CrossChx: Resolving duplicate medical records, adding fingerprints
28 October, 2014
category: Health
Duplicate records in health care are a serious problem. The same record for John Smith, Jonathan Smith of Jon Smith can make accurate care difficult if different information is in each record.
CrossChx is a two-years old company helping health care organization resolve duplicate records and then adding fingerprint biometrics to the record that can be retrieved from any health care provider that is using the same system, says Sean Lane, co-founder at CrossChx. The company has deployed at 54 hospitals across seven states and has enrolled 8.5 million patients. The company recently passed 1 million patient verifications.
Once a health care provider signs on with CrossChx, the company run an algorithm on its patient records, Lane says. It looks at name, address, date of birth and other factors to spot duplicate records. If suspected duplicate records are spotted they are flagged for further review.
For the biometric portion of the program, when a patient arrives at a provider that has deployed CrossChx, a registrar explains the system to them and then enrolls the fingerprint and links it to the medical record. Patients can choose to opt out of the system but once they are told it’s for their protection the vast majority are participating, Lane says. Upon return visits patients are authenticated with the fingerprint.
While other companies might offer vascular or iris biometrics, CrossChx is sticking with fingerprint, Lane says. “Fingerprints are well accepted and less likely to change over time,” he adds.
CrossChx is also trying to create a global system. So if a patient from a Columbus, Ohio facility is brought into another hospital that uses CrossChx on the other side of the country, physicians will be able to access the patient records, Lane says.