AHIMA, ARGO Launch Patient ID Education Effort

ARGO recently announced a new partnership with AHIMA to provide the next generation Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI) patient record matching technology to health care students worldwide.

ARGO will implement its Entity Match & Resolution EMPI solution to help AHIMA Virtual Lab students establish and maintain unique patient records, allowing evaluation and resolution of similar records into a single, comprehensive patient health record. ARGO and AHIMA will offer this functionality to approximately 10,000 students and potentially through 400 universities across the United States and around the globe. The virtual lab will give students full access to the ARGO EMPI solution, enabling them to walk through the following:

• maintaining the integrity of data received from health care systems and analyzing how changes to patient demographics affect relationships to other existing medical records;
• leveraging advanced probabilistic algorithms and custom rules to improve identification of medical record overlays, duplicates, and overlaps;
• resolving overlays, merging duplicates, and linking overlapped records into a
  community EMPI; and
• managing a patient's health record within and across health care organizations.

Developed in partnership with ARGO and other HIT software corporations, the virtual lab allows students to work with the software they will encounter in the workplace in a safe environment that closely simulates real-world scenarios. Lessons and activities designed specifically for the lab applications enable students to test their skills and decision-making abilities without jeopardizing the privacy, security, or integrity of actual medical records.

"To achieve accurate patient matching, future health information management professionals require knowledge on how to leverage specialized technology to lower existing duplicate record rates and prevent the creation of duplicate records," says AHIMA CEO Lynne Thomas Gordon, MBA, RHIA, FACHE, CAE, FAHIMA. "Incorporating the ARGO EMPI solution into our virtual lab will show students how to achieve a high level of accuracy, leveraging ARGO's advanced patient matching technology."

"The increasing complexity of managing a patient's health record within and across health care organizations necessitates increased sophistication in matching accuracy and intelligent workflow management," says ARGO's Healthcare Business Development Director Steve Kotyk. "The ARGO Entity Match & Resolution solution provides students with these capabilities and enables them to learn how accurate patient records help improve the quality and safety of health care, reduce the number of duplicate tests, and lower overall costs."

Source: ARGO