Abstract
Background U.S. poison control centers pose a special case for patient identity matching because
they collect only minimal patient identifying information.
Methods In early 2017, the Utah Poison Control Center (Utah PCC) initiated participation
in regional health information exchange by sending Health Level Seven Consolidated
Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) documents to the Utah Health Information Network
and Intermountain Healthcare. To increase the documentation of patient identifiers
by the Utah PCC, we (1) adapted documentation practices to enable more complete and
consistent documentation, and (2) implemented staff training to improve collection
of identifiers.
Results Compared with the same time period in 2016, the Utah PCC showed an increase of 27%
(p < 0.001) in collection of birth date for cases referred to a health care facility,
while improvements in the collection of other identifiers ranged from 0 to 8%. Automated
patient identity matching was successful for 77% (100 of 130) of the C-CDAs.
Conclusion Historical processes and procedures for matching patient identities require adaptation
or added functionality to adequately support the PCC use case.
Keywords
health information exchange - toxicology - delivery of health care - electronic health
records
