Colorado Medical Society

Introduced by:              Boulder County Medical Society

Subject:                           Statewide Master Patient Index

 

Referred to:                   Reference Committee on Health Affairs

 

WHEREAS, Colorado has just initiated landmark immigration legislation reducing non-emergency benefits to undocumented immigrants, and

 

WHEREAS, emergency medical providers will continue to provide care and likely encounter even more uninsured patients without standardized electronic health records, and

 

WHEREAS, there is a consensus that the ÒContinuity of Care RecordÓ (CCR)* dataset should be exportable and available at the point of care during emergencies, and

 

WHEREAS, an integrated, patient-centric, decentralized health information exchange system improves care, honors patientsÕ wishes (including DNR and opt-out capability) and reduces costs by minimizing redundant, unnecessary or previously rejected interventions, therefore be it

 

RESOLVED, that CMS supports a statewide secure and accessible network for sharing clinical data by encouraging adoption of a dedicated, secure, master patient index  to improve care and reduce ambiguity during electronic record exchange between dissimilar hospitals.

 

 

FISCAL IMPACT: None       


*CCR: ÒContinuity of Care RecordÓ is a core data set of the most relevant current and past information about a patientÕs health status and healthcare treatment.  This EMR subset is standardized and transportable, and is widely accepted by the AMA, HIMSS and others.  The record is prepared by a practitioner at the conclusion of a healthcare encounter, and enables the next practitioner to readily access such information.

 

 MPI: ÒMaster Patient Index,Ó is a data retrieval strategy whereby a guarded set of unique patient identifiers allows authenticated queries to securely ÒpointÓ to the correct hospital and internal identifier (medical record number, account number, etc), thereby generating a probabilistic Òmatch listÓ for review by a credentialed requestor.  Data remains decentralized and does not reside in any single statewide repository.  The Internet and banking systems have used this strategy for over a decade.