Master Patient Index

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The Master Patient Index (MPI) is a concept for overcoming the barriers between hospital IT solutions from different manufacturers or generations without endangering the patient. For this purpose, an index is managed in the Master Patient Index , which should, if possible, refer to all known and assigned identities and indices of a patient from different areas (hospitals, departments of a hospital, medical practices, etc.). An MPI is used to find the information from the various sources under a common identity (an index) also across successive cases of the same patient.

An integration of the heterogeneous databases is not associated with the Master Patient Index due to the lack of a legal basis. Products that claim such integration of the data sets do not overcome any horizontal barriers between different companies in the health care company without the consent of the patient. Overcoming the vertical barriers between insurance carrier or cost carrier, insured person and service carrier are also limited to the statutory rules, for example according to SGB V and SGB X.

Technical background

Referenced areas can be different departments within a hospital or different organizations, for example a hospital, a doctor's office or a nursing home . Each of these areas has its own information system . For a patient there is a clear identification in the respective information system of the areas . However, this is usually not clear beyond the area. This uniqueness is established by the MPI by storing all indices of the patient from the areas in addition to an index that is unique over the entire area.

Example:

Master Patient Index for patient Franz Müller (Master ID: 567895432178)

Hospital 1: Franz Müller (patient ID: 3456)
Hospital 2: F. Müller (patient ID: 89765)
Doctor's office 1: FRANZ MUELLER (patient ID: 76453)
Health insurance: Franz Mueller (insured person ID: 346576)

Medical background

Healthcare service providers around the world mainly work in a division of labor. This means that each patient receives treatment from different departments ( radiology , laboratory , internal medicine ) and medical service providers (resident doctors, hospitals, physiotherapists , nursing homes) over the course of their insurance history and for each new case . It is therefore necessary to share medical documentation about the treatment and the course of the disease with those involved. IT systems were set up to make this possible.

There are a number of technical and organizational interfaces in the administration of information on each individual patient and each individual case. At these interfaces, information that is important for treatment can easily get lost through incorrect assignment or incorrect identification or endanger the individual patient or third parties. An MPI ensures that the information from the various sources is identified under a common identity (an index). The MPI does not combine the individual medical data or documents.

Administrative constraints

The separation of the information on the individual patient file is retained in the local electronic patient file of the individual service provider in the long term in order to be able to recognize the delimitation of strict liability. No change makes sense without a legal basis.

Components

An MPI can consist of the following components:

  • Similarity search in the background, comparison of different patient identities and identification of potentially related candidates
  • Work support on the surface, preparation of the results of the similarity search for manual creation of references between IDs of the areas and the master patient ID.
  • Administration of the individual patient identities, storage of the individual referenced identities and use of this meta information for electronic patient files and other applications.

See also

  1. ^ LA Rinehart-Thompson: Storage media profiles and health record retention practice patterns in acute care hospitals. In: Perspectives in health information management / AHIMA, American Health Information Management Association. Volume 5, 2008, p. 9, PMID 18574517 , PMC 2435263 (free full text).
  2. ^ Text of the fifth book of the Social Security Code
  3. ^ Text of the Tenth Book of the Social Code