ONC posts patient-data matching best practices framework

The framework's five categories include data governance, data quality, data operations, platforms and standards and supporting processes.

By Bernie Monegain

December 15, 2017

02:01 PM

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT published the Patient Demographic Data Quality Framework of best practices for data management processes that enable hospitals to more effectively match patient records.

Developed in conjunction with Pittsburgh-based CMMI Institute and the Department of Health and Human Services, the tool arrives after CHIME announced in November it would abandon its two-year effort to resolve this issue with its National Patient ID Challenge.

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ONC’s goal is to boost patient safety by accurately and consistently matching patient data internally as well as between organizations.

The framework consists of five categories: Data governance, data quality, data operations, platforms and standards, and supporting processes. Hospitals can start by evaluating their own organization across those categories.

“When patient data is not accurately matched, treatment and diagnosis decisions are made in the absence of valuable information, and patients could be subject to adverse events and significant harm,” ONC said.

Eighty-six percent of healthcare providers, in fact, know of a medical error caused by patient misidentification, according to the 2016 National Patient Misidentification Report from Ponemon Institute.

“Patients and practitioners alike need to have the assurance that medical errors do not occur due to improperly recorded data,” CMMI Institute CEO Kirk Botula said.

Defining and adopting standards, as well as implementing sound data management processes, requires increased awareness and effective collaboration – nothing short of cultural evolution toward shared responsibility, both within and across healthcare organizations, Botula added.

PDDQ provides an evaluation of data management practices for patient data through all healthcare process areas, including registration, patient care, laboratory, pharmacy, claims and billing.

The PDDQ Framework is available here.