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Patient Identification Errors in Hospitals Should be Eliminated Now Instead of Waiting for a UPI

July 30, 2020/8472 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Medical Record Mix-ups, Patient Identification, Patient Matching, Patient Outcomes /by Matt Gibson

Patient identification errors have been haunting the US healthcare system for decades now. In fact, the lack of effective patient identity management within the majority of hospitals and health systems is quite well-known as it is prevalent. Otherwise, groups would not have formed every year to appeal to Congress to finally approve a state-funded unique patient identifier (UPI). However, the coronavirus pandemic has been wreaking havoc across the US, which is why accurate patient identification is needed more than ever. But should they still wait for Congress for a UPI, or is there a way to eliminate patient identification errors in hospitals now? The short answer to the latter is yes – RightPatient. Let’s dive deep into the issues caused by patient misidentification, what the healthcare industry is doing about it, and how leading providers are solving it.

Issues caused by patient misidentification

Patient misidentification has always caused a plethora of problems – for patients, healthcare providers, insurance companies – basically anyone involved with patient care. However, the pandemic has deemed the elimination of patient identification errors in hospitals more necessary than ever, so that patients can get faster, more accurate care, leading to improved health outcomes. So, what are the issues caused by patient identification errors?

The lack of accurate patient identification can create duplicate records or overlays (merged medical records of the same or different patients), causing a ripple effect and hampering patient safety by generating inaccurate patient information. For example, a patient with a common name comes into a provider’s facility, and without a robust patient identification platform, it will be quite difficult for the EHR user to determine the correct medical record for the patient. Thus, the healthcare official will either painstakingly search for the correct record, which is quite time-consuming, or else an entirely new record will be created, leading to just another duplicate record among the several existing ones. Duplicate records create patient safety issues – patients will be treated based on an incomplete or inaccurate medical history. For providers, the financial cost of duplicates can be up to $40 million, according to AHIMA.

Patient misidentification can also cause denied claims, which have a severe impact on the financials of hospitals and health systems. Suppose a patient is misidentified by the provider using an obsolete patient identification system. While the patient at the facility will be receiving the care, someone else will be charged inadvertently for the services as a result of patient identification errors. However, the medical record holder can simply let the authorities know that someone else had used the healthcare services, and thus, he/she will not be charged – leading to a case of claim denial. Denied claims can cost up to $4.9 million on average for any given healthcare provider.

Even during this ongoing and unprecedented health crisis, patient misidentification is quite common. It occurs because there is no proper way to match patients to their electronic health records (EHRs) within those providers’ facilities, and it leads to patient safety issues as well as reduced quality of care. Other issues patient misidentification causes are incorrect treatments, medications, and lab test results – hampering patient outcomes significantly. Given the current scenario of the healthcare system, these issues should be minimized as much as possible – something that RightPatient can help hospitals with.

What is the healthcare industry doing about it?

During a virtual briefing, the CEO of AHIMA, Wylecia Wiggs Harris, stated that COVID-19 shows how important accurate data is and why patient misidentification issues must be solved as soon as possible.

Likewise, other experts have been making similar statements. For instance, even COVID-19 test results were affected by patient identification errors. After the results came in, it was quite difficult to identify and search for the patients, as no accurate patient identity management system existed within the facilities.

Thus, healthcare leaders across the states are coming together to once again to ask Congress to lift the archaic ban on a state-funded UPI. However, if the past has anything to teach, it is the fact that the ban has been in effect for decades now. Lawmakers and officials placed the ban citing privacy concerns regarding a UPI, and it is quite unlikely that they will budge now.

Instead, many leading providers have taken it upon themselves to eliminate patient identification issues within their premises themselves. How are they doing that?

Eliminate patient identification errors in hospitals now

Forward-thinking providers did not rely on Congress to remove the ban, which might not happen anytime soon, admittedly. Instead, they deployed RightPatient – the leading photo-based biometric patient identification platform.

It locks the medical records of the patients with their photos – a returning patient looks at the camera, allowing the platform to identify the correct medical record within seconds. It is completely hygienic and ideal for the current crisis.

Our platform has been successfully reducing patient identification errors in hospitals and health systems. RightPatient ensures accurate patient identification, reduces claim denials, avoids duplicate medical records, and even prevents medical identity theft – improving patient safety and quality of care in the process.

