Simple Workflow Changes Enable Effective Patient Identity Matching in Poison Control
Mollie R. Cummins
1
University of Utah College of Nursing, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah,
United States
,
Pallavi Ranade-Kharkar
2
Homer Warner Center, Intermountain Healthcare, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
,
Cody Johansen
3
Utah Health Information Network, Murray, Utah, United States
,
Heather Bennett
4
Utah Poison Control Center, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
,
Shelley Gabriel
5
College of Nursing, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
,
Barbara I. Crouch
4
Utah Poison Control Center, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
,
Guilherme Del Fiol
6
Department of Biomedical Informatics, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah,
United States
,
Matt Hoffman
7
Medical Informatics, Utah Health Information Network, Murray, Utah, United States
› Author Affiliations Funding This study was supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Agency
for Healthcare Research and Quality, grant 5R01HS021472, and the Office of the National
Coordinator for Health Information Technology (901 × 003). The authors wish to acknowledge
the assistance of the Utah Poison Control Center, Intermountain Healthcare, the Utah
Health Information Network, and Dr. Tom H. Greene. Additional assistance was provided
by the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of
Health under Award Number UL1TR001067. The content is solely the responsibility of
the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National
Institutes of Health (NIH). Support and resources were also provided from the Center
for High Performance Computing at The University of Utah, partially funded by the
NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant 1S10OD021644–01A1.
Background U.S. poison control centers pose a special case for patient identity matching because
they collect only minimal patient identifying information.
Methods In early 2017, the Utah Poison Control Center (Utah PCC) initiated participation
in regional health information exchange by sending Health Level Seven Consolidated
Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) documents to the Utah Health Information Network
and Intermountain Healthcare. To increase the documentation of patient identifiers
by the Utah PCC, we (1) adapted documentation practices to enable more complete and
consistent documentation, and (2) implemented staff training to improve collection
of identifiers.
Results Compared with the same time period in 2016, the Utah PCC showed an increase of 27%
(p < 0.001) in collection of birth date for cases referred to a health care facility,
while improvements in the collection of other identifiers ranged from 0 to 8%. Automated
patient identity matching was successful for 77% (100 of 130) of the C-CDAs.
Conclusion Historical processes and procedures for matching patient identities require adaptation
or added functionality to adequately support the PCC use case.
Keywords
health information exchange -
toxicology -
delivery of health care -
electronic health records
Protection of Human and Animals Subjects
This study was reviewed and approved by the University of Utah Institutional Review
Board.
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