On this episode of the Empowered Patient Podcast, Gregg Church, president of 4medica, talks about how duplicate patient records create confusion for care providers and payers.
Gregg Church is the President of 4medica, a 24-year-old company that is in the business of aggregating datasets to create an accurate longitudinal view of a patient’s health record. The number of different legacy systems that were not initially designed for interoperability is only part of the problem. In the current environment, there is an average 20% duplication rate creating confusion for care providers and payers and potentially causing harm to the patient.
Gregg elaborates, “It’s going to depend on the organization and how much effort they place into it. But when we look at data coming in from different disparate systems and silos, believe it or not, most of what we see is still double-digit, meaning it’s above the 10% duplication rate. We’ve seen use cases that get up closer to 25%, 30%, especially in the commercial lab and laboratory arena because they deal with so many different outside systems. You’ve got practices on their own EMRs. You’ve got other laboratories that may use that lab for reference testing.”
“Imagine coming into the ER, and maybe you’re unconscious because you’ve been in a car accident. You’re at one of the facilities that maybe has a 20% duplication rate, not because there’s no effort to try to maintain, it’s just the sheer volume of records that are created on a daily basis. So, in this case, one in five patients is at risk of having their records commingled on another patient’s record or with another patient’s record. If you’re unconscious and you’re not able to verify things about your identity or even things about your healthcare background and medications, you may be incorrectly treated. You may be prescribed the wrong medication.”
This article was originally published by Empowered Patient Podcast and the original article can be viewed here.
