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Improving Remote Patient Outcomes by Addressing 5 Elements

January 6, 2021/11089 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Data, Patient Experience, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety, Telehealth /by Matt Gibson

The pandemic has been an unprecedented event that has taken much away from us since it started. However, hospitals in the affected countries felt its heat the most, and arguably the worst affected one is the US healthcare system. COVID-19 forced hospitals to divert regular patients to telehealth, leading to the explosive growth that it very much needed. Since telehealth is here to stay, more and more caregivers are adopting it and allocating resources for their online patients. While doing so, healthcare providers need to ensure that patient outcomes are optimal and immaculate.

Let’s take a look at five elements healthcare providers need to consider and address to improve the patient outcomes of their remote patients.

5 addressable elements that can improve online patient outcomes

Catering to patients’ expectations

While telehealth has been around for quite some time in the US healthcare system, healthcare providers and patients did not pay much attention to it. Experts kept arguing about its merits and drawbacks, whereas patients were reluctant to try it.

Telehealth achieved mainstream popularity only after the pandemic hit the US, and after almost a year, both patients and caregivers still might need some adjustments. For starters, caregivers need to identify patients’ expectations and work on addressing them.

A seamless check-in process and reduced wait times are good starting points, as these are some common requests. Moreover, if there are any temporary issues with the service, patients need to be notified immediately to avoid dissatisfaction. Conducting small and engaging surveys is another good strategy to determine what patients expect during the virtual sessions.

Training telehealth staff members

One of the best ways to improve online healthcare outcomes is by ensuring that patients have the best possible experience, and that can be done only if the telehealth team works effectively.

As already mentioned, telehealth is quite new to virtually everyone, and providing training sessions to the telehealth teams is a must to ensure that they use this solution to its maximum potential.

Not only can training help improve efficiency, but it can also help caregivers provide patients with a seamless, intuitive, and engaging experience, improving patient outcomes in the process.

Ensuring ample security

Patient safety and confidentiality are necessities that any and all healthcare providers must ensure, and virtual sessions are no different. Something that is often brought up in regard to telehealth is security – data breaches are at an all-time high. Experts have been predicting that there will be fraudulent cases during telehealth sessions, as hackers and fraudsters may try to disrupt the entire session.

Hospitals and health systems must ensure that ample safeguards are used to protect patient information, prevent data breaches, and identity medical theft. Caregivers must go the extra mile and ensure that patient outcomes are error-free, safe, and optimal.

However, while data breaches have so far been inevitable, medical identity theft is not. It can be prevented, but more on that later.

Ensuring reliability

A solution is as good as its reliability, and the same goes for telehealth options. Healthcare providers have a variety of options – they can either choose from the vast number of third-party solutions, or they can develop their own in-house. Whichever option they choose, healthcare providers must ensure that the solution is reliable and doesn’t break down unexpectedly or under pressure. If it fails, it can result in detrimental patient outcomes. For instance, equipment or technology breaking down in the middle of a telehealth session can be potentially dangerous for the patients, especially those who need urgent care.

While choosing third-party telehealth solutions, reading reviews can be quite helpful to determine their reliability. Also, pilot testing them provides a first-hand experience as to how reliable they are in real-time.

Ensure accurate patient identification for improved patient outcomes

Patient identification errors have been a prevalent but overlooked issue within the US healthcare system, and while many caregivers are still struggling with it during the pandemic, it will very likely be an issue during telehealth sessions as well. Imagine this: if the patient is misidentified right from the start and the wrong EHR (Electronic Health Record) is used, then the entire process will be full of errors. Moreover, as previously mentioned, medical identity theft during telehealth services is a growing concern. However, all of this can be mitigated with RightPatient.

RightPatient is a touchless biometric patient identification platform that is used by responsible caregivers to accurately identify their patients. It locks patients’ medical records with their photos and their biometric data during registration. Moreover, it is versatile enough to be used at any touchpoint across the healthcare facility, making it ideal for virtual sessions like telehealth and telemedicine.

Patients receive an SMS or email after scheduling their appointments, after which they have to provide a personal photo and a photo of their driver’s license. RightPatient automatically compares the photos for a match, ensuring correct patient identification.

Within healthcare facilities, the patient only needs to look at the camera – RightPatient performs a biometric search and provides the correct medical record after finding a positive match.

