Colorado Medical Society Resolution 11-P

Statewide Master Patient Index

Passed House of Delegates September 17, 2006

Author: John Ogle, MD, MPH

Submitted by Boulder County Medical Society

Note: There were 2 changes between this final (passed) resolution and the original resolution as submitted by Boulder County. The bold (emphasis) text was replaced with normal text and the last 3 words were sticken. View as originally submitted.

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, patients who receive fractionated care throughout the state usually get lower quality and less efficient services, and

WHEREAS, there is a consensus that the “Continuity of Care Record” (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 patients’ 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.

*CCR: “Continuity of Care Record” is a core data set of the most relevant current and past information about a patient’s 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: “Master Patient Index,” is a data retrieval strategy whereby a guarded set of unique patient identifiers allows authenticated queries to securely “point” to the correct hospital and internal identifier (medical record number, account number, etc), thereby generating a probabilistic “match list” 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.