Is TEFCA Talk Going to Finally Get Patient Identification the Attention It Needs?
Ask almost anyone who has worked with healthcare data about “patient ID” and their first response will be a silent pause – meaning “is that really what you want to talk about?.?.” Why is this? Because it is hard work that takes time, is never 100% done, and it is completely thankless. Everyone expects it to just auto-magically happen.
The History of Patient Identification Laws & Regulations
I love the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and am happy to shamelessly share their one-pager infographic on A Legislative History of Patient Identification as background. From the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in 1996 to the 21st Century Cures Act – legislation meant to help has arguably hindered progress in the world of digital data.
Collecting Patient Demographics is Hard
This is the step we forget or don’t like to talk about! You can never accurately match a patient if the collected and saved patent demographic information is bad. Think about how often and easy it is for entered values to be misspelled, mistyped, incomplete, placed in the wrong field, duplicated, or any of the other hundreds of errors that can happen. Not to mention the complexities around talking about and storing race, ethnicity, and gender values… Garbage in, garbage out, right?!? These details are important and, as an industry, we must be willing to deal with them. I am excited to see how we can point our cloud computing power and AI/ML tools to this issue to help those doing the work on the ground.
Patient Matching is Not Just a Data Problem
One of my favorite things to do is correlate and compare electronic data issues with physical world issues. I always find it interesting to see how they cross-over and if standard practices in one domain can be used in the other. Here is an article published by the Joint Commission titled Two Patient Identifiers – Understanding The Requirements: What are the key elements organizations need to understand regarding the use of two patient identifiers prior to providing care, treatment or services? It is obvious to see how quickly this becomes serious stuff when you think of the consequences of operating on the wrong patient. We should never forget that, in the data world, the information on our screens and in our database represent a real breathing human being…
Patient Identity and TEFCA
So what does the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement™ (TEFCA™) actually say about patient identification you ask? Well, unfortunately not much… The most relevant information I could find is page 30 of the QHIN Technical Framework (QTF) version 1.1 where they discuss the Patient Identity Resolution. Other than stating “Accurately resolving patient identity is necessary for ensuring appropriate access to information…”, the content in this short section is minimal and does not dig into issues or solutions leaving it up to you, me and the QHINs (the Qualified Health Information Networks).
New bipartisan legislation has been introduced in 2024 – the Patient Matching and Transparency in Certified Health IT (MATCH IT) Act of 2024. It is supported by not only AHIMA but the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, Inc. (HIMSS).
I’ll be watching to see where we go and how I can roll up my sleeves and continue to push the needle forward to help providers and patients.