Not only does RightPatient prevent medical record mix-ups, but it also red-flags fraudsters, preventing medical identity theft even after a data breach and improving patient outcomes in the process.

Four Ways to Improve Protection of Patient Information Within Hospitals

December 21, 2020/11996 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Cybersecurity, Duplicate Medical Records, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Data, Patient Experience, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Healthcare in the US has been facing considerable challenges for the past few years. Data breaches, medical errors, patient safety issues, patient mix-ups, medical identity theft, the lack of interoperability, and detrimental patient outcomes are just some of the many problems that plague healthcare providers. However, one of the more crucial issues for healthcare providers is data breaches as they lead to a number of problems, especially compromising patient information. Unfortunately, these are becoming more common, even during the pandemic. Let’s take a look at why protection of patient information is crucial and four ways to improve its protection – leading to better quality and safety in healthcare facilities.

Why the protection of patient information is crucial

The importance of patient information cannot be overstated – it is one of the most sensitive pieces of information for any given individual. Since it contains data such as names, medical history, medications, vitals, diagnoses, allergies, test results, demographics, etc., it should be protected at all times. Otherwise, external and internal data breaches can lead to the exposure of patient information to unauthorized individuals who might use it for nefarious purposes.

Medical identity theft is one of the most common outcomes of data breaches, and the former leads to patient data corruption. Patient data becomes unreliable, fragmented, and dangerous, causing detrimental healthcare outcomes down the line. This is exactly why HIPAA focuses on protecting sensitive information, known as PHI (protected health information).

After seeing why the protection of patient information is important, let’s take a look at how to improve it.

Four ways to improve the protection of patient information

Monitor access rights

Another way to enhance patient data protection is by monitoring access rights periodically, at the very least. This can be done by conducting internal audits to detect whether any unauthorized individuals have access to patient records. It’s crucial to remember that patient data protection requires preventing both internal and external breaches as well, and monitoring access rights prevents internal ones. After detecting the issues, simply revoking the access given to unauthorized users enhances protection.

Conduct risk assessments regularly

The best way to protect patient information is by taking the proactive approach – identifying issues within the system before the hackers do. Thus, healthcare providers need to conduct internal audits in order to detect existing security gaps, come up with effective solutions, and implement corrective actions.

Utilize blockchain

Blockchain is something that has been trending in the past few years, and using it can significantly improve patient data protection. But how exactly can it help healthcare providers do so?

Well, hackers usually attack a single point. Since patient information is grouped in a single location, it’s easier to attack it and tamper with it however they please. Fortunately, blockchain enhances the protection of patient information. As the stored data is distributed over the network, hackers no longer can attack a single point – they need to access the data at all the blocks repeatedly. Moreover, any changes will be picked up by the officials and such changes require the approval of the majority of those in charge, making it virtually impossible for conventional hackers to hamper patient information.

Use solutions that focus on patient data protection

There are many solutions available for protecting patient data, but responsible caregivers need to think beyond data breaches as well. Data breaches have been far too common, and that’s because most healthcare providers have budgetary constraints leading to poor cybersecurity measures. While data breaches might be inevitable, providers can prevent medical identity theft in real-time with RightPatient.

RightPatient is a touchless biometric patient identification solution that locks EHRs with patients’ photos. Moreover, it’s versatile enough to be used at any touchpoint across the hospital, making it ideal for remote sessions such as telehealth and telemedicine.

After scheduling an appointment, the patients receive an SMS or email. They need to provide a selfie along with a photo of their driver’s license, after which the platform compares the photos for a positive match, ensuring remote authentication.

Patients coming to hospitals only need to look at the camera. The platform compares the photos – red-flagging fraudsters and preventing medical identity theft in real-time. This ensures the protection of patient information as it prevents incorporating the fraudsters’ medical information within the EHR. In many cases, medical identity theft can be life-threatening for the patients if it remains undetected and unaddressed, something that RightPatient prevents.

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

December 18, 2020/14771 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.

