Mastering Data Management

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Sentara's EMPI helps better manage patient data beyond a single location.

Sentara Healthcare is a premier not-for-profit healthcare provider with more than 100 care sites, offering a full range of healthcare services. Located in Virginia and North Carolina, Sentara serves more than 2 million residents in eight acute care hospitals.

Challenge
Implement an enterprise master person index (EMPI) solution to reduce duplication rates and seamlessly integrate 4.2 million records across hospitals and clinics.

Solution
Deploy Initiate software to proactively manage patient identities within the healthcare system.

Sentara sought to boost physician satisfaction and increase patient safety, so they decided to implement an Enterprise Master Person Index (EMPI) to help more effectively manage patient identity data by streamlining records into a better, more accurate view of their patients.

Implementing an EMPI not only would help their integrated healthcare network solve their integration and duplication issues, but it would also help them meet upcoming HIPAA requirements and would pave the way to enable an electronic medical record (EMR) in the near future.

Prior to implementing the EMPI, Sentara worked with Initiate to perform a data analysis to identify the number of duplicates and discovered a significant duplication rate of over 18%.

As Sentara began to communicate about the upcoming implementation to their 400+ registration staff, the staff began to review their current processes, enabling them to identify training and process deficiencies. Sentara’s duplication rate began to quickly drop, well below the previous 18% figure to the 2% range.

Initiate Systems helped Sentara drive value to their integrated healthcare network by:

• Improving accuracy of patient identities – The accuracy of patient identities has been significantly improved across the healthcare system due to the sophistication of the EMPI algorithm and core technology.
• Providing comprehensive applications – Initiate software is a fully dedicated application that is used to manage patient identity tasks as they arise.
• Enabling enterprise-wide access – Sentara’s EMPI system can be easily accessed from other applications within the healthcare system, enabling them to quickly verify the identities of their patients.

Learn more about Sentara’s unique HIT history and their plans for the future in their success story.

Sentara also recently announced that electronic medical records are now live at six hospitals.