As the care continuum expands, patient-matching remains a problem without a single solution

Matching patients with their medical information sounds like a simple concept, but it’s not. The practice is plagued by such issues as typos, missing data, similar names and new addresses—resulting in match rates as low as 80% within the same facility, according to the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.

That means 1 in every 5 patients may not be linked with the correct record.

It also leads to higher costs. Patient-matching remains a multi-
billion-dollar problem in the U.S., with inaccurate patient identification accounting for $1,950 in duplicative medical care costs per inpatient and $1.5 million in denied claims per hospital each year, according...