Protect Patient Information During Telehealth Visits by Addressing 7 Issues

December 14, 2020/12013 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety, Telehealth /by Matt Gibson

The pandemic has been spreading like wildfire, and its effects on the US have been devastating – over 12 million people have been affected by it. Hospitals barely kept up with the pandemic’s effects when it first hit the country. Now that the winter has arrived, COVID-19 cases are increasing rapidly. One of the previously overlooked aspects of healthcare, known as telehealth, has gained much attention during this period. As it ensures that non-critical patients could receive healthcare services without the risk of contracting the virus, officials were quick to redirect such patients to telehealth. As a result, telehealth usage surged and it finally got the attention it deserved. However, like everything else, it also has pros and cons, and healthcare providers must address the risks associated with telehealth to protect patient information, improve healthcare outcomes, and enhance patient safety – let’s explore.

7 issues healthcare providers must consider regarding telehealth

Cybersecurity risks

Since telehealth requires the internet, hackers are always working on new and innovative ways to steal patient data and sell it to unethical individuals, who will later assume the identities of the victims to use the healthcare services fraudulently.

Phishing attacks

One of the most common tools used by hackers is phishing, and while simple, it is quite effective. Hackers pose as officials and lead the unassuming healthcare employees to click on the links they provide. As a result, hackers gain access to the targets’ accounts and can access or steal information.

While these attacks happened prior to the pandemic, telehealth is at huge risk as well now. Phishing tactics that are currently used rely on social networking, and it might lead to users being victims down the line. Moreover, there are many instances where hackers posed as credible organizations like Microsoft.

Hackers

Hackers have been constantly trying to access patient information to steal or use it for themselves, and the sudden growth of telehealth makes it much easier for them. If telehealth sessions are done using unsecured networks, hackers can just add themselves to the session and steal patient information. They are now targeting providers using obsolete systems that have security issues and vulnerabilities, as that will be much easier to gain access to.

Uncertainty regarding rapidly changing rules

As the situation surrounding COVID-19 is evolving, the rules are being constantly updated. Thus, it is quite crucial to ensure that providers are up to date regarding the changes surrounding telehealth usage in order to ensure telehealth services are delivered in a manner that can protect patient information.

Fraudulent activities

There’s a much broader scope for fraud in telehealth than inpatient visits – such as kickbacks, charging for services that weren’t actually provided, misrepresentation, and so on. Even CMS is closely monitoring in order to reduce such risks. Providers must ensure that they are not being charged falsely by having all the required documentation on hand at all times.

Patient misidentification

An issue that can be commonly seen during inpatient visits, patient identification errors may very well bleed over to virtual sessions as well. The premise is just the same – misidentification at the front-end due to issues such as duplicate medical records, overlays, or human errors leading to medical record mix-ups. All of this ultimately leads to delayed care, detrimental outcomes, and compromised patient safety. Thus, accurate and secure patient identification is crucial.

Medical identity theft

One can safely assume that medical identity theft is the end result of most of the concerns listed above. Let’s explore why it is so prevalent and how it takes place.

Well, the hackers aim to steal patient information from healthcare providers, and the ones who are high-risk are the ones that have vulnerabilities such as keeping patient data unencrypted or using unsecured means to transmit or receive it. After stealing the information, they sell it to hackers for steep prices – up to $1000!

This information is available on the black market, and fraudsters buy it to pose as the victims. Armed with the credentials of the victims, they can easily pass themselves off as the patients and have access to healthcare services, expensive medical equipment, prescription drugs, and more. That’s not all – the victims will be fraudulently billed for the services used by the impostors.

Experts are predicting that such cases will transpire with telehealth visits too, and with the issues listed above, it won’t be that hard. Fortunately, RightPatient can prevent medical identity theft and protect patient information.

RightPatient can protect patients during telehealth visits

RightPatient is a touchless biometric patient identification platform that uses patients’ faces to verify their identities. While data breaches might seem inevitable, RightPatient can mitigate its losses by preventing medical identity theft in real-time.

Patients are required to take a selfie and submit a photo of their driver’s license after registration. The platform automatically compares the photos for a match and verifies patients’ identities remotely, making it ideal for telehealth sessions as well. Fraudsters are red-flagged whenever they try to use the platform and pass themselves off as the patient. RightPatient helps protect patient information, enhance patient safety, and accurately identify patients across the care continuum.