Identifying Patients Accurately is Critical for Ensuring CMS Compliance

July 27, 2020/8107 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, Duplicate Medical Records, EHR, healthcare, Patient Errors, Patient Identification, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

The US healthcare system has been going through a very challenging phase due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, it looks like healthcare providers are going to have their hands full – they have another rule to comply with and must plan accordingly to ensure compliance by May 1, 2021. The fact that there have been additional changes to the Medicare Conditions of Participation (CoPs) is already well known among healthcare leaders. However, while many providers are already thinking about how they can ensure compliance, they might leave out one significant factor that can make or break the entire effort – are they identifying patients accurately? Why is this important? How does patient identification fit in with the new changes? How can providers ensure accurate patient identification? Let’s explore in detail.

CMS Interoperability & Patient Access Final Rule

While the entire healthcare system has been suffering from the lack of interoperability, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have made some changes to the CoPs to ensure that there is some degree of interoperability, believing that it will have positive effects on care coordination as well.

The “companion final rule”, as per CMS, mandates that healthcare providers like acute care, psychiatric, and critical access hospitals send out e-notifications during every patient admission, discharge, or transfer (ADT) to the designated recipients (read: providers and other entities primarily responsible for patient’s care). This is applicable for both inpatient admissions and patients registered in the emergency departments (EDs).

Moreover, the providers obligated to follow the ADT requirements must make enough effort to ensure that they have sent out the notifications to the applicable parties (suppliers, entities, practitioners, etc.) in real-time.

Any given healthcare provider that uses digital medical records like EMRs or EHRs needs to ensure compliance with the updated CoPs for e-notifications. COVID-19 has extended the deadline – healthcare providers now have until May 1, 2021 to ensure compliance with the recent changes.

Why are the CoPs important?

What is the biggest reason to ensure CMS compliance? Financial factors like CMS reimbursements and avoiding non-compliance penalties are more than ample motivators. Healthcare providers need to be compliant in order to safeguard their CMS provider agreement – it determines whether the providers are able to receive reimbursements or not, which can be quite significant in some cases. If providers do not ensure compliance, not only will their agreements be in jeopardy, restricting them from receiving reimbursements, but they might also face penalties. Given the current healthcare crisis that has crippled almost every caregiver, more financial woes are something any provider would want to avoid.

What the healthcare providers are doing

Since the deadline has been extended to May 1, 2021, leading figures of healthcare providers are brainstorming about how to comply with the change – should they build an in-house e-notification system themselves, or should they buy from experienced vendors? Whatever option providers go with, they are not addressing the elephant in the room – are they identifying patients accurately?

How identifying patients accurately is related to e-notifications

Think of it this way – patient identification in hospitals is already inaccurate. In fact, many healthcare providers face patient identification errors due to duplicate medical records, medical record overlays, and patient mix-ups, among other problems. These lead to issues like compromised patient safety, unwanted patient outcomes, avoidable medical errors, and even deaths.

So, it has already been established that if a hospital does not have an accurate patient identity management system, then it causes a lot of problems for the facility. Can you imagine what will happen if the hospital goes for an e-notification platform without identifying patients correctly first?

Issues like common names and characteristics shared by patients are already quite prevalent and cause patient mix-ups. If such a case occurs while sending out e-notifications, then the wrong patient’s data will be provided to the subsequent caregiver. Thus, patient mix-ups and incorrect patient identification cases during ADT notifications will wreak havoc – delays in treatments, medical errors, and lawsuits are just some of the consequences of such scenarios. It will be a nightmare for any given provider. Hospitals and health systems that are not identifying patients accurately at their facilities need to eliminate these errors to ensure CMS compliance and avoid any unwanted consequences. They need to ensure patient data integrity by ensuring positive patient identification every time a patient comes in. That’s where we can help.

Identifying patients accurately with RightPatient

RightPatient is the healthcare industry’s leading photo-based biometric patient identification platform. It seamlessly integrates with the major EHR systems and becomes part of the workflow. Patients are registered by locking their medical records with their photos. After enrollment, incoming patients only need to look at the camera and the platform matches the photos and provides accurate medical records within seconds. This ensures a safe, easy, touchless, and hygienic patient identification experience for everyone.

RightPatient ensures that the correct patient is identified every time across the care continuum, helping you maintain patient data integrity. With RightPatient, you can send out the correct patient’s notification every time, ensuring CMS compliance and safeguarding your patients and, in turn, your business.

