Mystery Patients Continue to Point at Biometric Patient Identification Systems as Solution
Yet another case of a patient turning up at a hospital without any identification or means to prove their identity resulted in the medical facility turning to the public for help. The Atlantic Journal Constitution published a story yesterday, “Grady seeks family of gravely ill mystery patient” that detailed a badly battered, dazed and confused man picked up by the police and transported to Grady Memorial Hospital without any identification on him or means to identify himself other than giving his name. Subsequently, Grady published his photo asking the public for their help to identify the patient, hoping someone may recognize him.
The case illustrates yet another example of how biometric patient identification systems can help healthcare to establish a means of identifying these types of patients if they are registered in their system as an existing patient.
Healthcare biometrics is increasingly making a significant impact for medical facilities that choose to adopt it, and can be applied in a number of capacities within a network:
1. Patient Identification to eliminate healthcare fraud, prevent duplicate medical records and raise patient safety levels
2. Single Sign On (SSO) for staff access to medical records that increases security and lowers the burden on hospital IT
3. To accurately track employee time and attendance eliminating buddy punching, raising accountability and strengthening workforce management audit trails
4. Access control devices to increase security into authorized areas and protect patients and medical personnel
Healthcare biometrics applications extend well beyond patient identification and can dramatically increase efficiencies and security within medical facilities to help save money, increase patient safety and protect against patient fraud and data breaches which are becoming a larger problem as healthcare begins to look at ways of tightening the belt in the midst of a move to mandated electronic medical record (EMR) systems.
