How Patient Safety and Quality in Healthcare Can be Improved With Positive Patient ID

February 14, 2022/4478 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, healthcare, Infection Control, Medical Record Mix-ups, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

While COVID-19 has been arguably the most talked-about issue over the past few years, it’s not the only problem that healthcare providers face. Even now, a plethora of problems continues to plague the US healthcare system. Duplicate medical records, overlays, medical identity theft, lack of proper patient identification, labor shortages, massive financial losses, and infection control issues are just some of them. While not all of these factors are solvable by the hospitals themselves, ensuring positive patient identification can help reduce many significant problems. With that being said, today, we’ll be considering how effective patient identification can improve patient safety and quality.

Five ways that patient identification improves patient safety and quality

It ensures patient data integrity

One significant issue that healthcare providers face in the US is the lack of data integrity in medical records or EHRs, which can often be traced back to patient misidentification. It’s pretty simple: if a patient has more than one EHR, their medical history, allergies, medications, vitals, etc., will be spread across several different medical records.

There are thousands of fragmented EHRs like these. As such, the patient will receive treatments based on a highly fragmented EHR; it doesn’t provide the complete collection of patient information. As a result, treatments may be inaccurate or less effective. However, there’s an even more severe scenario. In cases where there’s a lack of accurate patient identification, hospitals could use one of these EHRs to treat the wrong patient!

The presence of positive patient identification, on the other hand, ensures patient data integrity at all times since patients are treated using accurate EHRs whenever they come in. This remains true both for virtual and inpatient visits.

It ensures positive patient outcomes

Positive patient identification ensures that accurate EHRs are associated with the correct patients across the care continuum. Doing so helps the patients receive the best possible treatment plans and care without inaccuracies, helping them recover without any unwanted incidents, thereby enhancing patient safety and quality in the process.

Patients can receive the wrong treatment without accurate patient identification since they’re associated with incorrect medical records, which can lead to dangerous and adverse incidents.

It reduces medical record errors

One of the biggest problems caused by patient misidentification is that it leads to medical record errors, such as duplicates and overlays. Naturally, these can be detrimental to patient outcomes. Imagine a scenario whereby a patient has multiple EHR documents; if just one of those records is used to treat them, the treatment plan would be based on incomplete information, hence leading to ineffective treatment. On the other hand, overlays are even more dangerous; these are merged EHRs, but they often belong to different patients! Whichever patient gets treated using such an inaccurate EHR record could naturally face detrimental and wrong treatments down the line unless it’s detected and resolved quickly.

Fortunately, accurate patient identification prevents medical record errors right off the bat. Ensuring that accurate EHRs are used every time that patients come in for an appointment helps avoid the creation of duplicates and overlays, thereby saving considerable costs for the hospital and improving patient safety and quality of care overall.

It avoids mixups

Patient mix-ups can be hazardous and can even lead to the wrong patient getting the treatment or surgery intended for another. It might sound like a basic mistake that would never happen, but in reality, such an event has happened numerous times where the wrong patient received kidney transplant surgery.

One of the most common reasons for this is because patients had similar names and characteristics on their EHRs, which can easily lead to mixups, especially in high-pressure environments. In other cases, the wrong patient may have received chemotherapy that was assigned to a different patient for lifesaving treatment. Meanwhile, patients receiving the wrong medication and so on are potentially common risks due to mixups and mistakes.

Most of these mixups can be traced back to – you guessed it – patient misidentification. As such, ensuring positive patient identification is one of the most effective ways for hospitals to prevent these mixups and avoid jeopardizing patient safety overall.

It boosts infection control efforts

It might seem a little unclear as to how accurate patient identification can help boost infection control issues? Well, integrating a touchless patient identification platform such RightPatient helps with that. RightPatient doesn’t just ensure that the patients are identified correctly across the care continuum, but it also ensures that this care is provided hygienically.

Patients only need to look at the camera for registration; the platform captures a photo and attaches it to their EHRs, essentially locking them. Whenever patients come in for subsequent visits, all they need to do is look at the camera, and the platform automatically matches the current photo with the saved one.

RightPatient is already helping several healthcare providers ensure accurate patient identification, improve patient safety, and bolster infection control efforts effectively. As such, it could be a valuable tool to implement for your own healthcare facility’s management systems, too; why not give it a try?

Five Common Patient Safety Concerns Hospitals Must Address Effectively

January 20, 2022/4901 views / 2 Comments/in BLOG, COVID-19, healthcare, HIM, Infection Control, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Arguably, hospitals and health systems have been facing a very rough patch due to COVID-19, and with its latest variant, Omicron, it looks like it will continue to haunt everyone for quite some time. While COVID-19 is the biggest problem right now, it’s not the only one – healthcare providers need to address several issues to treat patients effectively and safely. With that out of the way, let’s dive deep into some of the typical patient safety concerns hospitals need to address effectively.

Five patient safety concerns hospitals need to focus on

COVID-19

Quite unsurprisingly, this tops all lists regarding patient safety concerns in the world now. This has been the most significant and unprecedented challenge healthcare providers have faced in recent years. Even with the new vaccines, rules and regulations, cases are still increasing due to the Omicron variant.

The variant has caused several hospitals to permanently close their doors, rapid changes to the entire healthcare landscape, incorporation of telehealth into the mix and adoption of other practices – desperate times call for desperate measures.

