Master Patient Index

In the dynamic world of healthcare mergers, affiliations and expansion, establishing a single master view of each patient's record becomes more critical and yet, technically, more challenging. Each time a new system (with its own patient database) is added to the mix the number of point-to-point system connections increases. Not only does internal efficiency and quality suffer but complying with external regulations becomes an administrative nightmare. HIPAA establishes the requirement to uniquely identify the participants involved in the provisioning of healthcare services. Similarly, payor organizations must accurately and uniquely identify covered individuals, regardless of how they are identified in various provider systems.

Fundamentally, the technical challenge is one of integrating disparate applications. In healthcare this often means connecting to legacy systems. These systems rarely have documented or open interfaces, making them painfully difficult to integrate. Legacy systems are not being retired at the pace previously thought, so finding a fast and effective way to integrate and extend them has become the more practical strategy.

MitemView - our renowned legacy integration platform - can be used to build a composite application that serves as an Enterprise Master Patient Index. The resulting application can create a cross-reference of patient information that is kept current by customizable rules to identify, match and update data from multiple sources. Because MitemView enables real-time, bi-directional integration, it is possible to ensure that the most current data is always available and that incorrect data can be automatically updated when necessary. The framework of this application is web-based and it is highly configurable, allowing organizations to create a custom patient indexing application suited to their specific needs.