How to Prevent Medical Identity Theft During COVID-19 as Experts Predict Rising Cases

July 9, 2020/6313 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, COVID-19, Data Integrity, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Identification, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

The world has been drastically changed due to COVID-19 – it seems as if the whole thing was adapted from a sci-fi horror story. While many parts of the world have been opened up with precautions, it looks like the coronavirus pandemic has yet to complete its significant mark on humanity. For instance, new cases are surfacing in the US – over 2.6 million Americans have been infected as of June 29th, 2020. However, that will not stop hackers from attempting to steal patient data, which ultimately leads to medical identity theft. In fact, experts have warned that such cases will rise due to the pandemic. That being said, everyone within the US healthcare system is working hard to survive, serve patients, and open up. With all these overwhelming odds, one might even not have time for the answer to the question, “How to prevent medical identity theft even during the pandemic?” Fortunately, there is an answer – RightPatient, but more on that later.

Rising medical identity theft

Medical identity theft is nothing new – it has been around for quite some time now. In fact, more than 2.3 million Americans are victims of medical identity theft each year, whereas healthcare providers might be forced to pay settlement costs of around $250,000. However, a security expert like Randy Pargman, an ex-senior computer scientist of the FBI, has stated that there will be more cases of medical identity theft during the pandemic as there is a lucrative window of opportunity for hackers.

But why is that so? Mr. Pargman has stated that since the patient information contains valuable and sensitive data like Social Security numbers, insurance information, DOB, names, and addresses, these can easily be used by actors. They can simply pretend to be the patients and obtain medical services while the victims are billed fraudulently. Cases like this will be quite common unless healthcare providers know how to prevent medical identity theft. Thankfully, RightPatient does that effectively. It also helps to improve quality and safety with its platform.

Why are such cases so common?

The answer is quite simple – medical records are the most profitable forms of stolen information. To put it into perspective, stolen credit card information sells for up to $110 on the dark web, whereas stolen patient records sell for up to a whopping $1,000!

Thus, it is quite natural that hackers would target healthcare providers more, as they can sell the records for far more money. Fraudsters can also obtain expensive medical services, unobtainable drugs, and medical equipment for a mere $1,000. They are saving thousands of dollars – healthcare can get quite expensive. It is simple economics – wherever there is demand, there will be supply.

While providers are required to protect patient data due to laws like HIPAA, they usually implement inadequate security, ultimately leading to healthcare data breaches and medical identity theft. As previously mentioned, not everyone is facing such cases. Healthcare leaders have taken it upon themselves to protect their patients from medical identity theft and saving themselves from unnecessary costs due to HIPAA violations. Saving costs is even more necessary during the pandemic. So, how are the leaders answering the question, “How to prevent medical identity theft?”

How to prevent medical identity theft with RightPatient

RightPatient has years of experience with leading providers. A touchless biometric patient identification platform, RightPatient solves a number of issues. But before that, how does it work exactly?

It locks the medical records of the patients with their photos during registration. After enrollment, the platform simply takes a photo of the returning patients, matches it to the one saved within the record, and provides the appropriate EHR within seconds. The best part is that it does so without requiring a single touch from the patient, making it the most hygienic patient identification platform.

Thus, if a fraudster comes in assuming the identity of someone else, RightPatient will immediately red flag the person – preventing medical identity theft in real-time. RightPatient also prevents duplicate record creation, reduces denied claims, and enhances patient safety. All these lead to boosting the bottom lines of hospitals – something which is very much needed for providers currently to survive.

So, how can you prevent medical identity theft during and after the pandemic? The answer is RightPatient.

Infection Control in Hospitals – How it Should be Addressed as Hospitals Reopen

July 8, 2020/6639 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, COVID-19, Infection Control, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Identification, Patient Safety /by Matt Gibson

COVID-19, “the novel coronavirus”, “corona” – it goes by a lot of names. Whatever you choose to call it, one thing everyone can certainly agree on is that it is an unprecedented phenomenon that has changed the reality for all of us. Many of us have not met friends or family members for months, have not left our homes, and are practicing social distancing to save ourselves and our loved ones from getting infected. However, one of the only exceptions to be highlighted are healthcare workers. They have been tirelessly providing services over the last few months – tackling the relatively new disease on the frontlines, with many even getting infected with it in the process. However, hospitals need to ensure patient safety as they are opening up gradually. With that in mind, infection control in hospitals is mostly focused on the busiest areas of their premises. What about the first point of contact? Is it safe for patients? Is the process touchless, accurate, and hygienic? Let’s analyze how RightPatient can reduce infection control issues for you during the arrival of patients.