While hospitals have already allocated or built separate facilities to accommodate COVID-19 patients, surges created by new variants have overwhelmed them. During such surges, hospitals postpone non-emergency elective procedures and surgeries, limit visitors, shorten visiting hours and encourage telehealth to protect regular patients from catching COVID-19 at their facilities. While these have become the typical responses, it disrupts the healthcare experience for many patients – what if the non-emergency procedure is crucial for the patient, or what if the hospital suspends ALL elective procedures? These are some questions that need answers from healthcare providers.

Healthcare staffing issues

The virus has led to another problem – a shortage of healthcare professionals. Many professionals contracted the virus. Unfortunately, some lost their lives, and others had to isolate themselves. On the other hand, hospitals incurred huge losses since elective procedures and regular healthcare visits were postponed or canceled. They had to furlough or lay off workers and introduce pay cuts. These actions led to massive shortages as nurses and other healthcare staff members had to look after far more patients than they could manage.

This is a huge patient safety concern because fewer healthcare staff members mean that the treatment will be rushed and compromised. Patients won’t receive the level of care they need, and increased pressure on healthcare staff members might lead to mistakes.

Issues with diagnoses

While diagnostic errors were common before COVID-19 wreaked havoc, the virus has caused many patients to miss out on scheduled diagnostic tests or even have them delayed. In the pre-pandemic era, errors such as delayed diagnosis, misdiagnosis and failure to diagnose related diseases were common. However, healthcare providers were forced to delay all procedures barring COVID-19 cases to allocate resources to deal with the pandemic.

Due to such delays, the patients’ health problems worsened, leading to more complex treatment plans, higher risks and chances of patient safety incidents. Once again, healthcare providers are using telehealth to address this issue. Although diagnostic tests are virtually impossible, patients need to physically come to healthcare facilities for the tests.

HAIs – one of the most significant patient safety concerns now

Hospital-Acquired Infections (HAIs) are quite problematic and have become one of the prominent patient safety concerns in the US, especially after COVID-19. Hospitals consist of patients suffering from different diseases, some of which are contagious. When other people, be it patients or healthcare staff members, have contact without ample protection, they’ll contract the virus as well. This is how COVID-19 has spread, and healthcare providers need to use innovative solutions and strategies to prevent HAIs. For instance, touchless patient identification platforms like RightPatient can help with infection control and reduce HAIs effectively – more on that later.

Errors during surgeries

Surgical mistakes are one of the biggest challenges for most healthcare providers. Surgical errors come in various forms, from retained surgical instruments and wrong-site surgery to operating on the wrong patient. A frequent surgical mistake is when patients get mixed up due to common names. While there are miraculous cases where the initial patient survived, these are dangerous nonetheless.

Surgical mistakes due to patient misidentification can be prevented with a tried and tested biometric patient identification like RightPatient. Using their photos, it ensures that patients are identified accurately and safely across the care continuum.

RightPatient prevents duplicate medical records and mix-ups – preventing patient safety incidents in the process.

How are you addressing patient safety concerns at your healthcare facility?

Hospital Acquired Infections are the Topmost Patient Safety Concerns – 4 Ways to Address Them

May 30, 2021/6591 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, healthcare, Infection Control, Patient Experience, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

We started feeling the effects of the pandemic towards the end of 2019. The committed efforts in the US to create vaccines that would aid the hospitals and health systems in their fight against the pandemic have aided their return to a degree of normalcy. Caregivers are often concerned about the dangers of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) as one of the foremost patient safety concerns. The cases of COVID-19 made it an even bigger cause for worry for everyone. Patients are conscious of getting infected in the hospital with the virus and with the rate at which it spreads, caregivers have to be extra committed to infection prevention. Understanding this, we can move further to look at how HAIs can be prevented in the hospital and how patients can be assessed without touching them, for instance, by using a touchless patient identity verification platform.

Addressing one of the trending patient safety concerns – HAIs

Hospitals are often perceived as a haven where people can be cared for as per their healthcare needs. However, the need to consider establishing policies to address the problems associated with patient safety concerns to forestall adverse health outcomes. Here are some ways in which hospitals can deal with HAIs.

Clean surfaces and patient equipment regularly

This is so important and almost traditional. It is one sure practice that either eradicates HAIs or reduces them to the barest minimum. Thorough cleaning and care for all surfaces in special parts of the hospitals such as where samples of blood, bodily fluids, or instruments that would be used to treat a patient are stored. Such care has to be administered to areas where people such as medics, suppliers, patients, or visitors are attended to. This will help to control the spread of germs that might have attached to their persons from outside. This is how control over infections can be achieved in the hospital.

The responsibility falls on healthcare providers to continue to institute practices that improve infection control in all facilities. Ensuring a clean environment with clean surfaces such as walls, chairs, tables, beds, doorknobs being cleaned and disinfected regularly and thoroughly. This has become even more important to do now more than ever. Disinfection of patient materials such as sheets and gowns must be carried out after each use. The use of disposable plates, cups, and spoons alone should be encouraged.

Enforce hygiene practices on everyone

One of the things we have picked from the pandemic is the consistent use of nose masks as well a practicing social distancing. That applies even in less clinical circumstances. It shows you just how crucial those practices should be encouraged within hospitals. The consequences are much dire in the case of poor hygiene practices in the hospital and health system. Caregivers will have a nightmare experience if a Covid-19 patient comes in contact with hundreds of other patients in an unprotected manner. People tend to not enjoy the use of masks, because of this set of people, it is important to enforce social distancing protocols in hospitals.

