In a perfect world, lawmakers would put policies and practices in place to support our best interests without removing our rights. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world and lawmakers rarely understand the realities that take place in any industry, especially healthcare and the approach to data management. If there’s ever any doubt – simply take a look at Affordable Healthcare.
Right now, there’s a bigger challenge in healthcare – Congress continues to block the nationwide unique identifier. Why is this a problem? According to Health Data Management, a significant and growing problem in healthcare is the mismatching of patient data. However, there is a congressional language in the Department of Health and Human Services appropriations that prohibit the department from using federal dollars to create a national unique patient identifier that could solve the problem.
“If Congress changes their position on that and gives us authority to do that, we will move forward on it,” said Jodi Daniel, the Office of the National Coordinator’s Director of the Office of Policy Planning, at an April 7 Health IT Policy Committee, in the Health Data Management article. “In the meantime, we are acting within our authority.”
The implementation of the HIPAA law actually mandated the creation of a unique individual identifier to streamline the use of patients’ records and prevent errors. Congress was concerned about privacy, however, and later inserted language to prevent the creation of that identifier. As a result, error rates due to patient mismatching average between eight and 20 percent, according to the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives. Plus, such errors can lead to adverse events and have done so in 19 percent of reported cases.
The use of the nationwide unique patient identifier could enable accurate, timely and efficient matching of patient information, while also supporting proper data management. In taking a national approach to standards, it could help to facilitate the uniform health information exchange while also optimizing patient-data matching and enhancing patient safety. While such an approach does not mean every system would have the same patient identity method, but instead national standards and solutions would be used for exchanging the information and driving data management.
As in every industry, there are pros and cons to taking a certain approach to information. When it comes to proper data management, however, it may be best to keep the federal government out of the conversation. After all, wouldn’t it be better to have the decision made by those who understand the technology?