Infection control in hospitals

First of all, infection control in hospitals aims to reduce the spreading of infectious diseases and keep the number of infected individuals, incidents causing infections, or the possibilities leading to outbreaks as low as possible. This is quite a tricky task, as it is not always possible to keep these criteria in check.

However, everyone mostly focuses on the other areas of the health systems and are overlooking the first point of contact – patient registration desks, EDs, and so on. For most of the providers, that is usually where all patients go first to receive healthcare services. If not kept in check, these points of entries might turn into infection control issues. For instance, if the place gets contaminated, every patient coming afterward will be potentially infected unless it is decontaminated properly. That itself is an administrative nightmare and will force the hospital to block off the area, leading to delays or hold-ups in services, causing significant losses in the process. As one can clearly see, this is something that any healthcare provider would want to avoid, which is why infection control issues were always a concern for leading healthcare providers.

Patients are wary of infection control issues now

While infection control in hospitals, or lack thereof, was only a common headache for the providers, the coronavirus pandemic has led to it being a headache for everyone else as well. Nowadays, everyone is well aware of how the virus spreads and they are scrutinizing how hospitals can and are reducing or managing infection control issues.

While the US healthcare system has been going all out to deal with the overwhelming number of patients, many providers are slowly opening their doors to regular patients requiring urgent care. For these patients, the hospitals need to be up to speed and ensure that they are improving patient safety and quality of care so that patients feel right at home and go through the caregiving process without any unwanted incidents.

While COVID-19 has instilled the fear of how good or bad infection control in hospitals is, what can the providers do to reduce spreading the disease at the first point of contact?

RightPatient – the futureproof patient identifier

It is a touchless biometric patient identification platform and has a variety of benefits. But how does it work exactly?

RightPatient locks the medical records of the patients with their photos upon registration. After enrollment, the patient just comes in and looks at the camera – RightPatient then matches the photo with the one saved alongside the medical record. It provides the saved medical record within seconds – ensuring accurate patient identification.

Leading healthcare providers understand the importance of positive patient identification and how it affects them. They have been using RightPatient for years and one of the reasons they chose it is because it is the most hygienic way to identify patients accurately and quickly without causing any infection control issues like other touch-based solutions.

While leading healthcare providers have been reducing infection control issues for years, you can do it now – preventing medical identity theft in real-time, reducing denied claims, and preventing duplicate medical records – all with a single platform that can be seamlessly integrated with your EHR system. RightPatient proudly protects over 10 million patient records and boosts the bottom lines of several healthcare providers.

Improve the Accuracy of Patient Identification and Boost your Profitability

May 10, 2020/6973 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Duplicate Medical Records, healthcare, Patient Identification /by Matt Gibson

Patient identification errors have been a long-term problematic part of the U.S. healthcare system and there are no signs of slowing it down. It causes problems for all involved and is one of the topmost issues jeopardizing patient safety. Still, the importance of improving the accuracy of patient identification is often underestimated.

Reason to improve the accuracy of patient identification

To put things into perspective, every year, almost 195,000 deaths occur because of medical errors. Ten out of 17 of these deaths occur because of patient identification errors, according to a comprehensive study.

Patients may suffer financially from identity theft. For example, a person who did not even go to a hospital may receive an invoice stating that they did – a classic case of mistaken identity. Patients may also be mixed up due to common names and features such as age, city, DOB, etc. All these incidents have a ripple effect on healthcare providers – the bottom line, reputation, and performance may be impacted as well.

However, there are solutions available, that are used by leading healthcare providers to improve the accuracy of patient identification. The benefits of RightPatient to providers and patients:

Benefits of accurate patient identification

Before the usage of patient identification platforms such as RightPatient, patients were commonly misidentified due to issues such as duplicate records, overlays, common names and demographic information shared with other patients (name, DOB, etc.), and so on. The fact that larger hospitals can have more than a million records stored in their EHR systems does not help either. It leads to mistreatment, wrong medical decisions, and wrong medications, based on inaccurate or incomplete medical history arising from duplicate records or overlays.

When an accurate patient identification platform is used, misidentifications become a thing of the past – the platform can easily identify the patient after enrollment. All the patient needs to do is scan their biometrics and their accurate medical record is identified within seconds.