The use of signs warning against such unhygienic practices should be encouraged. A sign that reads “NO MASKS, NO SERVICE” can be placed in strategic positions in the hospital to restrict such carefree attitudes in the hospital. Informative designed posters can be used to educate people on the social distancing protocols should also be used. Hand sanitizers should be made available and compulsory for anyone who wants to enter the clinic. Maintenance might be costly but it is worth the effort nonetheless.

Workers in the hospital must project adherence to these rules for patients to emulate by maintaining hand hygiene, use masks, and maintain social distancing. New workers must be adequately trained and enlightened about the essence of a clean and disinfected environment.

Have a robust and updated infection control policy in place

The above-mentioned practices are but a few that help to maintain infection control protocols being administered by a standard caregiver. These policies must be renewed and retaught regularly enough and they must be shared with staff members to prevent HAIs.

Other recognizable practices that are commonly an important infection control policy include

The use of gloves
Use of personal protective equipment
Regular and proper disposal of weight
Ensuring proper etiquette while coughing
Avoiding needlestick sores and injuries

Using contactless solutions to prevent prominent patient safety concerns

Providing quality care and ensuring patient safety as a practice is extremely difficult and important. In improving patient safety and quality of care, multiple solutions can help care providers reduce HAIs and deal with other patient safety concerns such as poor identification of patients or a case of mistaken identity.

One of such solutions available is RightPatient, a touchless biometric patient identification platform that helps identify patients in any care situation and time. It also does this in a simple, safer, and more hygienic manner. The patient only needs to gaze at the camera to register and on subsequent visits by the care provider staff. The platform compares the live photo with the saved one and displays their accurate medical record after the match is found.

It significantly minimizes the dangers of infection control issues, prevents medical errors, reduces misidentification of patients and other patient safety concerns. It played an active role in the post-pandemic scenarios but it has been in existence for years in some health institutions because it has no deleterious effects attached to its usage.

Question is, what are you using to accurately identify patients and reduce HAIs in the healthcare systems while doing it?

Improving Patient Outcomes Relies on Identifying Patients Even During COVID-19

December 18, 2020/14735 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, COVID-19, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, healthcare, Infection Control, Patient Errors, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Healthcare in the US has always had its fair share of troubles. Price transparency issues, medical identity theft, data breaches, denied claims, and interoperability issues are just some of the many issues plaguing it. However, it is having arguably one of the worst times it has ever faced due to COVID-19. To date, over 14 million American citizens have been infected with the infamous virus, whereas over 270,000 people have lost their lives battling it. Due to the spike, hospitals are shutting down, health systems are closing their emergency departments, elective surgeries are being canceled, and healthcare staff members are being pushed to their limits once again. It feels like a particularly bad déjà vu. While healthcare providers are doing whatever they can to help with improving patient outcomes, many are facing a critical issue that has been an impediment to quality healthcare for years – patient identification errors.

Having said all that, let’s focus on:

why patient identification errors are a big deal even during the pandemic
what healthcare providers are doing to address it
how a tried and tested solution ensures patient safety and quality healthcare, improving patient outcomes in the process

Patient misidentification is nothing new

Anyone who knows anything about the US healthcare system has heard at least one story about patient misidentification or something related to it, such as duplicate medical records, patient mix-ups, incorrect surgeries, medical errors, etc. It has been occurring for years, leading to delayed patient care, detrimental patient outcomes, repeated lab tests, among other consequences. While many caregivers have been facing all these challenges for quite some time, a large number of them didn’t pay much attention to the problems. Everything changed with the pandemic – let’s see how.

Improving patient outcomes is difficult due to existing issues

COVID-19 pushed everything to its limits, especially the healthcare providers, and they were forced to face the issues that significantly hamper patient outcomes. One of the more prevalent issues was, and still is, patient misidentification.

HIMSS VP of Government Relations, Tom Leary, said that public health response efforts can be significantly impacted by inaccurate patient data, and that’s exactly what happened during the first wave. Since patient identification was erroneous in most healthcare facilities, this led to improper data sharing, delayed test results, sending results to the wrong patients, and more. Nurses even tried to google patients so that they could send them the test results!

COVID-19 is an unprecedented situation that requires prompt responses that can help save lives, and issues such as patient identification errors significantly hamper the efforts put forth by frontline teams. So, what are healthcare providers doing to address it?

Healthcare providers are urging for the UPI

The US healthcare system was supposed to get a unique patient identifier (UPI) years ago, but a bill had restricted state funding to create one. Since then, most healthcare providers have been struggling to identify their patients accurately. Each year, experts come together and urge the ban’s abolishment, but their requests get rejected every time – for almost two decades. Even if the mythical UPI is made, it won’t be enough to solve such a huge problem by itself.

However, not every hospital is struggling with patient identification errors – many forward-thinking ones are using RightPatient.

Improving patient outcomes is possible with RightPatient

RightPatient is a touchless biometric patient identification platform that is the most feasible solution currently, given the pandemic. It uses the characteristic that cannot be stolen, lost, or transferred, patients’ faces, to verify identities. However, the part that makes RightPatient ideal for the pandemic is that it is entirely touchless, ensuring infection control and reducing hospital-acquired infections.

By locking medical records with patients’ photos, RightPatient protects patient data and accurately identifies patients. Moreover, it is versatile enough to be used across any touchpoint within a healthcare facility, starting from appointment scheduling.

After scheduling an appointment successfully, patients receive an SMS or email, and they are required to provide selfies as well as a photo of their driver’s license. The platform compares the photos for a match, ensuring remote authentication. If these are new patients, RightPatient provides them with new biometric credentials – making it a hassle-free experience.

