East Tennessee Health Information Network (etHIN) Selects 4medica to Reduce Duplicate Patient Records

4medica, a leader in healthcare data quality and matching technology, announced that East Tennessee Health Information Network (etHIN) will deploy 4medica’s cloud-based Data Quality Platform to improve patient matching and health data quality.

Established in 2005 and headquartered in Knoxville, etHIN reaches 80% of communities within its geographic market in Tennessee and contains patient records from all 95 Tennessee counties who have been treated in the eastern part of the state, along with records of patients from other states who were treated in the area.

4medica will begin by conducting a thorough assessment of etHIN’s health data quality, focusing on duplicate patient records. Following the assessment, 4medica will run etHIN’s data through its 4-layer Master Patient Index (MPI) process to reduce patient duplication rates – which can reach as high as 30% in some health organizations – to less than 1%.

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“We needed a partner with the technology and experience to identify the source of our data challenges and help improve the quality of patient data we receive from healthcare organizations and other sources,” said Pam Matthews, CEO and Executive Director of etHIN. “4medica’s expertise will enable us to be better data stewards for our participants and partners across Tennessee and help improve the quality of care delivered by providers relying on our data. Ultimately, patients are the single most important b********** because quality data improves the care they receive from their providers,” added Matthews.

It’s common for health information exchanges (HIEs) to have excessive duplicate patient records due to mistakes at registration and other points of data entry. As staffers at various hospitals, clinics, labs and practices struggle to locate information on a patient in their systems, they often opt to create another file for the patient rather than spend more valuable time searching.

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But the new patient record may lack important clinical information included in the existing record, while the older record won’t include data added to the new record. Bottom line: Whichever record providers access will give them an incomplete view of the patient.

This not only can introduce patient safety issues, it also leads to higher healthcare costs as tests and procedures that already have been conducted are redone because clinicians lacked access to complete patient records. Duplicate patient records cost healthcare organizations nearly $2,000 per inpatient stay and $800 per emergency department visit, according to a Black Book survey, while 33% of claims denials can be traced to inaccurate patient identification or health data.

“We’re excited to be working with etHIN and its upstream data partners to reduce duplicate records, improve health data quality and produce better outcomes for the individuals and communities the organization serves,” said 4medica President Gregg Church. “At the end of the day patient lives are at stake and we know when HIEs have the tools at their disposal to receive good data they can make meaningful change for healthcare in their communities.”

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