Case Study: Duplicate Records Compromise EHR Investment

Children's Medical Center in Dallas made a major financial commitment to an EHR in 2001, but when the data from the old master patient index (MPI) was loaded into the new system, big problems arose. Because the new system's search routine was programmed to deal only with exact matches, something as minor as a misspelled name, or even the lack of a space or a comma between a first and last name, yielded a separate medical record. And when physicians or the medical staff searched those records, previous medical histories, x-rays, laboratory and test results might or might not be available, depending on how the data had been entered.

When Just Associates, Inc. arrived on the scene, the hospital was buried under 250,000 duplicate records that took 10 months of clean-up, consulting and training to resolve. The clean-up included an external data analysis using sophisticated person Matching algorithms to identify possible duplicates. Just Associates' staff of fully trained, experienced Patient Identity Experts reviewed the possible duplicates and validated and merged those confirmed to be the same person. Data integrity issues were thoroughly analyzed, quantifying the causes of each and generating action plans to address every cause.

The experience at Children's Medical Center in Dallas shows the benefit of making sure the Master Patient Index is clean of duplicates before merging or upgrading to a new Electronic Health Records system. Additionally, if extra effort is taken to identify and resolve the root causes of duplicate records, the efforts will pay dividends for years.