Within healthcare facilities, patients only need to look at the camera – the platform compares the live photo with the saved one. After finding a positive match, RightPatient provides accurate medical records within seconds. This helps prevent patient mix-ups, duplicate medical records, medical errors, denied claims, and patient safety incidents – improving patient outcomes. Moreover, it can also prevent medical identity theft in real-time, as it red-flags fraudsters who try to assume patients’ identities.

RightPatient can enhance healthcare outcomes, improve patient safety, and reduce significant costs – something which is extremely crucial for hospitals right now in order to survive.

2021’s Patient Safety Goals Show that Patient Identification Is the Topmost Concern

December 15, 2020/13101 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, EHR, healthcare, Infection Control, Patient Errors, Patient Experience, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

This has been a devastating year all around for the entire world due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects. Even though there have been a lot of issues within the US healthcare system that surfaced during the pandemic, one of the more prominent problems healthcare providers faced (and are still facing) is patient identification errors. Experts have talked about and how patient misidentification is detrimental to both patient safety and quality healthcare. Thus, it isn’t surprising that improving the accuracy of patient identification takes the top spot of 2021’s patient safety goals as per the Joint Commission.

Let’s take a look at the new goals set by the Joint Commission, why improving patient identification can help achieve the other goals, and how RightPatient can help healthcare providers.

Patient safety goals for next year

The Joint Commission outlines the top patient safety concerns that healthcare providers must address each year based on available information. Patient identification has been on the list almost constantly because errors can cause a lot of adverse effects for patient safety, healthcare outcomes, hospitals’ finances, etc. – more on that later.

Let’s take a look at the national patient safety goals for the upcoming year 2021:

Identify patients accurately.
Improve staff communication.
Safely use medicines.
Reduce patient harm by improving clinical alarm systems.
Reduce hospital-acquired infections.
Identify patient safety risks within the healthcare facility.
Prevent surgical mistakes.

While these are different issues, some of these patient safety goals can be met, or at least the unwanted incidents can be reduced, by ensuring accurate patient identification with RightPatient.

How patient identification ties in with other patient safety goals

While patient identification errors might seem trivial to some, there have been many complaints about the different problems which were consequences of misidentification – not finding the accurate medical record, delays in care, repeated tests, etc. As a result, many healthcare experts are clamoring for the mythical national patient identifier once again this year. However, national patient identifier or not, patient identification must be accurate to mitigate patient safety issues. Moreover, by ensuring accurate patient identification, other patient safety goals can be met – let’s explore how.

Improving staff communication

Communication is crucial for ensuring improved healthcare outcomes and reducing patient safety incidents across the care continuum. By ensuring that patient data is accurate and consistent, it will enhance outcomes, as most patient safety incidents occur when patient data is corrupted, fragmented, obsolete, or inconsistent.

When patients are accurately identified every time at any touchpoint across the hospital, it helps maintain patient data integrity, ensures that the correct information regarding the patient is used, leading to accurate test results being passed to the appropriate personnel at the right time.

Safely use medicines

Many patient safety incidents occur because of simply giving the wrong patients the wrong medicine, incorrect doses, and/or at the wrong time, leading to preventable medical errors. While clearly labeling and rechecking do help, many medical errors occur because of patient misidentification. For instance, if the patient is misidentified right from registration, rechecking the name or information won’t help, as it belongs to someone else entirely.

If patients are accurately identified from the start, not only will patient misidentification be eliminated, but medical errors will be prevented too, enhancing patient safety and improving healthcare outcomes in the process.

Prevent surgical mistakes

This is somewhat related to the previous point, but medical record mix-ups do lead to the wrong surgeries being performed as well. If the patient is misidentified during registration, rechecking won’t help, as it will lead to the wrong surgery being performed on the wrong patient.

Only by identifying patients accurately at the front-end can mistakes such as patient record mix-ups be prevented effectively.

Reduce hospital-acquired infections

Now, how can patient identification reduce hospital-acquired infections (HAIs)?

Well, as there is no standardized patient identifier present in the US healthcare system, many caregivers are using different solutions to fit their needs. However, many of these solutions can be ineffective and are touch-based, which is a major challenge, given the pandemic. These touch-based solutions can lead to infection control issues, as they require contact by multiple individuals. If an infected person uses it, the subsequent patients will be infected as well, leading to a disastrous situation.

However, many caregivers are using innovative solutions such as RightPatient – a touchless biometric patient identification platform. It uses the patients’ photos to ensure that the patients are who they claim to be, preventing patient identification errors, mix-ups, duplicate medical records, and more. It can also be used across any touchpoint, starting from appointment scheduling.

How RightPatient works – improving patient safety

Patients need to provide a selfie and a photo of their driver’s license – the platform automatically compares them for a match, remotely verifying their identities. During inpatient visits, the patients only need to look at the camera – the platform provides accurate medical records within seconds after comparing the live picture with the saved one.

RightPatient thus prevents HAIs as it is a contactless solution, enhancing patient safety, improving patient outcomes, and reducing preventable medical errors across the care continuum.

Infection Control in Hospitals is Imperative as COVID-19 Cases Increase

November 27, 2020/13023 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, COVID-19, healthcare, Infection Control, Patient Data, Patient Errors, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

COVID-19 is a phenomenon that has crippled almost the entire world. Even in those very rare countries where it didn’t infect many people, it did hurt their economies. The majority of developing countries are severely affected by the novel virus, leading to disruption in international businesses and global transactions. However, one can safely say that COVID-19 has affected America the worst – it is currently seeing huge spikes across the states, where officials are introducing new safety measures. Let’s take a look at the most recent record-breaking statistics of US COVID cases, some measures officials are implementing to mitigate its spread, and practices that will help ensure infection control in hospitals – improving patient safety and quality of care.