Improving Patient Safety Depends on Error-Free ADT E-Notifications

November 25, 2020/11618 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, healthcare, Medical Record Mix-ups, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

While COVID-19 has been ravaging almost the entire world, healthcare industries have been facing an unprecedented number of patients and challenges. Arguably, the US healthcare system has been hit the worst. Just look at the numbers – over 10 million cases with a record of 100,000 new cases for seven consecutive days. Unfortunately, things will get worse, as spikes are seen across the states and experts predict far more cases during the fall. Healthcare providers are facing huge challenges while they deliver care, while keeping patient and provider safety as a top priority. That being said, CMS (the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) has mandated that caregivers must support sending and receiving e-notifications during ADT (admission, discharge, and transfer) events, something that many believe will help with improving patient safety and quality of care. Let’s take a closer look at the rule, how it will enhance care coordination, and why it requires accurate patient identification.

Interoperability has always been problematic

COVID-19 has already shown the importance of sharing patient data among caregivers. Most of the patients have multiple caregivers located at different sites, and for seamless care coordination and improved healthcare outcomes, their data needs to be shared accurately and in real-time with the appropriate parties. That’s exactly what CMS aims to achieve: improved interoperability between caregivers with patients in common.

Interoperability has been a massive issue within the healthcare space as caregivers fail to share patient data accurately, mostly because of patient identification issues – more on that later. In order to bolster interoperability, enhance coordinated care, and improve patient outcomes, CMS announced a new CoP (Condition of Participation) surrounding e-notifications as a part of their Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule.

The new Condition of Participation (CoP) in a nutshell

This CoP requires applicable healthcare providers (critical access, psychiatric, and regular hospitals) that use digital medical records to share and receive alerts that are triggered in real-time due to ADT events – both inpatient and ED (emergency department) events. Applicable parties are PCPs (primary care physicians), post-acute care providers, and primary care practitioners, among others. The notifications should at the least include patient information, such as the patient’s name, the treating practitioner’s name, as well as the sending institution’s name. Caregivers can share more information if they deem it necessary.

The applicable healthcare providers need to support e-notifications by May 1, 2021. This means they have around half a year to comply with the requirements.

Why it is critical for improving patient safety

By sharing critical patient information with other parties across the care continuum, all of them can make informed decisions using the most recent data, leading to seamless care coordination and better healthcare outcomes – improving patient safety along the way.

Healthcare in the US has become multifaceted and complex – gone are the days when a patient would go to a single caregiver for receiving care. Now, a single patient can have multiple doctors that are located at different healthcare facilities. E-notifications enable such caregivers to quickly send and receive information that can lead to faster outcomes and better decision-making. When you compare it to previous methods – fax, phone calls, etc. – you will understand how this is going to change patient data sharing and interoperability. In time-sensitive cases, for instance, these real-time alerts will save lives.

How healthcare providers are addressing this CoP

Caregivers are brainstorming to identify the best way to address this CoP. Many will develop e-notifications solutions in-house, whereas others will use third-party solutions. While healthcare providers do that, they might overlook a crucial aspect that will make or break their e-notifications solution: patient identification.

To improve care coordination and interoperability efforts, e-notifications won’t be effective on their own – let’s see how.

Improving patient safety requires accurate patient identification

One serious but overlooked issue faced by healthcare providers is patient identification errors. Even during the pandemic, patient identification errors have been brought up a number of times, as they lead to delayed care, repeated lab tests, and can even hamper patient safety. But how exactly is this related to e-notifications?

It’s quite simple – imagine a hospital that does not utilize an effective patient identity verification solution. It is bound to face a number of issues, such as duplicate medical records, overlays, medical record mix-ups, and so on. Now, imagine that a patient is misidentified during registration; the entire caregiving process will be dangerous and inaccurate as it will use the wrong medical record. This will also hamper interoperability – false alerts will be sent out, raising credibility concerns. It will wreak havoc in the facilities that are associated with the wrong medical record. Thus, accurate patient identification is crucial for improving patient safety as well as making e-notifications work. Fortunately, RightPatient can help with that.

RightPatient has been improving patient safety

Used by several caregivers, RightPatient is the leading biometric patient identification platform for a number of reasons. First, it ensures hygiene as it is a touchless solution, eliminating risks of hospital-acquired infections. Second, it has a vast amount of experience over the years, making it a trusted name within the healthcare space.

By using patients’ photos, RightPatient locks the medical records. Patients are asked for a personal photo and a driver’s license after they schedule appointments. The platform matches the photos to verify the identities remotely.

