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Improving Mobile Patient Identification with Wireless Technology

October 21, 2015/6951 views / 0 Comments/in Biometric Hardware, BLOG, Data Integrity, Future of Biometrics, Health Care, Mobile, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Safety /by John Trader

Patient Identification isn’t Cookie Cutter

You know the drill. A trauma patient is whisked into the emergency room bypassing the normal registration process to receive immediate care. Despite the patient’s condition, you as a patient registration representative are still responsible for establishing the patient’s identity, verifying their insurance eligibility, and ensuring that services rendered are allocated to the proper electronic medical record so the hospital can maintain high levels of data integrity and secure accurate revenue cycle compensation. Or, perhaps a handicap or disabled patient arrives at your facility and you may have to adjust normal registration procedures to compensate for their condition which may involve approaching the patient in the waiting room instead of asking them to approach you.

Particularly in emergency situations, wireless biometric patient identification devices offer convenience and portability to ensure patient safety.

The following post was submitted by Brad Marshall, Enterprise Development Consultant with RightPatient®

Whatever the case may be, some hospitals that have implemented biometrics for patient identification now have the ability to use a wireless camera to identify a patient at bedside or in-person, adding registration flexibility and removing the need to deal with the often cumbersome tangle of wires, USB cables, and devices on computers on wheels (COWs) or workstation on wheels (WOWs). These hospitals understand that wireless, portable patient identification offers distinct advantages to quickly identify patients with special conditions without the restrictions of a USB connection that may limit mobility and waste valuable time.

The Flexibility of Free Standing Patient Identification in ED or Bedside

The ability to quickly, easily, and accurately identify patients in emergency situations can often be the difference between life and death. Think about identifying an unconscious or unknown patient who arrives in the Emergency Department (ED) with a long medical history that includes medication allergies or important pre-existing conditions. Treating a patient in the absence of this critical health data not only endangers their health, but it presents a huge liability to the hospital should something go wrong based on missing or incomplete information. Not to mention that fact that in healthcare, especially in emergency situations, seconds matter.

Patient registration staff and clinicians both need the convenience and portability of a wireless biometric patient identification device that can be used to quickly determine a patient’s identity at any physical touchpoint along the care continuum. Think for a moment about the importance of verifying a patient’s identity at bedside. Accurate patient identification is not only an important safety protocol, but it also offers a variety of other benefits including:

Cost reductions by eliminating unnecessary or repetitive diagnostic testing or procedures
Reduction of mistakes during treatment that could result in hospital liability
Efficient organization of supplies, medications, and specimens

Innovative wireless patient identification devices increase productivity by saving time without compensating accuracy during the registration process. Characterized by their mobility and efficiency, these devices are configured to seamlessly communicate with biometric patient identification systems integrated with electronic health record (EHR) platforms to ensure 100% accuracy.

Conclusion

Wireless devices are revolutionizing patient identification in healthcare by combining the speed and accuracy of biometrics with a convenient and portable design that eliminates the frustration of maneuvering cumbersome COWs and WOWs and the restrictions of USB connected devices. Specifically designed to ensure patient safety, lower hospital liability, and strengthen and sustain patient data integrity, wireless patient identification devices almost seem to be a “must have” for any hospital that is vested in ensuring the highest quality care, especially amid challenging conditions.

Interested in learning more? Drop us a note and we will be happy to set up a no obligation demo to show you firsthand how these devices operate, and provide more details about the advantages.

Brad Marshall is an Enterprise Development Consultant with RightPatient®. With several years of experience implementing both large and small scale biometric patient identification projects in healthcare, Brad works closely with key hospital executives and front line staff to ensure project success.

Why We Offer a Choice of Hardware Modalities for Biometric Patient ID

August 10, 2015/6337 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Future of Biometrics, Health Care, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Voice Biometrics /by John Trader

Understanding the value of using a biometric patient identification solution that offers a choice of multiple biometric modalities is key to a better understanding of how this technology can truly increase patient safety in healthcare.

