MARINA DEL REY, Calif., Jan. 4, 2023 – 4medica®, a leader in healthcare data quality and matching technology, today announced that East Tennessee Health Information Network (etHIN) will deploy 4medica’s cloud-based Data Quality Platform to improve patient matching and health data quality.
Established in 2005 and headquartered in Knoxville, etHIN reaches 80% of communities within its geographic market in Tennessee and contains patient records from all 95 Tennessee counties who have been treated in the eastern part of the state, along with records of patients from other states who were treated in the area.
4medica will begin by conducting a thorough assessment of etHIN’s health data quality, focusing on duplicate patient records. Following the assessment, 4medica will run etHIN’s data through its 4-layer Master Patient Index (MPI) process to reduce patient duplication rates – which can reach as high as 30% in some health organizations – to less than 1%.
“We needed a partner with the technology and experience to identify the source of our data challenges and help improve the quality of patient data we receive from healthcare organizations and other sources,” said Pam Matthews, CEO and Executive Director of etHIN. “4medica’s expertise will enable us to be better data stewards for our participants and partners across Tennessee and help improve the quality of care delivered by providers relying on our data. Ultimately, patients are the single most important beneficiary because quality data improves the care they receive from their providers,” added Matthews.
It’s common for health information exchanges (HIEs) to have excessive duplicate patient records due to mistakes at registration and other points of data entry. As staffers at various hospitals, clinics, labs and practices struggle to locate information on a patient in their systems, they often opt to create another file for the patient rather than spend more valuable time searching.
But the new patient record may lack important clinical information included in the existing record, while the older record won’t include data added to the new record. Bottom line: Whichever record providers access will give them an incomplete view of the patient.
This not only can introduce patient safety issues, it also leads to higher healthcare costs as tests and procedures that already have been conducted are redone because clinicians lacked access to complete patient records. Duplicate patient records cost healthcare organizations nearly $2,000 per inpatient stay and $800 per emergency department visit, according to a Black Book survey, while 33% of claims denials can be traced to inaccurate patient identification or health data.
“We’re excited to be working with etHIN and its upstream data partners to reduce duplicate records, improve health data quality and produce better outcomes for the individuals and communities the organization serves,” said 4medica President Gregg Church. “At the end of the day patient lives are at stake and we know when HIEs have the tools at their disposal to receive good data they can make meaningful change for healthcare in their communities.”
About 4medica
Since 1998, 4medica® has been solving challenges around health data quality, enabling healthcare organizations to achieve real-time clinical interoperability. The company’s Big Data Management and Clinical Data Exchange cloud solutions facilitate identity management and patient-centric data exchange to ensure the right data is captured at the right time, guaranteeing an unprecedented 1% patient record duplication rate. Perfect Order for Perfect Payment™ integrates end-to-end laboratory and radiology ordering through an online portal, EMR interoperability, and with superior quality of validated data to drive highly effective RCM performance. 4medica connects 40,000-plus medical professionals to hundreds of
- ACOs
- HIEs and HINs
- hospitals and health systems
- laboratories and radiology imaging centers
- and payers nationwide.
About East Tennessee Health Information Network (etHIN)
etHIN is a non-profit community health information network established in 2005 to serve the information needs of healthcare providers in Tennessee. etHIN manages a secure health information exchange infrastructure that is used by participants to exchange data, support improved patient outcomes, and help lower the cost of healthcare. Since 2011, etHIN has been securely exchanging health information between participants, including hospital systems, providers, home health and hospice, long term care facilities, labs, and other healthcare entities that provide services to more than 2.2 million individuals. For more information, visit www.ethin.org.