When patients arrive at the hospitals, all they need to do is look at the camera – the platform identifies them using the saved photo and provides the appropriate medical record within seconds.

Use RightPatient now and eliminate misidentification, ensuring that you send out proper alerts to the correct caregivers, enhancing patient safety and care coordination in the process.

4 Strategies to Optimize Revenue Cycle in Healthcare and Mitigate Losses

November 24, 2020/12651 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, healthcare, Medical Record Mix-ups, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety, Revenue Cycle Management /by Matt Gibson

The US healthcare system has been going through a rough patch for a number of years now. When one problem is solved, other critical issues arise. However, with all these preexisting issues, it is now facing its biggest challenge in decades: COVID-19. With patients postponing regular visits and elective procedures, COVID-19 has created a severe financial strain and plunged hospitals and health systems into unprecedented losses. While hospitals are having to cope with these losses by closing down emergency departments, laying off employees, and so on, they can significantly reduce costs by focusing on their revenue cycles. Let’s explore why revenue cycle in healthcare is crucial, some strategies to optimize it, and how positive patient identification can help significantly.

Why is revenue cycle in healthcare important?

Revenue cycle management is one of the most crucial aspects of any given healthcare provider. In a nutshell, it is the series of events that starts when a patient schedules an appointment and ends when the provider receives payment and is reimbursed. Since it’s related to patient service revenue, it has a direct effect on any hospital’s bottom line.

If a hospital’s revenue cycle is optimized, then it will face higher margins, and if not, it will face significant losses. Complications such as billing and coding errors, patient misidentification at the front-end, and miscommunication lead to denied claims and delayed payments. In the end, patient volume won’t matter if a hospital takes a long time to capture the revenue or faces denied claims. Thus, optimized revenue cycle in healthcare facilities is extremely important if hospitals want to continue to operate in the foreseeable future.

4 Strategies to optimize revenue cycle management

Improve front-end and back-end collaboration

The front-end consists of activities where the hospital’s staff members interact with the patient directly: patient information collection, appointment scheduling, eligibility, verifying insurance coverage, upfront patient collections, and registration of new patients are just a few examples.

The back-end, on the other hand, consists of medical billing, claims management, denials management, as well as the collection of final “patient financial responsibility”.

Usually, when it comes to revenue cycle management, most healthcare providers have their front-end and back-end tasks separated. However, collaboration between the two can significantly improve revenue cycle management. Effective and seamless communication is the key, and if that can be facilitated between the front-end and back-end teams, then it will result in faster, more accurate, and improved collections.

Improve front-end activities

According to a recent webinar, half of denied claims incurred by hospitals can be traced back to front-end activities, with the top contributors being registration and eligibility issues. These ultimately cause issues at the back-end of the revenue cycle in healthcare facilities, and the caregivers are forced to allocate significant resources such as FTEs (full-time equivalents) to fix billing and coding errors. If the front-end issues are not addressed, then this will lead to an endless cycle of lower productivity and an unoptimized revenue cycle.

If the front-end processes can be improved by preventing common errors such as patient misidentification or missing patient information, then issues like claim denials, underpayments, and lower productivity of the FTEs can be vastly reduced. Automating the front-end workflow is just one step towards improvement – but more on that later.

Adopt revenue cycle automation

Revenue cycle automation is becoming more popular within the healthcare space, and for good reason. It leads to a significant reduction in the pressure that is put on healthcare professionals, reduces avoidable errors, and streamlines the entire process. However, organizations have to be cautious in their search for an effective automation tool.

Identify patients accurately

The most prominent issues that cause revenue cycle inefficiencies are patient identification errors, duplicate medical records, and medical record mix-ups at the front-end. If the accurate medical record isn’t identified, then the subsequent processes will be riddled with errors, leading to denied claims. Hospitals lose a huge amount of money – around $4.9 million – due to denied claims, many of which can be traced back to patient identification errors. Thus, revenue cycle in healthcare can be optimized if patient misidentification, duplicates, and mix-ups can be eliminated. This is exactly what RightPatient does.

RightPatient is a touchless patient identification platform that is used by several healthcare providers. It uses the patients’ photos to verify their identities, eliminating misidentification, avoiding duplicates, and preventing mix-ups at the front-end.

