News

ONC SAFER patient identification self assessment

ONC SAFER patient identification self assessment

In January of 2014 the ONC released a Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) report on patient identification.  This is a self assessment tool to be used by healthcare organizations that want to determine how well they are doing in the patient identification area.  It focuses on 14 measures of patient identification quality.

One Million Data Breaches in One Month

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.

2013 WEDI Report

2013 WEDI Report

  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."

HIMSS Patient Identity Integrity

Patient Identity Integrity

This is a 60 page white paper prepared by the HIMSS Patient Identity Integrity Work Group in December, 2009 investigating the status of patient matching.  It includes discussions on current matching approaches and their shortcomings, the role of unique identifiers, the importance of proper procedures, and a brief discussion of the GPII system.

 

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