All the medical data, medication, lab test results, and discharge information can now accurately be stored in the same medical record, improving patient data integrity. This helps build up a robust database of accurate, complete, and error-free patient records, overcoming the data integrity challenges caused by misidentification.

A biometric patient identification platform like RightPatient also prevents medical identity theft. As the medical records are locked with the patient’s photo and biometric signature, an impostor cannot assume the identity of the patient. The impostor will be red-flagged immediately, as their biometric features will be different from the patient’s one, stopping medical identity theft in real-time.

RightPatient also helps to improve the revenue cycle and reduces denied claims. As the patients are identified before a service is provided, there is no chance of identification errors – the correct patient receives their appropriate invoices every time, saving lots of costs associated with claim denials and this significantly improves the revenue cycle.

Some statistics

RightPatient helps to prevent duplicate record creation. For Atlanta-based hospital Grady Health, it has reduced duplicate rates by up to 90%. According to AHIMA, the financial impact of duplicate records can be up to $40 million. That’s a lot of money RightPatient can save!

Final words

RightPatient is the leading biometric patient identification platform that locks medical records with the patient’s photo and biometric data. This ensures that unauthorized parties cannot access the medical record without the patient’s biometric scan. The platform also ensures that the accurate medical record is presented every time the patient goes to the hospital. It helps to improve the accuracy of patient identification in all the hospitals it is being used. Do you want to improve your facility’s patient identification and save millions along the way?

Medical Identity Theft Prevention Enhances Patient Trust

February 10, 2020/4692 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, healthcare, Medical Identity Theft, Patient Matching /by Matt Gibson

What is one of the crucial things a company needs to ensure so that it can thrive? Is it the employees, revenue, or size? While many may answer something along the lines of the previously mentioned characteristics, one of the most critical assets a company can have is the trust of its customers. The healthcare system is no different – various health systems and hospitals are successful today only because of their patients’ trust in their services. Since it is healthcare, patients put their lives in the hands of the hospitals – trust plays a huge role here. That trust can be enhanced with medical identity theft prevention.

According to Morning Consult, in terms of trust from consumers, healthcare lies in the middle, while insurance, finance, and real state are underneath it, whereas airlines and technology are above it.

Morning Consult conducted a study which had several respondents about their perception regarding various US brands as well as firms. From these people, a meager 16% responded that they trust health systems a lot, whereas 36% said that they believe these organizations somewhat.

Also, while ranking the most trustworthy companies, people, ideas, among other things, the respondents ranked their physicians even above notable choices such as Google, police, and leaders.

Thankfully, the report went deeper and gave areas of improvement for hospitals and health systems to build up trust among patients. When the sample of the study was asked what the most crucial factor which helps build trust towards an organization is, three-fourth of the respondents said that protecting their sensitive data was extremely important for trust-building.

All of these are straight from the customers themselves, and these are even more applicable to the US healthcare system. The health systems and hospitals need to ensure that the sensitive patient data they keep are safeguarded, especially now. Breaches seem to be very common nowadays, which leads to exposure to the patients’ confidential medical data as well as documents like medical images, medication, and so on. It costs both patients and healthcare providers alike – patients become victims of medical identity theft, whereas healthcare providers’ reputations are dented. People question the security surrounding the medical records since HIPAA requires strict safeguarding of such sensitive information.

These lead to losses for both patients and health systems – patients may sue the hospitals, the culprits may use the identities to avail services illegally, costing the patients a significant amount of money for services that they never used. Medical identity theft may also occur if an individual steals a patient’s medical credentials and uses it for his/her gain. In such cases, the preferences of the culprit may get mixed up with that of the patients. For instance, the patient might be allergic to certain medications, and may still receive that after the culprit uses his/her ID.

Dynamic healthcare providers such as Novant Health, Terrebonne General Medical Center, and University Health Care System are preventing such issues by using RightPatient. It is a biometric patient identification platform that locks the medical records after attaching those with the biometric data of the patients. Once a patient enrolls with the biometric data, for instance, irises or fingerprints, the records can be accessed using only the same data, creating medical identity theft prevention. The hospital can also identify the accurate patient record within seconds after the patient scans his/her biometric data for verification. RightPatient not only aids in medical identity theft prevention, but also eliminates patient matching errors, ensuring accurate patient identification, enhancing patient safety, and improving the revenue cycle as well. It saves lives as well as millions for both patients and health systems, enhancing patient trust.

