The Growing Importance of Accurate Patient Identification in Healthcare – #biometricchat November 3rd, 11a.m. – 12 p.m. EST
It comes as no surprise that accurate patient identification has been number one on the list of Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations’ (JCAHO) National Patient Safety Goals since 2003. Medical identity fraud and inaccurate patient identification continue to be a growing problem in healthcare, causing a precipitous drop in the quality of patient care along with rising liability and litigation costs. The problem of duplicate medical records alone due to inadequate and outdated patient identification systems is frustrating healthcare through medication errors, transfusion errors, testing errors, wrong patient procedures and the discharge of infants to the wrong families.
The call to adopt digitization of medical records and stringent patient identification standards through the use of new technologies have recently increased by authorities that provide leadership on global health matters such as the World Health Organization. So how is the healthcare industry faring to adopt more accurate patient identification procedures? Is medical identity theft still a growing concern within the healthcare industry? What can be done to prevent duplicate medical records? What other issues are at stake?
Join us on Thursday November 3rd from 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. EST for a tweet chat about patient identification in healthcare. Our guest will be Jim St. Clair (@jstclair1), Senior Director, Interoperability and Standards at the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) who will be sharing his knowledge and answering questions on the topic. We will also ask Jim about his thoughts on using biometric technology for patient identification.
Just in case you are interested in participating, but are new to Tweet chats, please read this post which outlines the instructions and procedures. We hope that you will join us for the discussion, and please spread the word among your colleagues and friends.
Do you have any questions that you would like to ask Jim? Please send them to: john@m2sys.com or come prepared with your questions, comments and feedback next Thursday!
