4 Ways Practice Management Software Providers Use Identity Verification
Protecting and managing patient identity data is an absolute necessity for software providers in the healthcare industry. To combat medical identity theft, duplicate patient records and slowing revenue cycles, many practice management software providers are integrating identity verification technology into their systems. Here are the top four ways they do it.
It’s no secret medical identity theft is a serious threat to patients, medical practices and technology providers. While user privacy is important in every industry, healthcare depends significantly more on the exchange and storage of critical personal information. Unlike other enterprise environments, such as financial services, the accuracy and availability of the data can be a matter of life and death.
This presents a serious challenge to practice management software providers who store and aggregate this data. A single breach or unauthorized access can cause serious financial, medical and reputational damage.
To address this challenge, many providers are using identity verification to ensure only the appropriate people have access to patient data. Here’s how they’re doing it.
Combating Medical Identity Theft
As telemedicine and technology become more commonplace in the healthcare industry, verifying a patient is who they say they are has never been more important.
Identity thieves will often try to access patient data and health insurance records to steal information. This puts factors like patient health and financial safety along with the provider's's reputation and financial health all at risk.
To combat these efforts, PMS providers are starting to integrate identity data verification into their systems. Verifying patient and healthcare provider identity before they access medical records is one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways to weed out unauthorized access to medical records.
There are a number of ways to accomplish this. The most common is to verify patient identity against trusted and verified, non-public data sources. Other useful methodologies include verification of identity documents, biometric checks with liveness detection and knowledge-based authentication. Many providers also implement two-factor authentication for ongoing access.
When properly deployed, these methods ensure the person accessing a medical record is who they say they are.
Deduplicating Patient Records
Duplicate medical records pose a serious threat to healthcare efficacy. Dangers to patient safety. Delayed treatments and reporting. Large financial and administrative costs for healthcare organizations. And as more hospitals share information through Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), the number of duplicate medical records continues to grow.
By integrating identity verification directly into their systems, PMS providers can help hospitals accurately identify patients during onboarding, detect duplicates and consolidate records. This eliminates the costs and risks posed by duplicate records for just a few cents or dollars a transaction.
Accelerating Revenue Cycles
Gathering incomplete or inaccurate patient information at the point of registration can make it impossible for healthcare providers to collect their payments quickly. Because of this, many software providers and medical billing systems are using data validation technology to verify the accuracy and completeness of patient demographic information. This integration works by proactively flagging inaccurate patient information collected at the point of registration or at billing. This makes revenue cycle management faster and more cost-efficient.
Enforcing Security
As identity theft and data breaches become more sophisticated, there’s a clear need for any PMS provider to strengthen data privacy and security. Before considering any platform safe, all stakeholders will want assurances that identity data is managed accurately and safely.
There are a number of actions a provider needs to take to establish patient confidence. Chief among them is adopting an effective strategy for verifying the identity of users accessing patient data. For software providers looking to augment the security of their platforms, integrating identity verification provides a way to accurately associate a patient with their electronic record.
Conclusion
Controlling access to patient identity is a mission-critical task for healthcare software providers. Identity verification technology offers an efficient, cost-effective way to accomplish this.