Healthcare Data Security: How Doctors and Nurses Access, Utilize, and Protect Your Information

July 10, 2017/7562 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, healthcare, Privacy /by John Trader

The following guest post on healthcare data security was submitted by Brooke Chaplan.

Anyone who has been to a doctor’s office, hospital or other healthcare institution knows that these can be busy places with patients waiting to be seen and professionals bustling about to perform their duties. With all of this activity going on and various personnel involved in your care, you may wonder about the security of your medical records. Sensitive information lies within the paper and electronic files used by your medical providers. Let’s take a look at how doctors and nurses access, utilize and safeguard your healthcare data.

Docs and nurses need access to your protected health information (PHI) to provide you optimal care. What steps are they taking to protect that healthcare data?

Confidentiality, Privacy, and Security

First, it’s important to identify the difference between three different terms that are often used interchangeably within healthcare. The concepts of confidentiality, privacy and security are related, but each has its own significant meaning with regard to balancing the needs of patients, providers, the public and other relevant parties such as insurance personnel. When discussing confidentiality in the medical field, the term refers to the duty of personnel to hold any patient healthcare data to which they have access in the strictest of confidence.

Privacy is a separate concept that has to do with an individual patient’s right to decide how personal medical information is shared and with whom. You may be familiar with HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This statute by the federal government states that, while a patient’s right to privacy and control of their healthcare data still exists, there are some parties to whom such data can be shared without prior patient approval. These include public health officials, health organization administration and payment providers. Finally, there is security, which is all about the protection of confidentiality and privacy of patients. It refers to the ways in which healthcare data is stored and accessed.

Medical Records and Their Use

Your medical records contain a wide range of information. Your full name and unique patient number within that particular healthcare network is stored in your records, along with demographic data like your date of birth, gender and race. Your allergies, medical conditions, lifestyle habits in addition to detailed accounts of every provider visit, lab result, prescription and referrals. Your payment, billing and insurance information are also kept in your medical records, as is your family medical history.

Organizational Policies and Procedures

As you can see, there is a great deal of sensitive and personal healthcare data kept within your individual medical records. In order to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of patient data, healthcare and medical organizations pay special attention to create structured policies and procedures regarding the way such information is handled, stored and accessed. Each network will have its own unique set of guidelines, but the matter is taken very seriously among medical providers. In fact, an entire profession known as healthcare or nursing informatics is dedicated to the management of healthcare data. Many universities also offer a masters in nursing informatics program. An informatics expert is usually employed to help organizations protect patient health information and to ensure only necessary professionals can gain access.

Healthcare providers work hard to care for your medical needs. They are also concerned with the proper care of your personal data. You can rest assured that procedures are in place to ensure the security of your private and confidential information.

Author Bio:

Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most her time hiking, biking and gardening. For more information contact Brooke via Twitter @BrookeChaplan.

Nuclear Imaging is Likely to Increase Patient Data Integrity and Eventually Safety in Healthcare

February 9, 2017/4656 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, Guest Blog Posts, Patient Safety /by John Trader

The following post on how nuclear imaging improves patient data integrity and patient safety in healthcare was submitted by Karandeep Virdi.

The field of science and medicine has shown tremendous progress in the last two decades. Nuclear imaging is a branch of the medical field and has gained popularity in the recent past. Preclinical Medical Imaging is assisting in revolutionizing health-related research and expand understanding related to several medical applications. The nuclear imaging systems industry is set to grow in the future as R&D is on the rise and the overall infrastructure fosters the growth in patient healthcare systems.

Can nuclear energy be the key to improving patient data integrity and patient safety in healthcare?

Emphasis on quality and value: The need of the hour for radiologists worldwide

In the current era, it is essential to keep a check on the quality of healthcare systems. Medical diagnosis and imaging have gained significant popularity in the last two decades and the trend is set to continue. Expert in patient safety, Robert Wachter, M.D from University of California, San Francisco, said that it is important and vital to add value to the healthcare system. Vivian Lee, CEO, University of Utah threw light on the subject and explained how radiologists can add value by taking more responsibility to make an accurate and precise diagnosis.

According to Lee, accurate and on-time diagnosis by radiologists will eventually mean shorter length of stay, early detection of disease and reduce pharmacy costs. One of the major factors that drive healthcare inflation is high pharmacy cost. Radiologists can aid cancer patients to identify cost-effective and efficient treatment procedures. Lee said, “Imaging is front and center in the way we think of health care.”

