Healthcare IT vendor Surescripts has lately introduced the next generation of patient matching. This will enhance patient care management and patient safety ultimately leading to positive outcome levels. The advancement in patient matching is through the master patient index.

Surescripts patient index seamlessly supports healthcare IT tools intended for patient medication history, real-time prescription advantages, and electronic prior authorization.

Benefits of the master patient index

The vendor’s master patient index has depended on a matching algorithm since 2001. The innovations in the patient matching index can address changes in societal and care dynamics. This new functionality will also help healthcare providers by providing precise insights into patient medication history and the overall care plan.

The new patient index will complement the algorithm along with patient reference records, this includes patient demographic data such as name, date of birth, and residential address. Due to this, Surescripts was able to categorize added data for 400,000 patients in a day.

The increase in match rate has the benefits of patient safety as the risk of manual transcription errors is eliminated. Patient care management is also enhanced as patient clinical history is effectively matched.

Once physicians have an all-inclusive view of the patient medication history then the medication reconciliation process can be optimized and providers can have knowledgeable conversations with the patient, making way for patient safety and enhancing health outcome levels.

Applications of the master patient index

Surescripts master patient index was used by stakeholders in 2021, to notify more than 2 billion patient medication histories. The new tool has also helped to inform four billion patient care events and managed to offer 422 million real-time prescription benefit responses at the point of care.

The health IT vendor has helped revolutionize healthcare in the US through innovative solutions of prescription benefits and prescription routing that improve patient care, reduce costs, and boost patient safety for healthier patients. Many EHR software vendors like athenahealth EMR Software and AdnacedMD EMR software are enhancing electronic prescription accuracy by implementing the right technology.