Cloud-based patient matching specialist Verato announced that ADVault, the developer of an all-digital advance care planning platform, is the first partner to join its Powered by Verato program.

What happened?

The program uses the company’s Universal Master Patient Index for patient matching, linking and matching identities across disparate sources and using a self-learning database of U.S. identities as a reference.

ADVault’s partnership with Verato will help expand secure identity matching so care teams have seamless access to medical records, Verato explained. Patient matching is seen by many as the core of patient-centric healthcare technology solutions.

Patient matching is the process by which health data is accurately linked and attributed to the correct patient, allowing physicians and others to have a complete picture of the patient and ultimately to better care for patients.

What is the trend?

However, it has become exponentially more challenging with the push for industrywide interoperability, Verato contended.

“Healthcare solution providers don’t want to dedicate dozens of developers and identity experts to create their own patient matching algorithms,” Verato CEO Mark LaRow said. “Instead, they need to focus their energy and resources on core solution functionality.”

ADVault’s MyDirectives platform is a free-to-consumer cloud service allowing people to digitize their healthcare goals by creating a digital advance care plan or uploading an advance care plan, advance directive or portable medical order.

The company’s enterprise services team works with health plans, health providers and medical record partners to help doctors access those documents when necessary so people can have their voice heard in their care, ADVault said.

“We believe every healthcare technology vendor should have simple and cost-effective access to world-class patient matching – because patient safety is at stake,” said Rachel Blum, director of business development at Verato.

Verato earlier partnered with healthcare IT security specialist Imprivata to use biometrics for improving patient identity management, whereby Imprivata’s PatientSecure patient identification solution will be linked with Verato’s cloud-based master patient index platform, Universal MPI.

Why it matters?

According to an October 2018 report from Pew Charitable Trusts, biometrics and referential matching are among the cornerstone opportunities to improve patient matching in the exchange of health information.

The report highlighted two other opportunities to improve patient matching nationwide including smartphone-based solutions and demographic data standardization.

Improved patient matching rates can help cut healthcare costs in several ways, reducing the need for resources – including staff time – needed to merge duplicate records for the same individual, or else fix records that are incorrectly combined.

In addition, electronic health record vendors and other health information technology companies have developed their own matching systems, but successful exchange of health information – interoperability – depends on several factors which continue to pose challenges for healthcare organizations.

The report also noted logistical challenges might also hinder adoption, including the perception that these solutions are costly and that business associate agreements would need to be in place.

Nathan Eddy is a healthcare and technology freelancer based in Berlin.

Email the writer: nathaneddy@gmail.com

Twitter: @dropdeaded209