US COVID-19 cases keep breaking records

Unfortunately, the US has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world – over 11.3 million! Moreover, it keeps on making new records: November 13 saw 184,514 new cases, according to John Hopkins University. This is in line with experts’ predictions – many stated that things will get worse during the fall. Ultimately, all of this will add to the huge amount of pressure healthcare providers are already facing – the COVID Tracking Project saw over 68,000 hospitalizations on November 13 where 6% of the patients were on ventilators and 19% in ICUs.

Needless to say, these numbers are frightening, with officials introducing measures to mitigate further spread. Let’s review some of the emergency measures introduced within some states.

Some recent measures to mitigate COVID-19’s spread

Oregon will see restrictions on gyms, restaurants, and retail stores. Virginia issued a mask mandate for anyone older than five starting on the 15th of November. New Mexico will be facing a two-week shutdown that consists of nonessential activities starting from 16th November. Many other locations are seeing similar restrictions to ensure social distancing practices as a result of ever-increasing cases.

While these measures are in place to lower potential COVID-19 cases, infection control in hospitals must be ensured so that cases don’t spread within healthcare facilities. Let’s explore why this is important.

Why is infection control in hospitals important?

Of healthcare providers’ many responsibilities, preventing hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) has been a topmost priority for many of them. Hospitals are constantly looking to improve practices that enhance infection control and prevent HAIs. It is a crucial role of any hospital because, if not ensured, it will lead to compromised patient safety, undesirable healthcare outcomes, and create a chain of events that will jeopardize the entire healthcare facility. However, prior to the pandemic, HAIs used to be a headache of healthcare providers only; but now, contracting diseases is the concern of virtually everyone, especially those in hospitals.

COVID-19 has shown how effective communication can be in this day and age – any new update regarding the novel virus can be shared and seen by anyone, thanks to the internet. Almost everyone has extensive knowledge about the do’s and don’ts, and they are quite reluctant to visit hospitals since they know that’s where the COVID-19 patients are going. Thus, healthcare providers need to ensure infection control in hospitals and enhance patient safety as well as the safety of the frontline staff members. Let’s take a look at how hospitals can reduce HAIs, some of which are according to WHO, and improve healthcare outcomes as a result.

Practices to ensure infection control in hospitals

Create an effective infection control policy

The foundation of having zero to minimal HAIs is to have an effective infection control policy at hand. Healthcare providers wanting strict infection control must plan for it in advance, and this plan should contain guidelines for dealing with HAIs, identifying affected patients, locations to place the patients in isolation, and the duration of such events.

Washing hands thoroughly and regularly

While this might seem obvious at this point, it is still one of the most important practices to ensure infection control in hospitals and save lives in the process. Washing hands regularly with liquids containing antimicrobial agents for twenty seconds is a must, especially after interacting with extractions, contaminated items, blood, secretions, etc. Keep sanitizers within a short distance of each other so that patients and caregivers both have access to them. If possible, use automatic dispensers to make it a touchless and safer experience for everyone involved.

Enforce PPE usage

PPE is a term that has been tossed around since the beginning of the pandemic, and for good reason. While healthcare professionals have been using it for decades to prevent HAIs, virtually everyone uses some form of PPE nowadays to protect themselves. Unfortunately, not everyone follows best practices, which will ultimately put others at risk.

Enforcing PPE usage for everyone within a healthcare facility is a good practice, regardless of their designation. Simply putting up signs saying “No PPE, No Service” will be quite effective for patients. For the healthcare staff members, surgical masks, face shields, gloves, gowns, etc., must always be present whenever they are within the facilities.

Keeping surfaces clean

Viruses linger on surfaces for days, and keeping them clean is the best solution to prevent HAIs. We can significantly reduce HAIs by monitoring the materials and environmental surfaces that are touched frequently and disinfecting them regularly and thoroughly, such as beds, handles, etc.

Using touchless solutions that ensure infection control

While many touchless solutions will be popping up within the next few years, there is one that is already being used by many healthcare providers to prevent infection control issues – RightPatient. It is a touchless patient identification platform that uses patients’ photos to lock medical records and verify their identities. Enrolled patients only need to look at the camera – the platform matches the live photo with the saved one, providing the appropriate medical record within seconds without requiring any physical contact, and ensuring patient safety and hygiene.

Patient Safety and Communication are Critical as Patient Visits Return to Pre-pandemic Levels

November 3, 2020/11438 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, COVID-19, Data Integrity, EHR, healthcare, Infection Control, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

COVID-19 has changed everything in unparalleled ways. Gone are the days when we could hang out casually with friends, be safe without PPE, and commute without the fear of catching the virus. It is quite natural that COVID-19 has impacted organizations and industries as well, and arguably, the US healthcare system is facing the worst consequences. The pandemic has affected every aspect of healthcare as we know it, and healthcare providers will be facing the consequences for years. They were forced to postpone elective procedures and outpatient visits to accommodate the surge of COVID-19 patients. While that was at the beginning of the year, many caregivers are now witnessing increased outpatient visits. Let’s take a look at some numbers regarding the fluctuation of outpatient visits, what caregivers should focus on now, and how patient safety and communication can be achieved with positive patient identification.

What has been the situation since the pandemic hit?

