GAO indicates patient matching and privacy represent unsolved challenges
A recent publication by the General Accounting Office states that accurate patient matching and supporting privacy of patient information are major challenges to achieve interoperability.
One Million Data Breaches in One Month
A recent article reported that in the past month there have been nine major healthcare data breachs resulting in the exposure of personal information on more than 1,000,000 patients. This reinforces the need for healthcare to implement improved privacy and security measures to enable proper protection of healthcare information.
On Dec. 16 Audacious Inquiry hosted a report on their work to support an ONC project investigating the patient matching issue in healthcare. The attached list of references is a valuable resource for those interested in improving healthcare's patient identification capabilities.
This is an update of a 1993 WEDI foundation report on healthcare automation. The report has several items that deal with patient identification.
On page 17 the report states the first patient engagement recommendation as "Standardize the patient identification process acoss the healthcare system.
On page 54 the report makes a HUGE MISTAKE when it recommends "Use the Social Security Number as a patient identification number."
