Improving interoperability — the ability of healthcare organizations to exchange patient data across different electronic health record systems—continues to be one of the toughest challenges facing health information exchanges across the country. This situation is often exacerbated by patients who often share their identify in different ways with different healthcare providers. Identifying and matching patient data adds to the complexity of data exchange.

The inconsistencies in the way patient demographic data is captured can lead to duplicative or mismatched health records. This can have adverse clinical and financial consequences—reduced quality of care or delays in care for patients,increased hospital re-admissions, and unnecessary healthcare spending.

While organizations exchanging data have yet to reach a consensus on the optimal standards and minimum data elements for effective data exchange to support the constantly evolving requirements to support whole-person care and advance payment models, the Hawai‘i Health Information Exchange is moving forward with a promising solution to facilitate identifying patients across systems that are participating in health data exchange.

Francis Chan, HHIE CEO, and other HHIE leaders are taking steps to reduce duplicate and mismatched records by adopting enterprise matching patient index (EMPI) tools offered by NextGate’s Patient Matching as a Service (PMaaS) and Provider Directory. The EMPI tool uses demographic data such as a patient name, birthdate, and Social Security number to match records to patients.

For the past 20 years, NextGate has helped organizations transform siloed systems into a seamless, efficient network to provide a comprehensive view of each patient, connecting the right patient with the right data to deliver better, more efficient care.

For more information, here to read an interview with Francis Chan in the article, “How Health Information Exchanges Can Boost EHR Patient Matching” that was recently posted in EHRIntelligence