While the novel coronavirus has rattled almost every country’s healthcare system, America’s is the one it hit the worst. In addition to the many pre-existing issues with the healthcare system, the US has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world. In order to make room for the numerous COVID-19 cases, as already mentioned, caregivers had to cancel elective surgeries and also encourage non-critical patients to opt for telehealth visits.

Updates regarding outpatient visits

The Commonwealth Fund was closely following the updates of patient volumes within hospitals – let’s take a look at the numbers.

Outpatient visits took a significant hit – they had reduced by almost 60% during the early stages of the pandemic. The update provided by the Commonwealth Fund during May showed that patients were returning for outpatient visits, however, they were still one-third lower compared to pre-pandemic numbers. Also, the latest report shows that weekly outpatient visits are somewhat higher now, compared to the pre-pandemic period.

Outpatient visits vary

While this is a good sign for healthcare providers, it must be noted that these vary greatly depending on age, location, specialty, etc. For instance, in-person visits from younger patients are still lower than they were before the pandemic. Visits are higher for urologists, dermatologists, and adult PCPs, whereas behavioral health providers are experiencing lower visits. More Medicare patients are coming for inpatient visits compared to the pre-pandemic period. Telemedicine visits were higher when inpatient visits declined, but its usage is declining. However, its usage is still much higher than it was before the pandemic.

All these comparisons show that providers and patients are adapting to the new normal. Many patients are suffering from complex diseases and, due to the pandemic, they have been postponing healthcare visits for far too long. However, since restrictions are being lifted, patients are returning for outpatient visits in order to avail healthcare services. While providers are opening their doors to treat patients, they also need to ramp up their patient safety and communication efforts. After all, the post-pandemic world is completely new for everyone – there’s no tried and tested formula to ensure everyone’s safety. Healthcare providers also must make sure that their patients are not contracting COVID-19. Let’s see how this can be a possibility.

How patient safety and communication are hampered

All of the patients of any given hospital must first be identified. This happens either at the registration desks or within the emergency department. Different caregivers have different patient identity verification methods in place. Now, many caregivers either use inefficient methods, like questioning patients, or use solutions that have become outdated, such as contact-based patient identification platforms.

When asking patients questions, there are high chances that the registrar or nurse will identify the wrong medical record – they might need to find the record from an EHR system that contains thousands. Moreover, duplicate medical records are quite prevalent. Whatever the case may be, such inefficient methods hamper patient safety, lead to poor communication, and adversely impact patient outcomes.

While many used touch-based solutions to identify patients before the pandemic, COVID-19 has rendered these solutions unsatisfactory. Many caregivers have witnessed significantly lower utilization of these solutions – patients simply are reluctant to touch them. This is because of the pandemic and the fear of contracting the virus, which is not unreasonable. Every patient of any given hospital is processed from registration desks and EDs – can you imagine how disastrous it would be if one of them had COVID-19? Once the infected patient touches the device, it would lead to everyone else becoming infected. Before, infection control was a common headache of caregivers, and now it is a concern for patients too. Touch-based solutions have always had an impact on patient safety, but only the most forward-thinking caregivers foresaw this. That’s why they went with RightPatient, improving patient safety and communication in the process.

RightPatient enhances patient safety

RightPatient is the leading patient identification platform used by caregivers who prioritize patient safety. It’s an entirely touchless solution that uses a powerful photo-based engine and patients’ faces to identify them across the care continuum.

Whenever patients arrive at the hospital, all they need to do is look at the camera – the platform matches the saved photo taken during registration with the present one, ensuring an entirely touchless, hygienic, and safe experience for everyone involved. This eliminates the risk of contracting infectious diseases and enhances patient safety.

By identifying patients accurately right from appointment scheduling, as well as other touchpoints, RightPatient ensures patient data integrity by preventing data corruption, improving communication across the care continuum and reducing the chances of medical errors based on incorrect patient data.

Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Can be Achieved with Positive Patient Identification

October 21, 2020/10295 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, healthcare, Infection Control, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Among the several issues faced by the US healthcare system, one of the more prominent is patient misidentification. We know this to be true because even during the coronavirus pandemic, experts have stated that patient matching issues were continuing. Moreover, coalitions were formed to demand the fabled “unique patient identifier” once again. But why do healthcare providers demand patient identifiers time and again? Let’s take a look at some statistics that show how serious the issue is, some consequences caused by the absence of effective patient identification, and how patient safety and quality improvement are related to it.

Patient identification issues are nothing new

The last decade has been a transition towards technology for the US healthcare system. Caregivers such as physician practices, hospitals, and health systems have made the jump from traditional paper medical records towards the more standard electronic health records (EHRs). However, as they did so, they saw the issues that occurred due to the absence of an effective patient identifier nationwide. One of the biggest challenges is matching patients to their accurate medical record whenever they arrive for healthcare services. Let’s review some recent statistics about how common misidentifications are.

Some stats to back it up

According to a study conducted by eHealth Initiative, approximately 38% of the respondents have suffered from an unwanted event caused by patient misidentification within the last 2 years. Many of these events are caused by duplicate medical records, and an overwhelming 66% of the respondents blame data entry errors that lead to duplicates. Moreover, 80% of the providers have dedicated FTEs (full-time employees) or third-party contractors to solve these issues. The biggest barriers to reducing poor patient matching were the lack of prioritization and the lack of technology. 32% of the caregivers stated that they had around 3-10% duplicates within their EHR systems. All of these statistics show that patient misidentification is growing and needs to be addressed by caregivers. Fortunately, many hospitals and health systems are already using touchless patient identification platforms like RightPatient to solve these issues, but more on that later. Let’s see how patient misidentification is a barrier to patient safety and quality improvement.

