Harris Data Integrity Solutions: Simplifying Patient Matching with Expertise and Innovation

With potential outcomes such as patient identification errors, repeated care, redundant medical tests, and denied claims, patient record duplication costs healthcare systems billions of dollars each year. This critical hindrance stems from inconsistent naming conventions for patients across disparate health systems and hospitals and poor-quality data sets that lack critical identifying information on a patient. At the same time, the rise of self-registration/scheduling patient portals is hinderingtech-driven patient matching algorithms from generating desired results; for instance, untrained users often incorrectly fill required fields, resulting in the aforementioned discrepancies. As a result, most hospitals today face errors in their Master Patient Index (MPI), leading to increased costs and dire complications.

Colorado-based Harris Data Integrity Solutions cleanses MPI contaminations with its blend of unmatched industry expertise and advanced technology solutions geared toward mitigating ever-evolving patient matching and data integrity challenges. The company was formed as a combination of two top data integrity powerhouses—Just Associates and QuadraMed—to deliver a full suite of best-in-class, industry-leading data integrity software, and services capable of identifying and resolving data quality issues, thereby ensuring more accurate patient matching. “Our depth and breadth of industry expertise and commitment to ongoing innovation equips us to meet the changing needs of patients and healthcare organizations today and in the future,” says Lora Hefton, executive vice president of Harris Data Integrity Solutions.

The company’s software suite comprises its CuraMatch automated duplicate resolution solution and SmartIX Enterprise Master Person Index, which automates duplicate resolution and consolidates patient data across fragmented silos. CuraMatch is powered by advanced proprietarymatching algorithms that enable the identification of more true duplicates compared to conventional embedded matching tools. At the same time, Harris Data Integrity Solutions’ clients can integrate CuraMatch with their MPI management console to establish ongoing duplicate resolution and reduce overall costs of patient matching and data integrity issues by 40 percent.

Alternatively, SmartIX provides a single source of truth across an entire health system. The software links local patient medical record numbers (MRNs) and drives the creation of a consistent and accurate record. SmartIX’s sophisticated probabilistic algorithm assigns each patient a unique identifier, simplifying duplicate detection and achieving a 99 percent accuracy rate.