Many professionals in the healthcare industry have called for the inclusion of medical devices' unique device identifiers in health insurance claims.
At present, claims only list surgical procedures and are void of data about the model of the implant or manufacturer.
Greg Daniel, PhD, of Duke University's Robert J. Margolis, MD, Center for Health Policy, called for the use of UDIs during a 2014 speech to a National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics subcommittee.
Here are five reasons Dr. Daniel said insurance claims should include UDIs.
- Incorporating UDIs into insurance claims would improve the quality of care for patients with medical implants and lower costs by providing payers with the most current information available.
- While researchers and epidemiologists regularly use claims data to study the relationship between prescription drugs or other interventions with patient outcomes, they rarely conduct similar studies on medical devices as valuable information is not available. Claims containing UDIs would provide researchers with more medical device data for analysis.
- EHR and other clinical data systems hold a limited ability to track patient information as they move across the healthcare system from provider to provider. Incorporating UDIs in insurance claims could offer more cohesive, detailed patient information.
- When payers gather data from a variety of areas, including health plan enrollment information and clinical claims, more opportunities exist to identify and intervene in medical issues across a broad population.
- The Food and Drug Administration could also use the information from claims with UDIs to better analyze long-term effects of medical devices.
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