Patient misidentification hampers patient safety and quality improvement

While patient misidentification causes a lot of problems for any given caregiver and patient, let’s take a look at how it impacts patient safety, and in turn, healthcare quality.

Patient misidentification is closely related to duplicate medical records

Duplicates can lead to patient misidentification and vice versa. For instance, if a patient comes in and provides their nickname instead of the name on the medical record, the registrar won’t be able to accurately identify the medical record. Thus, after failing to find the record, a new one gets created, leading to another duplicate record within the EHR system.

Likewise, if there are many duplicates within the system against the same patient, there are high chances that all of them have incomplete and inconsistent information. This will lead to matching the patient to the improper medical record. Both of these scenarios will lead to incorrect procedures, adversely impacting patient safety.

Patient misidentification hampers patient data integrity

As previously stated, data entry errors are quite common during registration. Thus, if patients are associated with the wrong medical record, they will be treated based on someone else’s medical history, illnesses, allergies, and so on. One single pill can severely impact the patient’s health – one can imagine what would happen if the whole procedure was wrong! Such cases have led to delayed care, repeated lab tests, and compromised patient safety.

Patient misidentification leads to medical errors

Quite closely tied with the previous point, patient safety and quality improvement cannot be achieved if medical errors keep occurring. While medical errors happen for a variety of reasons, many are preventable, and as stated previously, 38% of the healthcare providers surveyed reported that they suffered from medical errors tied to patient misidentification. These errors could have easily been prevented had the caregivers used robust patient identity matching solutions.

Patient safety and quality improvement is achievable with RightPatient

Leading healthcare providers such as Catholic Health Services of Long Island, Terrebonne General Medical Center, Community Medical Centers, among others, have been using RightPatient and improving patient safety and quality of care. As the healthcare industry’s leading touchless patient identification platform, RightPatient has years of experience helping hospitals and health systems identify patients’ accurate medical records across the continuum of care. The platform uses patients’ photos to identify their accurate medical records, prevent medical identity theft, avoid duplicate records, and prevent medical errors – enhancing patient safety and ensuring a hygienic environment that will be crucial in a post-pandemic world.

Top Reasons for Using a Robust Patient Identification Platform

September 29, 2020/10559 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Connected Health, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, healthcare, Infection Control, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Data, Patient Experience, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Even though the novel coronavirus and its effects are dominating headlines (as well as our social lives and safety), patient identification issues have not been far behind. Those who are up to date with the U.S. healthcare system know that the UPI (unique patient identifier) has been trending once again – healthcare leaders across the states are urging lawmakers to lift the ban this year as well. While the future is uncertain due to COVID-19, even if the ban is lifted and the UPI created, providers would need to couple it with a robust patient identification platform such as RightPatient. Let’s take a look at why such a platform would be perfect for patient identification, with or without the UPI.

It eliminates risks associated with contact-based patient identification platforms

There are many patient identification platforms available – we’ve talked about them several times. However, the responsible healthcare providers always choose touchless platforms as they don’t have the problems associated with touch-based patient identification systems – let’s take a precise look at what those are.

Patients have to touch the devices while using most patient identification systems. Naturally, this would entail concerns regarding infection control – these are used within the premises of healthcare providers who serve the sick, after all. Thus, there’s quite a high chance that one patient can unwittingly infect others when they verify their identity using such systems.

One unfeasible remedy to avoid infection control issues would be to clean the devices after every verification – imagine the administrative nightmare! Thus, even if these systems are accurate (fingerprint scanning, for instance), they are not at all suitable for such environments housing cases that may potentially lead to infection control issues.

Secondly, since these are contact-based, many, if not all the patients, would be reluctant to touch these devices. In the post-pandemic world, almost everyone is well-informed about how dangerous contact-based solutions can be. Thus, the COVID-19 crisis has rendered even accurate touch-based solutions ineffective as patient acceptance rates would be significantly lower now.

Thankfully, touchless patient identification eliminates all these issues – more on that later.

A robust patient identification platform helps avoid duplicate records and overlays

Since we’ve already established that touchless patient identification is the only feasible choice in a post-COVID-19 world, let’s look at the other proven benefits of such a system, starting with duplicate medical records.

Whenever a healthcare provider uses an obsolete patient identification platform (the most common one being asking patients questions), they’re bound to get confused when seeing the multiple medical records assigned to the single patient. They have to dig through them to find the accurate and most up to date one each time the patient arrives. In some cases, they might even create a new record just to avoid the hectic procedure – adding another duplicate record into the mix. These lead to delayed patient care, compromised patient safety, and impact healthcare outcomes.

Overlays are even more dangerous – these are the merging of medical records of the same or different patients. Imagine being treated with someone else’s medical history – the treatment will be botched right from the start.

A robust patient identification system, however, can avoid such issues. By ensuring that the correct medical record is identified every time across the care continuum, duplicate records and overlays are avoided as well as the issues associated with them.

It prevents medical identity theft

One of the bigger healthcare concerns is data breaches that ultimately lead to medical identity theft. After buying the stolen patient information from hackers, the fraudsters use that to bypass obsolete patient identification systems and gain unauthorized access to medicine, treatment, and expensive medical devices. However, robust patient identification systems like RightPatient can prevent medical identity theft in real-time. When the fraudster has to verify their identity, the identification platform red flags them upon detecting that the fraudster’s photo and the photo in the medical record saved by RightPatient don’t match. Thus, patients and providers are protected from the consequences of medical identity theft, even if the data is breached, thanks to positive patient identification.

