Patient Identification

Patient identification is the process of properly identifying a patient within a healthcare system to provide personalized care, and serves as a critical component of streamlined, quality healthcare. Without  accurate and consistent recognition of individuals throughout their healthcare journey, medical errors are bound to happen. And unfortunately, patient misidentification is a widespread problem, with 45% of large hospitals finding it difficult to accurately identify patients through their digital health information.

Patient identification errors interfere with patients receiving the correct treatments and services, and can lead to serious consequences such as medication interactions, incorrect diagnoses, and even life-threatening situations. Accurate patient identification is also necessary for healthcare organizations to remain financially viable. Patients must be properly linked to their records for insurance claims and invoicing, and dealing with inaccurate or duplicate records takes up a great deal of time that could be devoted to other tasks.

To ensure accurate patient identification, healthcare providers use a variety of methods and technologies. These include the use of unique patient identifiers, such as medical record numbers, Social Security numbers, and other demographic information. Additionally, healthcare providers may require patients to provide multiple forms of identification, such as a government-issued ID and a photo, to verify their identity. Tools such as patient-specific barcodes can ensure patients are consistently identified at all stops along a hospital journey, but only if the patient is correctly identified at check-in, when barcodes are assigned.

Many hospitals and clinics employ biometric technologies, such as fingerprint scanning, and facial recognition to further enhance the accuracy of patient identification. Because these technologies link a unique physical identifier of the patient to their records, it’s far more accurate than manual patient identification processes, which are naturally vulnerable to human error. Front desk staff may mishear patients or enter data incorrectly, and in large practices, more than one patient could have the same name or birth date.

To address these issues, healthcare organizations are increasingly adopting biometric patient identification technologies to reduce errors and improve data integrity, and they’re enforcing thorough training and education for healthcare staff so that these systems and technologies are used effectively.