Patient Matching within a Health Information Exchange

The purpose of this article is to describe the patient matching problems resulting from the Nationwide Health Information Network's automated patient discovery specification and propose a more effective and secure approach for patient matching between health information organizations participating in a health information exchange. This proposed approach would allow the patient to match his or her identity between a health information organization's electronic health records (EHRs) at the same time the patient identifies which EHR data he or she consents to share between organizations. The patient's EHR username/password combination would be the credential used to establish and maintain health information exchange identity and consent data. The software developed to support this approach (e.g., an EHR health information exchange module) could also allow a patient to see what health information was shared when and with whom.