Radiologists trained in the last three decades are focusing on enhancing value and reducing treatment costs. Certain surveys portrayed the advances in modern medicine held imaging breakthroughs in CT scans, MRI’s and mammograms at the top of the list. However, the interest in radiology is fading off among the medical school graduates. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, radiology residency seats are unfilled and the application rate for the same has dropped owing to a steady decline in the income.

Breakthrough technology developed by iCAD will assist radiologists significantly

According to Ken Ferry, CEO, iCAD said that the launch of the innovative solution to spearhead in cancer detection and workflow efficiency. He further added that such useful solutions have proved to be an effective solution for 2D mammography. It further assists radiologists to detect cancer at an initial stage.

A conventional 2D mammogram examines two images per breast whereas tomosynthesis can develop 100 images. This optimizes the interpretation time for radiologists significantly. The improved 2D image is in sync with the 3D tomosynthesis dataset that creates an efficient and effective navigation tool for radiologists.

Progress in PET/MR imaging

With the help of imaging coupled with transgenic small-animal models, the progression of a disease can be monitored and regulated to examine an individual’s therapeutics, interventions, and molecular traces. There has been significant innovation in the preclinical positron emission tomography (PET) technology. By using innovative detectors, the systems are advancing to the theoretical limits of resolution with Full Field Accuracy. The initial PET systems provided PET detection functions. However, PET/CT integration offered structural context that is limited to skeletal anatomy and soft tissue.

With recent progress in the PET detector technology, the uncompromised PET/MR integrations can be seen that provide high field and sequential data collection simultaneously. The onset of MRI scanners has boosted the prospects of non-invasive imaging for next generation advanced applications. It is a major challenge to develop a fully integrated PET/MR system as it demands modifications to the PET detector to make it compact and less vulnerable to magnetic fields. Along with significant modifications, to make it entirely compatible with the RF-sensitive MRI hardware is another major hurdle.

Progress in medical imaging for personalized healthcare

In the present scenario, the medical imaging market is advancing towards personalized healthcare. The personalized approach in this field would offer patients treatment that is efficient and most suitable for them. Post the successful MediSens conference in 2016, The aforementioned organizations were keen to showcase their recent developments in imaging technology. For instance, ON Semiconductor showcased the image sensors manufactured by the firm for medical applications. The need for a multimodality imaging in healthcare was revealed by Dr. Dimitra Darambara, Institute of Cancer Research. Dr. Dimitra threw light on the topic by explaining that there are different ways to look at a disease. However, each of the modality offers a different perspective. The attendees of the conference shared a common objective—how the quality of medical imaging technology can be enhanced.

Summary

The Nuclear Imaging Systems and Equipment Market will witness a steady growth in the future as R&D is on the rise. The medical experts, medical schools, and major market players have shown interest to collaborate and develop efficient and reliable medical imaging systems. The market is set to grow significantly in the developed markets such as North America and Europe owing to technological advancements and quality of the infrastructure compared to the markets in the other regions of the world. However, the Asia-Pacific region offers numerous growth opportunities for the medical imaging systems market. This is due to government support and stable economic conditions in the region.

Author Bio:

Karandeep Virdi is a content writer for research team of Progressive Markets, who harbors an active interest in medical devices, advancements in the medical field and the upcoming trends in the industry. Karandeep has written extensively on topics covering medical devices, software technology used in the medical industry.

Our Top Posts on Patient ID in 2016

January 4, 2017/7317 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Comments On Recent Biometric News Stories, Future of Biometrics, Patient Identification, Patient Safety, Photo Biometrics /by John Trader

We work hard throughout the year to help our community stay informed of the latest news and information on the state of patient identification in healthcare. Our perspective is that the future of patient ID is the patient photo, and with good reason. The ECRI recently recommended that healthcare organizations use more standard means of patient identification, which should include patient photos with their electronic health records (EHR). In addition, many prominent healthcare providers have already implemented patient photo capture initiatives, pointing out that capturing a photo increases patient safety and helps augment effective patient provider communication.

A look back at our most trafficked blog posts of 2016 and a few words on the state of patient ID in healthcare.

Understanding that accurate patient ID in healthcare affects so many more downstream activities and is widely considered to be the “big bang” of effective and safe patient care, the urgency for hospitals and healthcare organizations to adopt more secure patient identification technology has never been stronger.

