Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) has published a national policy defining data field standards, said to provide best practice guidelines for patient facing staff on accurate patient registration and data recording, supporting the successful matching of each patient to their unique Individual Health Identifier (IHI).
The specifications will apply to all new system procurements, and support existing training and education around standardisation, accuracy, and completeness of patient data, the service notes.
HSE states that the unique identifier assigned to every individual receiving healthcare in Ireland is critical for patient safety, however, “inconsistent or incomplete data entry at registration weakens IHI matching”. HSE adds: “The introduction of these standards supports the message that the IHI is the foundation for consistent patient identification and the seamless exchange of health information across the healthcare ecosystem.”
The service highlights the “significant opportunity” to support new and integrated models of care, as well as interoperability, with the standards aligning with Ireland’s focus on empowering patients as a key principle for digital care, said to close “critical gaps and ensure every patient can be reliably matched to their IHI”.
The policy aims to achieve two main objectives, to mandate minimum standards for patient identity data fields for successful IHI matching in all new system procurements. Secondly, to underpin a soon to be launched national training and education programme aimed to up skill staff and ensure consistent practices at the point of registration.
The policy aligns with the Digital Health Roadmap for Ireland published late last year, which set out a vision to create better health outcomes through a digitally enabled environment around six core principles: the patient as an empowered partner; workforce and workplace; digitally enabled and connected care; data-driven services; digital health ecosystem and innovation; and secure foundations and digital enablers
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