17% of Healthcare CIOs Acknowledge Harm for Patient Misidentification: Imprivata

A new survey of Chief Information Officers in the healthcare sector points to the need for reliable patient matching systems, Imprivata says.

The company organized the survey in cooperation with healthsystemCIO.com, with the two polling CIOs from 55 healthcare organizations. In a statement announcing select survey findings, Imprivata asserts that “17 percent of survey respondents acknowledged that patient harm had actually occurred at their institution as the result of a patient matching error.” Also disconcerting is the finding that 18 percent of the CIOs surveyed did not know the percentage of mismatched records within their institution.

Commenting on the findings, Imprivata Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sean Kelly said that “[m]isidentification of patients upon registration creates a ripple effect, with both clinical and financial consequences for hospitals and patients,” and pointed to the utility of biometric identification technology in resolving this issue.

Imprivata is, of course, the provider of one such solution, with its PatientSecure system leveraging palm vein scanning to identify hospital patients and link them to their respective medical records. Such solutions can improve both administrative efficiency for healthcare facilities and patient outcomes, and are poised to see growing interest as hospitals increasingly look to technological solutions to improve operations.