The view for 2020: AHIMA continues to push for patient safety in 2020

PARCA eNews _ Jan. 2, 2020 – Despite the setback to lifting the decades old ban on development of a universal patient identifier last September, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) vows to continue to push forward on patient safety by making 2020 the year of Patient Matching.

Mary Butler outlined AHIMA’s goals for 2020 in an article on the organization’s website, stating that, "AHIMA has never waited for Congress to start advocating for better ways to improve patient safety, so the association is ready to make 2020 “The Year of Patient Matching” regardless of whether the Senate votes to remove the ban on a UPI." Ms Butler wrote."

Patient matching aims to reduce patient misidentification, records duplication and missing information that occurs from data transfers of patient records across different health IT systems. While having a universal patient identifier would be a huge advance in ensuring correct patient matching, it is not considered the only thing needed to ensure patient safety.

“Having a UPI isn’t going to solve it [the problem of duplicate records],” says Julie Dooling, MSHI, RHIA, CHDA, FAHIMA, a director of HIM practice excellence at AHIMA. “We need an end-to-end patient matching solution, and we know as HIM professionals that we have a people, process, and technology (PPT) approach that has worked well. However, it’s not a magic button because every electronic health record’s (EHR’s) algorithms are different.”

In other words the organization intends to continue to push for people, processes and technology to reduce patient data errors and patient misidentification. In doing so, the organization hopes to continue efforts aimed at educating legislators about patient safety issues related to misidentification.

Source: AHIMA: The HIM View for 2020