New patients need to take a photo during registration, locking their medical records with it. Enrolled patients only need to look at the camera – the platform identifies the patients accurately by matching the photos and provides the appropriate medical records within seconds.

By eliminating misidentification, mix-ups, and duplicates at the front-end, RightPatient ensures that the accurate medical record is used across the care continuum, eliminating denied claims, boosting bottom lines, and enhancing patient safety in the process.

How to Improve Patient Safety and Add Millions to Hospitals’ Bottom Lines

November 16, 2020/10989 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Data, Patient Errors, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

The US healthcare system has been having a tough time for many years due to several issues, but the pandemic arguably tops all of them. It has damaged everything, leading to the cancellation of regular healthcare services in order to aid COVID-19 patients. While COVID-19 cases had decreased over time, cases rose across many states in the US. The American Hospital Association (AHA) also predicted that healthcare providers will face losses of at least $323 billion in 2020 due to the novel virus. As caregivers are still facing some of these challenges, as well as lower reimbursements, they can save significant costs and add millions to their bottom lines if they improve patient safety. Let’s take a closer look at the losses, what caused them in the first place, and how patient safety can be improved.

What contributed to the losses?

In short, a variety of factors contributed to the unfathomable losses. However, the key factors were elective procedures being canceled or postponed, drastically lower patient volumes, and high costs due to the surge in demand for crucial materials such as PPE (personal protective equipment). All of these were necessary so that caregivers could treat COVID-19 patients.

The losses didn’t stop there, which forced many healthcare providers to resort to cost-cutting strategies. Furloughing, laying off employees, restructuring the organization, introducing pay cuts, and even shutting down departments or entire healthcare facilities were just some common strategies seen during the pandemic. Unfortunately, there’s more bad news.

Hospitals reportedly received lower reimbursements for treating uninsured COVID-19 patients. It was estimated that the reimbursements might total from $13.9 billion to $41.8 billion. However, around $881 million has been provided at this point. Moreover, CMS fined half of the hospitals in 2021 as these hospitals readmitted patients too frequently. From every angle, hospitals are facing the worst financial strain in decades. Thankfully, these losses can be mitigated significantly if healthcare providers improve patient safety within their facilities with RightPatient.

How can RightPatient improve patient safety?

Ensures a hygienic environment

One aspect that makes RightPatient different from other patient identifiers is that it is touchless. The platform uses the faces of patients to verify their identities. In healthcare facilities, all a patient needs to do is look at the camera – the platform matches the saved photo and the live one for verification, making it a hygienic and safe experience for everyone involved.

Prevents medical identity theft

By identifying patients accurately across the care continuum, starting from appointment scheduling, RightPatient ensures that patients are who they claim to be and not some fraudster. After scheduling an appointment online, patients receive an SMS/email instructing them to provide a personal photo and a photo of their driver’s license – RightPatient does the rest. It red-flags any anomalies when it sees that someone else is assuming the patient’s identity, preventing medical identity theft in real-time.

When a scammer uses the victim’s medical record, it is contaminated with their data, rendering it dangerous, fragmented, and inconsistent. If such cases are undetected, they severely hamper patient safety and impact healthcare outcomes. Thankfully, RightPatient can prevent such cases and improve patient safety along the way.

Prevents duplicate medical records

Duplicate medical records are quite dangerous, as they lead to treatment based on incomplete and inaccurate medical data, creating incidents that hamper patient safety. RightPatient identifies patients right from the start, avoiding duplicates and overlays.

Protects patient data integrity

Patient data is useless and dangerous if it is corrupt, and such cases increase when patient misidentification is common. RightPatient eliminates patient misidentification and helps improve patient safety by using the most appropriate characteristic to identify them – their faces.

Reduces medical errors

Medical errors occur on a regular basis. In fact, a John Hopkins study claimed that each year, over 250,000 American patients lose their lives due to medical errors, whereas others claim the number to be above 440,000. This would make medical errors the third leading cause of death in the US, and as most of these errors stem from something as simple as patient identification issues, those deaths are preventable.

Imagine this – when a patient walks into the hospital, the registrar needs to identify their accurate medical record. However, if the wrong medical record is chosen, even if it is a duplicate medical record of the same patient, the treatment will be based on obsolete or incomplete information – even a single medication can severely hamper the patient’s outcome. RightPatient prevents these cases and eliminates preventable medical errors associated with misidentifications.

