Enterprise master patient index

The Master Patient Index ( MPI) is a concept to overcome the barriers between hospital IT solutions from different manufacturers or generations without endangering the patient. In the Master Patient Index is an index given is managed, what possible all known and assigned identities and indices of patients from different areas ( hospitals, departments of a hospital, doctor's offices, etc.) to give a lecture. An MPI serves ( an index ) is also across locate the information from the various sources under a common identity across successive instances of the same patient.

An integration of heterogeneous data sets is not connected to the master patient index for lack of legal basis. Products that claim such integration of data resources, overcome without the consent of the patient no horizontal barriers between different companies in the health business. Also to overcome the vertical barriers between insurance carriers or payers, the insured and the service provider are limited to the implied rules, for example by SGB SGB v and X.

Technical Background

Referenced areas may be different departments within a hospital or different organizations, for example, a hospital, a doctor's office or a nursing home. Each of these areas has its own information system. For a patient, there is a unique identification in the respective areas of the information system. However, this is beyond the area usually not clear. This uniqueness is established by the MPI by all indices of the patient are stored in the areas next to a unequivocal over the entire region index.

Example:

Master Patient Index for patient Franz Müller ( Master ID: 567 895 432 178 )

Medical Background

Healthcare providers work primarily labor worldwide. This means that each patient in the course of his insurance history and definitely new to treatment of various departments (radiology, laboratory, internal medicine ) and medical care providers ( doctors, hospitals, physiotherapists, nursing homes ) is. Therefore, it is necessary to share medical documentation regarding the treatment and the disease process with stakeholders. To make this possible IT systems have been established.

There are a number of technical and organizational interfaces with the administration of the information for each individual patient and for each individual case. These interfaces can be used for the treatment of important information from incorrect assignment or by false identification are easily lost or endanger the individual patient or third parties. An MPI ensures prove the information from the various sources under a common identity ( an index ). The MPI leads together not individual medical records or documents.

Administrative boundary conditions

The separation of information on the individual patient record is maintained in the long run each in the local electronic patient records of individual service operations in order to identify the demarcation of strict liability can. Without legal basis, no change is meaningful.

Components

An MPI can consist of the following components:

• Similarity search in the background, comparison of different patient identities and identification of potential candidates that belong together
• Support work on the surface, preparation of the results of the similarity search for manual creation of references between IDs of the areas and the master patient ID.
• Management of the individual patient identities, storage of the individual referenced identities and use of this meta-information for electronic medical records and other applications.