The following guest post was written by David Cuberos, Enterprise Sales Consultant with RightPatient®

On many occasions throughout the course of conversations with different hospitals and healthcare systems, the question of which biometric modality to deploy for a biometric patient identification management project always surfaces. After all, choosing which biometric hardware modality to deploy is a critical factor for patient acceptance and efficient system performance – metrics that have a significant impact on the success and return on investment (ROI) of the initiative. More often than not when our customers and community get an in depth look at the variety of biometric hardware modalities we offer compared to other alternatives, they are curious about why we would support multiple devices instead of just one, and what the pros and cons are of each. The answer uncovers an important, but not frequently discussed attribute of biometric patient identification solutions that hospitals and healthcare organizations should be aware of.

Experience in Biometrics and Health System Integration Matters

The origins of RightPatient®’s biometric matching technology trace back 13 years through the experience and global track record of managing both small and large scale biometric identification management projects in many different industries by our parent company M2SYS Technology. As a proven innovator and expert in biometric matching technology, our experience has taught us that the success of these initiatives is largely dependent on ensuring that the biometric modality used matches the unique needs of our end users, offers the flexibility to change or add a modality in the future, has the ability to be customized prior to launch, and is easily scaled up as the deployment grows.

Experience in managing biometric identification management projects has also taught us the importance of using human factor engineering as part of our system design process based on understanding what makes a task easy for hospital staff and what makes it hard in order to ultimately develop biometric tools that would support healthcare organization goals. Deployments became more about identifying solutions that would cut down on “human error” and providing biometric hardware and software systems that fit employee need and workflow and less about deploying a solution that used the most popular and well known technology and relied on traditional conventions.

Ergonomics have become more influential in biometric patient ID system design, and training curriculum was refined to reflect the sources of expert performance, and how hospital staff acquire expertise in working with biometric identity systems. And perhaps most importantly, biometric deployments based on human factor engineering are designed to make systems more resilient in the face of shifting demands.

Hardware diversity, patient identification mobility, and back end databases that use certain biometric matching types are the only way that hospitals will be able to reach pre-deployment defined goals of eliminating duplicate medical records/overlays, preventing medical ID theft/fraud, and increasing patient safety. The biometric hardware chosen for a deployment has a direct effect on achieving these goals which is why it becomes a critical decision in the overall project scope.

The Problem of “Locking In” to One Biometric Modality System Platform

Biometric vendors who only offer a choice of deploying one biometric modality system for a patient ID initiative are hamstrung by the limitations of the device manufacturer. In other words, they “lock” you into using one biometric modality system that inhibits the ability to expand a deployment to meet the new realities of identifying patients in healthcare – biometric patient ID systems must now be able to offer patient identification at new touchpoints along the care continuum (e.g. – smart mobile devices, patient portals, and telehealth) and not just accurate ID at the point of service. Biometric patient ID systems that rely on one biometric modality can’t offer this flexibility because they can’t identify patients in these scenarios and often times, hospitals who deploy these solutions must either make another investment in a system that does have this capability, or risk not addressing how to offer accurate patient identification for the aforementioned new patient touchpoints – a risk that could have extremely negative repercussions should a patient be mis-identified or a clinician misses key patient health data missing from their medical record.

Deploying a biometric patient authentication system that offers a variety of modalities is the only way a hospital can meet the increasing complications of ensuring accurate identification along the care continuum at new touchpoints, using voice or facial recognition biometrics for smart mobile devices as an example. Absent of this flexibility, hospitals and healthcare organizations are running the risk of non-authorized individuals accessing sensitive personal health information (PHI), or medical information not being attributed to the proper records which is a direct threat to patient safety and an extreme liability.

The ability to establish and maintain patient data integrity is also called into question when locking into a single biometric modality system. The holy grail of patient data integrity is to achieve 100% accuracy, cleanse a master patient index (MPI) of any duplicate medical records/overlays, and then have the ability to maintain that level of integrity as the database grows. Since single biometric modality systems do not have the ability to address accurate patient identification at all touchpoints along the care continuum, hospitals and healthcare organizations run the risk that a care event will either be administered to the incorrect patient, or medical data could be accessed and stolen by an unauthorized individual. Deploying multiple biometric modalities such as facial and voice recognition to address accurate patient ID at ALL touchpoints is the only way that true patient data integrity can be established and maintained.

