Managing personal healthcare data has been an issue for years. Now, in the digital era, as more sources of data exist and as health records are electronically exchanged, data is more important than ever. Perhaps no aspect of data management is more important than identity — when identity is not correct, it can result in serious consequences.
At Becker's Hospital Review's 13th Annual Meeting, in an executive roundtable sponsored by Verato, George Gellert, MD along with experts from Verato —Joe Hickey, vice president of provider market and Jay Strauss, regional vice president — led a discussion about how data management and innovative solutions like Verato's can bridge the data gap and help prevent disasters.
Four key takeaways were:
1. Valuable patient identity data is dangerously fragmented. Each person's healthcare data is fragmented and sits in many places. This includes but goes far beyond the EHR to include claims data, pharmacy data, CRM data and call center data, as well as data from apps, data related to SDOH and much, much more.
Unfortunately, this data resides in multiple siloes across multiple health systems, and in wellness apps and portals. While personal healthcare data has always been fragmented across the complex health ecosystem, data fragmentation accelerated during the pandemic because of the rapid shift to digital healthcare, creating even greater data management complexity. Yet despite massive investment into health IT capabilities, the bulk of research focuses on integrating clinical and lab data, rather than personal health data.
A big barrier? Physicians generally view EHRs as "counterintuitive, time consuming, often a pain in the butt, and they compete for the most important thing that they want to do and that they went into medicine for — to deliver good patient care," Dr. Gellert said. "The [EHR] is actually more inhibiting than it gets things done for the clinician," one attendee agreed.
2. Getting patient identity management is foundational. Unless this fragmented data can be accurately matched together and determined — with clinical-grade accuracy — that it unambiguously belongs to the same person, you can't build the 360-degree view that is needed to improve patient experiences, deliver safe care and maximize reimbursement. This means that identity is critical.
Mixed-up patient data, Dr. Gellert said, can be potentially deadly. Personal data must be resolved and managed. However, this isn't easy. An attendee from the Chicago area said her organization had a lot of problems with attempted fraud — borrowed Medicaid cards and the like. "It's a mess," she said. "We have so many duplicates." The issue of duplicates is a common issue. In a recent survey by the Patient ID Now coalition, 71 percent of organizations report that portals and digital health apps are contributing to an increase in duplicate record creation or identity issues.
3. Better data management increases patient safety. Accurately resolving and managing a 360-degree view of each patient enables better care. When this occurs, patients are accurately identified and matched to their complete record across the care continuum. Every clinician can access the accurate, comprehensive patient information for the patient at the point of care, and the chance of missing, mixing or incomplete information is reduced. Accurate 360-degree views mean better, safer care.
Better data management also improves operational performance and powers an organization's revenue cycle, since 35 percent of denied claims are due to inaccurate or missing patient data.
4. Verato Universal Identify™ Platform solves identity problems and improves outcomes. Verato is the key enabler of healthcare digital transformation, solving the key problem that drives everything else: knowing who is who. By knowing who is who, Verato "can help focus on building trust, building brand loyalty and helping health systems acquire more patients," Mr. Hickey said. Verato is the only cloud-native healthcare platform that gets identity right from the start. Verato is the single source of truth for identity.
With the right kind of identity data management solution, healthcare systems and providers can improve operational performance and drive better results. These results include smarter growth, a better consumer experience, better care, improved efficiency, actionable insights, reduced identity-related medical errors and better population health. A solution like Verato's can help healthcare organizations prepare for tomorrow's data needs.