AHIMA May 13, 2024
Today, there is no nationwide strategy to connect patients to their health data. Patient misidentification happens in two ways: one, through overlaid medical records, where two or more patients’ information is combined into one record because of similar demographic information; and two, through duplicate records, where a patient may visit several healthcare settings and have disparate and incomplete records at each, rather than them being combined into one complete record.
Without the ability of clinicians to correctly connect a patient with their medical record, lives have been lost and medical errors have needlessly occurred. Both overlaid and duplicate records pose real safety concerns to patients. With overlaid records, a patient may be treated based on another patient’s health information. In...