Conclusion

As the biometric identification management industry continues it’s rapid pace of evolution and expansion parallel to the evolution and expansion of new patient touchpoints to access medical data and services, hospitals and healthcare organizations should be thinking of deploying a solution that leverages multiple modalities that can accurately identify patients no matter where they are. The only way to accomplish this is the use of a biometric patient ID solution that offers a choice of modalities and a high degree of flexibility for deployment to address various patient touchpoints along the care continuum.

Don’t fall into the trap that a one biometric modality system will be sufficient to ensure accurate patient ID and a high level of patient data integrity across the care continuum. Learn more about how a choice of biometric hardware modalities for patient identification in healthcare is a smarter investment that will truly help hospitals and healthcare organizations achieve the goals that measure the success of the initiative.

Partnering with a vendor that has deep experience in biometric identification management technology, a strong track record of healthcare system integration experience, and a history of innovation is the only way to achieve the results you expect.

What patient ID challenges have you experienced that were solved by the use of multiple biometric modalities? Please share your comments below.

David Cuberos is an Enterprise Sales Consultant with RightPatient® helping hospitals and healthcare organizations realize the benefits of implementing biometrics for patient identification to; increase patient safety, eliminate duplicate medical records and overlays, and prevent medical identity theft and healthcare fraud.

Uniting Accurate Patient Identification with Secure Single Sign-On (SSO) to Improve Data Integrity in Healthcare

May 26, 2015/5870 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG /by John Trader

Today we announced a new strategic alliance with Healthcast, Inc. to bring biometric patient ID and single sign-on (SSO) technology to healthcare.

One of the biggest obstacles facing the healthcare industry is ensuring high levels of patient data integrity. As computerization of health information continues and the scope of health information organizational exchange expands into health information exchanges (HIEs), and integrated delivery networks (IDNs), maintaining the integrity and completeness of health data is paramount yet much more complicated and challenging. The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) recently stated that:

“The overarching goal of HIEs is to allow authorized users to quickly and accurately exchange health information to enhance patient safety and improve efficiency. Achieving this goal is dependent on the ability to link (match) multiple, disparate records relating to a single individual.” (Insuring Data Integrity in Health Data Exchange, AHIMA Resources, 2012)

Achieving high levels of patient data integrity in healthcare is largely contingent upon establishing accurate patient identification — a complex process due to the absence of any standardized patient identification credentials and a lack of consistency on how patient identification information is collected. Implementing a secure patient identification system should be the precursor to any patient data integrity improvement strategy, one that has the ubiquity for use at ANY patient touchpoint (e.g. portals, mHealth, and kiosks) and has the power to prevent duplicate medical records and fraud which can quickly poison an electronic health record database and create a host of “dirty data.”

Coupled with the importance of deploying a modern patient identification system is the urgency to establish stricter single sign-on (SSO) security protocols for access to personal health information (PHI) from clinicians or any staff authorized to view this data. Healthcare data breaches continue to pose a tremendous strain on the industry, recently highlighted in The Ponemon Institute’s 2015 2nd Annual Data Breach forecast which states:

“Healthcare organizations face the challenge of securing a significant amount of sensitive information stored on their network, which combined with the value of a medical identity string makes them an attractive target for cybercriminals.” (2015 Second Annual Data Breach Industry Forecast, The Ponemon Institute, 2015)

A logical first step for any healthcare provider is to implement stronger SSO technology to simplify and secure access to PHI that helps deter fraud, prevent duplicate medical records, and increase operational efficiencies.

In an effort to help introduce and increase adoption of arguably the two most important components that will improve patient data integrity for any healthcare organization, today we announced a new strategic alliance with Healthcast — joining forces to offer our best-of-breed biometric patient identification solution with their #1 ranked single sign-on solution (KLAS, 2014) to increase patient safety and secure access to patient data.