more efficient and less error-prone care for their patients. The VUHID system plays a key role in making that optimum care feasible by ensuring that there is never any confusion concerning your identity.