University of Utah Health Care to implement vein-based patient ID

The University of Utah Health Care is to implement a palm vein recognition-based patient identification system to eliminate duplicate medical records and improve patient safety.The PatientSecure solution from Imprivata will be rolled out across the healthcare provider's enterprise, including four university hospitals and 11 community clinics that facilitate nearly 1.6 million patient visits per year.”Accurately identifying patients and ensuring we have access to their complete medical history anywhere they receive care across our health system is extremely important to our ability to provide the best patient experience,” said Jim Turnbull, Chief Information Officer for University of Utah Health Care. “Imprivata enables us to positively identify patients across our health system with a biometric identifier and automatically access their correct medical record. This enables clinicians to have an accurate medical history of the patient they are treating and also protects our patients from medical identity theft and insurance fraud.”Medical errors are the third highest cause of death in the United States, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Many medical errors such as radiation overdoses, medication errors, and blood transfusion errors result from patient misidentification at the point of care as well as at registration, often in the form of duplicate medical records, which, according to RAND Corporation, account for eight percent of all medical records and may cost up to $5,000 per record to correct.”Addressing patient misidentification issues continues to be a top patient safety concern of our customers as healthcare goes digital, and the best way to prevent these issues is to quickly, efficiently, and accurately match patients to their medical records at registration and at the point of care,” said Clay Ritchey, Chief Marketing Officer and GM of Imprivata PatientSecure Products Group.The PatientSecure system creates a 1:1 match between individual patients and their unique medical records using palm-vein biometrics at registration.

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