Healthcare providers should take note however that not all biometric patient identification solutions are equipped to address the challenges and complexities of ensuring ID accuracy across the entire care continuum which now includes a multitude of new touchpoints such as connected health devices, patient portals, telemedicine, home health, and more. Investing in a patient identification solution that simply provides the ability to accurately identify an individual when they are physically present at a medical facility is now considered short-sighted. Healthcare providers should now consider adopting patient ID technology that is easily scalable, and has the flexibility to capture and store a patient’s photo for accurate identification during any encounter along the care continuum.

In 2016, we wrote extensively about the impact of accurate identification on patient safety including several posts that extrapolate on the imperatives of capturing photos as part of the ID process. We also covered how technology has changed healthcare provider patient ID protocols, the growth and impact on patient ID of iris recognition on smart devices, the characteristics and limitations of patient ID biometric hardware, and much more.

After crunching the numbers, what were our most popular blog posts for 2016? Here is the list:

Identify Unconscious, Unknown Patients with Biometric Identification Technology – Written in May, 2015 this entry was our most trafficked post in 2016. Understanding how biometric technology works in real-life scenarios can help shed light on its true ability to identify unconscious patients as quickly as possible.
The Difference Between 1:N, 1:1, and 1:Few and Why it Matters in Patient ID – Did you know that there are different biometric matching types depending on the type of hardware modality you deploy for patient ID in healthcare? Written in 2015, this post examines three biometric matching types – one-to-many, one-to-one, and one-to-few – providing a side to side comparison of each matching type capabilities and limitations and providing a recommendation of the only matching type that can truly prevent duplicates and protect patient medical identities.
Removing the word “scan” from iris recognition healthcare biometrics – Our extensive experience deploying iris recognition biometrics around the world helped us to understand and advocate that the word “scan” be removed from any discussion of this technology. Learn more about our viewpoint in this post from 2015.
In Your Face: Future of Federated Patient ID – As we mentioned earlier in this post, the future of patient ID in healthcare is the distinct ability for a provider to capture and store a patient’s photo that can be used for accurate identification at any point along the care continuum. This post, and a subsequent follow up article by our friends at HealthStandards effectively illustrates not only the importance of capturing a patient’s photo at registration but how that photo can be used with facial recognition biometrics for accurate identification no matter where a patient seeks care or data access.
Why telemedicine needs accurate patient ID – Following in the footsteps of our assertion that modern patient identification strategies should be holistic and enable the ability to accurately ID patients at any point along the care continuum, this post covers why we feel accurate patient ID is just as important for connected health and telemedicine as it is for in-person visits.

2016 is a wrap. We observed a few positive advancements to improve patient identification in healthcare, but overall we remain concerned that the topic is often skirted in favor of bolder, more splashy initiatives (e.g. – MACRA, Blockchain, interoperability) which always seem to garner more attention. No doubt that these are important initiatives in the healthcare industry but as we have said many times before — accurate patient identification in healthcare arguably should have been the first problem solved before we tackled these other projects. However, factors at play make it perhaps one of the most difficult and complex healthcare issues to solve from a logistical, political, economical, privacy, and health data exchange perspective.

What did you feel was the most important patient identification advancement (or regression) during 2016? Please leave us a comment!

How Medical Device Hacks Endanger Patient Safety

December 17, 2016/5997 views / 0 Comments/in BLOG, Data Integrity, Guest Blog Posts, Patient Safety /by John Trader

Arxan’s infographic on healthcare IoT shows wearables, implantable medical technologies, and hospital equipment as three types of devices with their own specific vulnerabilities, including patient data theft. As the company points out on their page for protecting healthcare IoT applications, the FDA found that 400,000 hospitals used infusion pumps deemed to be remotely-hackable last year, merging cybersecurity risks with patient safety hazards. Blocking unauthorized access to hospital networks starts with guarding information, but it goes beyond protecting patients’ records. This includes preventing cryptographic key exposure in the embedded apps of the medical devices that contain extremely sensitive patient information, like how much insulin a diabetic patient needs per hour. Remote hacking and ransomware incidents, and even discoveries of vulnerable devices, stress the need for protecting hospital network data at all levels, including the binary logic of software that could be manipulated if a network’s security is compromised.

Arxan is a company that focuses on application attack-prevention and protection products for Internet of Things and other technologies, including mobile and desktop platforms.