It ensures that you send out proper e-notifications

Healthcare providers will require software that supports e-notifications to patients’ other caregivers beginning May 1st, 2021, as per the CMS. This system is designed to promote interoperability and ensure proper care coordination.

However, to send out e-notifications to the appropriate caregivers, the hospital needs to ensure that they are identifying the proper patient first. Otherwise, the hospital might end up sending alerts to the wrong caregiver or information about the wrong patient. This can easily be avoided if a proper patient identity verification system is in place.

RightPatient does all of the above – and more

RightPatient is the leading patient identification solution used by forward-thinking caregivers. Healthcare providers who are currently using RightPatient don’t need to think about infection control issues now – they thought about it before COVID-19. It uses photos of patients to identify their records. Patients take a selfie and a photo of their driver’s license after appointment scheduling. RightPatient checks the selfie and the driver’s license to ensure a proper match. During hospital visits, patients enrolled under RightPatient only need to look at the camera – the platform finds the appropriate record within seconds. If fraudsters try to assume a user’s identity, it red flags them, preventing medical identity theft in the process.

CMS Compliance Requires Identifying Patients Correctly – Are you Ensuring it?

August 25, 2020/11919 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Connected Health, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, healthcare, Infection Control, Medical Record Mix-ups, Patient Experience, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

From the title, it is quite clear what this is about. The changes made to the Medicare CoPs (conditions of participation) have attracted attention within the US healthcare system, especially after the introduction of mandatory e-notifications during every ADT (admission, discharge, or transfer) of a patient. While providers are more focused on e-notifications, most of them forget about one very important prerequisite: identifying patients correctly. While we have already touched upon the topic regarding CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) Interoperability & Patient Access Final Rule, this time, we will focus more on the practical aspects and how patient identification is a crucial component that is absolutely necessary for e-notifications to work properly as well as CMS compliance. Without further ado, let’s dive deeper into the topic at hand.

A brief refresher

A few changes have been made regarding the CMS Interoperability & Patient Access Final Rule. As the name suggests, it has been done to boost interoperability efforts within the caregivers of the patients. Let us look at why it is required within the healthcare system.

There are many cases where a patient is not restricted to a single healthcare provider; especially if they have complications, multiple ailments and so on. Such patients need to visit and consult with multiple healthcare providers in order to receive the best patient care. For this to be effective, caregivers need to have access to the patient’s medical record, history, medications, vitals and other necessary information. In order to make the caregiving process seamless and boost interoperability, the Final Rule was introduced.

The “companion final rule” states that e-notifications must be sent out by healthcare providers (such as acute care, psychiatric, critical access providers, etc.) during every ADT to the appropriate recipients, i.e., the other caregivers (post-acute providers & suppliers, established primary care practitioners, or any other entity primarily responsible for the patient’s care). This rule applies to inpatient admissions as well as ED admissions.

Who needs to ensure it?

Applicable healthcare providers are those who use digital medical records like EMR or EHR systems. They need to ensure compliance and have proper systems set up by May 1, 2021 so that they can send out e-notifications during ADTs.

While that’s a succinct summary of the most recent change in the CoPs, every healthcare provider needs to ensure that they are sending out e-notifications. Otherwise, they can face undesirable consequences such as receiving penalties for non-compliance, or worse, jeopardizing their CMS provider agreements. But how is identifying patients correctly related to CMS compliance regarding e-notifications?

Identifying patients correctly is required for CMS compliance

As previously mentioned, the CMS rule requires healthcare providers to send out notifications during ADTs. But there’s a catch.

Identifying patients correctly is quite important for e-notifications to work. Think about it: if a patient is not accurately recognized or is misidentified as a different patient, the healthcare provider risks sending alerts to the wrong caregivers. Worst of all, the provider risks that they won’t be able to answer alerts other caregivers are requesting.

Without a reliable way to identify patients, things can escalate quickly. If a provider cannot fulfill alert requests or sends too many incorrect alerts, care coordination teams will start to lose faith and miss opportunities to improve patient outcomes. Noncompliance will also incur CMS penalties, which can result in hefty fines. After COVID-19, nobody can afford such costs.

While healthcare providers are busying themselves by deciding how to best implement e-notifications, they should also assess the effectiveness of their patient identity matching systems. Clearly, the former is dependent on the latter. Those who are struggling with patient identification need to upgrade their systems to futureproof, easy-to-use and hygienic ones.

RightPatient helps identify patients correctly

We ensure that patients are always identified correctly with our industry-leading touchless biometric patient identification platform.

How it works

After making an appointment, patients receive an SMS or email to validate their identity. During this process, the patient takes a photo of their driver’s license and a selfie. RightPatient automatically matches the selfie photo with the photo on the driver’s license to ensure a proper identity match. If the patient is not already in the system, RightPatient assigns biometric credentials to the new patient.

This is how we prevent patients from registering under a different identity or medical record mix-ups. There’s no need to worry about name changes, mistakes when entering a patient’s name or other common issues. Patients are recognized with their selfies.

We have been helping prominent health systems like TGMC, CMC and CHSLI fight the battle against patient misidentification for years. With RightPatient, responsible healthcare providers can send e-notifications and comply with CMS without worrying about faulty alerts.

If we haven’t convinced you by now, why don’t you try our free trial? No gimmicks – it’s really free!