An American Health Information Management Association survey of 815 health information management professionals who use 12 different EHRs found nearly half wrestle with the duplicate medical records on a regular basis.
Here are six takeaways from the survey:
- 57 percent of respondents spend time sorting through duplicates "regularly."
- 72 percent of respondents said they work to mitigate duplicate patient records on at least a weekly basis.
- 47 percent of respondents said they lack resources to adequately correct duplicate records and have a quality assurance step in their registration or post-registration process to identify duplicates.
- 43 percent of respondents measure quality data as it relates to patient matching.
- 55 percent of respondents are able to communicate the rate of duplicate medical records with their organizations, but report a lack of standard definitions relating to how duplicate rates are calculated.
- Respondents identified the major challenges to managing a master patient index as registration staff turnover; record matching and patient search terminology; lack of resources to correct duplicates; inadequate information governance policy support; and lack of executive support.