RightPatient can improve patient safety and mitigate losses simultaneously

RightPatient does all of the above and more – it reduces denied claims, litigation costs, and eliminates the costs associated with preventable medical errors. Leading caregivers have already experienced how useful RightPatient is and reduced losses significantly. Use RightPatient now to be a responsible caregiver and enhance patient safety, all while boosting your bottom line.

Patient Data Accuracy is More Crucial Than Ever for Value-Based Care

November 11, 2020/9299 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, EHR, healthcare, Patient Data, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety, value-based care /by Matt Gibson

While the US healthcare system, as well as the entire world, is still facing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the former has several issues not directly associated with the novel virus. For instance, the lack of price transparency, increasing healthcare costs, healthcare data breaches, medical identity theft, the lack of interoperability, and the lack of effective patient identification in hospitals are just some of the many problems that plague healthcare providers. While we’ve already covered many of the aforementioned topics, today’s focus will be on value-based care, some upcoming adjustments, and why accurate patient data is crucial for it.

Value-based care in a nutshell

Value-based care is a frequently discussed topic within the healthcare space – it’s supposed to transform healthcare for everyone. While healthcare costs have been ever-increasing and accompanied by all-too-often poor healthcare outcomes, value-based care is thought to be the game-changer. Instead of focusing on the fee-for-service model, value-based care focuses on paying hospitals and physicians based on the patients’ health outcomes.

Due to value-based care, patients will experience lower costs and better healthcare outcomes, healthcare providers will experience better patient satisfaction scores and improved efficiencies, and everyone involved in the model will experience reduced costs and better overall results.

Value-based care has been heavily focusing on:

reducing price and providing transparency regarding it,
enhancing care quality by providing a competitive environment for caregivers,
pushing for enhanced interoperability to improve coordinated care.

However, value-based care will be focusing on more areas as it seeks to improve healthcare as a whole. Let’s take a look at some of the recent updates.

Some current updates regarding value-based care

Medicaid will finally be integrated into value-based care, according to Seema Verma, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Medicaid directors across the States have been sent letters including ideas that will help incorporate value-based incentives within programs. Moreover, CMS wants all public and private entities to participate alongside Medicare and Medicaid.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) was established to test alternative payment models. It created fifty-four models; however, only five of them demonstrated savings, and only three of them are applicable for national expansion. CMS is hard at work observing the data in order to mitigate these issues.

Being flexible regarding regulations might do the trick, as the CMS believes that the exemptions introduced during the pandemic might be offered within the models for more participants.

There are many other proposed changes as well as those already underway, along with what might be the future of value-based care. A more detailed explanation can be found here.

However, even when value-based care was introduced, one thing was certain – accurate patient data is crucial for it to work. Let’s take a look at why patient data will make or break CMS reimbursements that focus on such models.

Accurate patient data is required for value-based care

Since the focus of value-based care is better healthcare outcomes, providers need to ensure that the right patient is receiving the right treatment at the right time. However, if patient data is inaccurate, it will significantly degenerate healthcare outcomes. For instance, if a patient is misidentified during registration, that patient will be treated using someone else’s medical record – someone with different diagnoses, test reports, ailments, allergies, and so on. If one takes previous patient misidentifications into account, both the misidentified patient, as well as the record holder, have faced adverse health outcomes. Thus, patient data integrity must be maintained to ensure that the information is consistent, accurate, and useful. That’s where RightPatient can help.

RightPatient enhances patient data integrity

Right from the beginning, RightPatient ensures accurate patient data by eliminating patient misidentification, avoiding duplicate medical records, and preventing medical identity theft.

It is a touchless patient identification platform used by several caregivers such as Community Medical Centers, Grady Health, MediSys Health, and Catholic Health of Long Island. By using patients’ faces, RightPatient locks the medical records upon registration with their photos. While scheduling appointments, patients only need to provide a personal photo along with a photo of their driver’s license – the platform automatically verifies the photos to ensure a proper match.

Within healthcare facilities, patients only need to look at the camera – the platform verifies the identities to see if the patients are who they say they are, preventing patient misidentification, avoiding duplicates, and maintaining patient data integrity as well. All these lead to better healthcare outcomes, something which is crucial for value-based care.

