About Sun Master Patient Index

In today’s healthcare environment, vital patient data is generated and stored in several systems throughout an organization. Each of these systems typically assigns its own, independent local identifiers, making it difficult to share information between systems and departments. It is also difficult to create a comprehensive, reliable view of each patient across a healthcare enterprise.

Patient information should flow seamlessly and rapidly between internal systems and departments throughout the entire healthcare network, and each department should have access to the most current and reliable patient data. As organizations grow, merge, and form affiliations, sharing data between different information systems becomes a complicated task. Sun Master Patient Index can help you manage this task and ensure that the data you have is the most current and accurate information available.

The topics below provide information about Sun Master Patient Index and how it provides a solution for sharing and cleansing patient data.

• The Sun Master Patient Index Solution

• Configurability

• Standardization and Matching Logic

• Data Maintenance

• Sun Master Patient Index and HIPAA

The Sun Master Patient Index Solution

Sun Master Patient Index is an enterprise-wide master patient index (EMPI) built on the Sun Master Index (Repository) platform. It provides a comprehensive, reliable view of patient information by uniquely identifying patients throughout a healthcare enterprise and maintaining the most current information about those patients. With Sun Master Patient Index, it is possible to create a single source of patient information that synchronizes with your existing systems.

Sun Master Patient Index cross-references data from all connected systems and automates record matching across disparate systems, simplifying the process of sharing data between departments and facilities. Sun Master Patient Index is highly flexible and customizable, and you can configure the master index as needed to meet your data processing needs. The master index uniquely identifies each patient record throughout an organization to ensure that the most current and accurate data is available.

Sun Master Patient Index provides an automatic, common identification process regardless of the system from which data originates. Records from various locations are cross-referenced using an enterprise-wide unique identifier assigned by Sun Master Patient Index, allowing the master index to use the local identifiers generated by your internal systems to create an index of patient records. In addition, Sun Master Patient Index employs configurable probabilistic matching technology, which uses a matching algorithm to formulate an effective statistical measure of how closely records match based on the data fields you specify. Using this matching logic, Sun Master Patient Index consistently and precisely identifies patient records, flagging potentially duplicate records and automatically joining records that are considered a match. In this way, Sun Master Patient Index provides continuous data cleansing as records are processed.

Sun Master Patient Index centralizes the information about the patients that participate within your organization. Maintaining a centralized database for multiple systems enablesSun Master Patient Index to integrate data throughout the enterprise while allowing your existing systems to continue to operate independently. The database, which is accessible throughout the enterprise, stores copies of local system records and their associated single best records (SBRs), which represent the most accurate and complete data for each patient. To facilitate up-to-date records in each system, you can configure Sun Master Patient Index to generate a message to a JMS Topic each time a record is updated, added, merged, or unmerged in the master index. Using the Sun Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), this information becomes available to those systems that are able to accept incoming messages.

Configurability

Sun Master Patient Index provides a predefined data structure based on standard healthcare data requirements that can be used as is or can be easily customized if needed. Before deploying Sun Master Patient Index, you define the components and processing capabilities of the system to suit your requirements. The matching and standardization rules, survivorship rules, queries, Patient Enterprise Data Manager (Patient EDM) appearance, and field validation rules can all be used as is or can be configured to better meet the needs of your organization. In essence, you control the data structure and the logic that determines how data is updated, standardized, weighted, and matched.

The data structure and processing logic is stored in a set of XML configuration files that are predefined but that can be customized. These files are defined within the context of Java CAPS project and are modified using the XML editor provided in NetBeans. You can also use the graphical configuration editor to customize some of the master patient index configuration.

Standardization and Matching Logic

Sharing data requires overcoming data quality problems such as name and address changes, transpositions, and phonetically similar names to be able to uniquely identify the same patient across multiple systems. Sun Master Patient Index uses the Sun Match Engine, a proprietary algorithm for probabilistic matching of patient records and data standardization. As records are processed through Sun Master Patient Index, the standardization engine normalizes and phonetically encodes specified data and the match engine identifies records that potentially represent or do represent the same patient. The match engine uses user-defined logic, including configurable matching thresholds, comparison functions, data fields, and so on.

Matching Weight Determination

When comparing two records to determine the likelihood of a match, the match engine compares the match fields you specify between the records to determine a matching weight for each match field based on the reliability of the field and the comparison function used. The sum of the weights of the match fields is the total matching weight between the two records. The logic used by the standardization and match engines is highly customizable to provide the most reliable matching for the type of data you store.

Alias Processing

Sun Master Patient Index provides alias name processing in the form of custom plug-ins to help find or match patient records in cases where the patient’s name has changed or a nickname is used. In the default configuration, a name is added to a patient’s alias list when a maiden name is added or updated and when a patient’s first, last, or middle name is modified. Searches can be performed against a patient’s primary and alias names, providing broad search capabilities and improving the chance of finding a match.

Data Maintenance

The Patient EDM is the web-based user interface for Sun Master Patient Index. The Patient EDM supports all the necessary features for maintaining data records. It allows you to add new records; view, update, deactivate, or reactivate existing records; and compare records for similarities and differences. From the Patient EDM, you can perform searches using a variety of criteria and search types for a specific patient or a set of patients. For certain searches, the results are assigned a matching weight that indicates the probability of a match.

One of the most important features of Sun Master Patient Index is its ability to match records and identify possible duplicates. Sun Master Patient Index also provides the functionality to correct any duplication. Potential duplicate records are easily corrected by either merging the records in question or marking the records as “resolved”. If you find two records to represent the same person, you should merge the records (at either the enterprise record or system record level). At the enterprise record level, you can determine which record to retain as the active record. At the system level, you can determine which record to retain and which information from each record to preserve in the resulting record.

Finally, Patient EDM provides standard reports that provide information about the current state of the data in the master index, helping you monitor stored data and determine how that data needs to be updated. Report information also helps verify that the matching logic and weight thresholds are defined correctly. Standard reports are available through a command line or the Patient EDM. You can also create custom reports using any ODBC-compliant reporting tool, SQL, or Java.

Sun Master Patient Index and HIPAA

Sun Master Patient Index provides full audit capabilities in support of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandates. Transaction histories are stored in the database to track every change to every record and provide before and after images as well as who made the changes and when. In addition, the audit log maintains a record of each time patient data is accessed or viewed in the master index database, including who accessed the data and when. The audit log and transaction history can both be viewed on the Patient EDM.