Choose RightPatient now and enhance healthcare outcomes by ensuring patient safety across the care continuum.

Patient Identifying Information Used Determines Patient Safety Within Hospitals

November 9, 2020/8157 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Duplicate Medical Records, healthcare, Patient Identification, Patient Outcomes, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the US, its healthcare system was plagued by a multitude of issues. Increasing costs, the lack of price transparency, medical identity theft, healthcare data breaches, duplicate medical records, and the lack of interoperability are just some of the many problems surrounding healthcare. While these are persistent issues, many of them took a backseat when COVID-19 struck the US – except for patient misidentification. During the pandemic, healthcare providers profoundly felt the lack of an effective patient identifier. It led to patient safety issues, result mix-ups, patient misinformation, and so on. Let’s explore what healthcare experts are doing, why a national patient identifier might not be enough on its own, and how patient identifying information used by a healthcare provider heavily influences patient safety.

The current state of patient identification

Patient identification has been a mess within the US healthcare system due to a number of factors. However, the biggest reason is that there is no standardized patient identifier that can be used to accurately identify patients’ medical records. As a result, many healthcare providers are still using the archaic process of finding electronic health records manually. Even though EHR systems provide search functionalities, issues such as common names and demographic characteristics as well as duplicate medical records make it harder to identify the accurate medical record. Thus, using names as patient identifying information is inefficient, dangerous, and, in high-stress environments such as registration desks of hospitals, might lead to misidentifications.

As a result, even this year, coalitions were formed where healthcare leaders came together to demand a state-funded UPI (Universal Patient Identifier) and expressed why accurate patient identification is crucial to ensure desirable healthcare outcomes. Back in July, healthcare leaders across the industry were relieved when the House of Representatives finally voted to overturn the ban on the UPI.

Its creation, though, depends on the Senate now; they must approve the policy change. While we are closer to a national patient identifier than we’ve been in years, the Senate didn’t approve of abolishing the ban last year, citing privacy concerns.

Why is patient identification so crucial?

Let’s take it from an expert, Tom Leary, HIMSS VP of Government Relations. During a session organized by the ONC (Office of the National Coordinator), Mr. Leary stated that incorrect patient data hampers public health response initiatives, such as those during the pandemic. As a result of patient identification errors, improper data sharing, delayed test results, and inaccuracies in medical records were seen during the crisis. Also, whenever the vaccine for COVID-19 is created, accurate patient identification is a must to deploy large-scale immunizations. While these were just some of the anomalies observed during the pandemic, patient identification errors have been rampant for years.

Hospitals using ineffective patient identifying information to identify proper medical records have been facing issues such as denied claims, patient safety issues, duplicate record creation, overlays, and poor care coordination across their facilities. With all that said, along with years of medical record errors, duplicates, and so on, will the UPI be enough on its own to eliminate all the existing issues?

Choosing the right patient identifying information won’t be enough for the UPI

Short answer: the UPI won’t be enough in the near future. First, creating a UPI will be quite expensive and time-consuming. In terms of implementation, it will take years to cover the entire population. Also, its efficacy will entirely rely on the patient identifying information used. For instance, many healthcare providers already use Social Security numbers, and they’ve proven to be ineffective identifiers. These numbers can be easily lost, stolen, or even forgotten by the patients, making them unreliable identifiers.

Thus, the only way to make the UPI a success is to couple it with an existing and robust patient identification platform, one that has experience ensuring positive patient identification. That’s where RightPatient comes in.

RightPatient uses the most practical patient identifying information

Many healthcare providers are using RightPatient as their patient identification platform, and they chose it for a number of reasons. One factor that sets RightPatient apart is it uses the one feature that cannot be stolen, forgotten, or misplaced as patient identifying information – patients’ faces.

After successfully scheduling an appointment, the patient receives an SMS or email requiring a personal photo as well as a photo of their driver’s license. RightPatient matches the photos to ensure remote patient authentication.

Within healthcare facilities, registered patients only need to look at the camera – the platform matches the photos and ensures accurate and touchless patient identification. This helps to provide a hygienic environment for both patients and registrars, eliminating infection control issues and enhancing patient safety.

RightPatient has years of experience ensuring accurate patient identification – try us now to learn how we can help you reduce denied claims, prevent duplicate records, improve healthcare outcomes, and more.

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

November 3, 2020/11474 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.