Powering Identity Resolution for Patients, Providers and Consumers

Thought Leadership

In this blog post, we will explore the Verato Universal Identity™️ platform and its unique approach is answering the call to transform identity resolution management.

If you receive healthcare in the United States, it’s almost guaranteed that at some point in your healthcare journey, you’ve experienced moments in time when your care provider does not know who you are. It’s a frustrating, scary and a bewildering proposition that currently, our expansive healthcare system is still struggling to consistently identify the people they serve. The patient journey is about trust, trust for everyone involved, those receiving care and those providing care.

The healthcare industry has been collaborating with technology pioneers to develop a solution to bring together the multiple data streams both internally and externally that contribute to the patient journey. This involves indexing and assembling data in a meaningful way. However, the identity resolution ecosystem within our healthcare landscape is inconsistently evolving and largely depends on resources, budgets, and transformational goals inside hundreds of healthcare organizations within the US.

Digital transformation accelerates need for a single source of truth

Over the years, healthcare systems have been acquiring various solutions to streamline the patient experience, provide accurate information, and offer reliable data to everyone, whether a patient, consumer, or provider. Consequently, healthcare organizations have environments filled with multiple systems at work behind the scenes, each with its own data and requirements, with a multitude of access points. These complex highways are major roadblocks for healthcare organizations as they try to gain a smart view within the volume, variety, and velocity of the data.   

The endeavor of digital transformation has been the key driver to jump-starting a new way of thinking about mastering identity resolution in healthcare. The theme of digital transformation has been in healthcare for years but has accelerated even more, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has resulted in a significant shift in how consumers access and consume their care.  Additionally, within the competitive landscape of healthcare, providers and all key stakeholders within the patient journey are also re-evaluating how they deliver consistent, reliable, trustworthy, and high-quality care…. with a major focus on knowing who is who within the communities they serve.

Healthcare leaders recognize that the typical patient journey should be focused on enabling accurate person identity at every touchpoint, because effective healthcare always begins and ends with identity data. The patient’s information needs to be accurate and up to date within every pathway, and providers also need to have their own information available across the health system. The combination of these data streams results in a smoother experience for everybody. This is especially important as healthcare providers try to retain and acquire new patients to capture a lifetime of value from the people they serve.  Achieving these goals requires collaboration between healthcare technology trailblazers and our leaders within the US healthcare provider framework.

A solution to solve healthcare’s biggest challenges

One of the industry trailblazers answering the call is Verato, whose Universal Identity platform is a cloud-based solution that provides a referential matching approach to identity resolution. Instead of relying on traditional deterministic matching methods that compare exact data attributes, Verato uses a reference database of over 400 million identities to find matches that may have been missed or incorrectly linked by traditional methods. Verato’s matching engine uses sophisticated algorithms and machine learning to identify matches even when data is incomplete, inconsistent, or contains errors. This approach to identity resolution has been proven to increase match accuracy, reduce duplicate records, and improve patient safety.

The Verato Universal Identity platform is purpose-built for healthcare organizations and is designed to integrate with existing healthcare systems and workflows. This healthcare-specific Master Data Management (hMDM) platform can be deployed quickly and can scale to meet the needs of any healthcare organization, from small clinics to large health systems. The platform is also highly secure, with HITRUST and SOC 2 Type II certifications, ensuring that patient data is always protected.

Meeting organizations where they are with a maturity model

One of the unique capabilities of Verato is the expert approach towards maturity model scoring for identity resolution management. A team of trusted advisors collaborates with healthcare leaders to evaluate their current state of identity resolution methods and provides a maturity score based on industry best practices and benchmarks. This scoring approach helps identify gaps in the current state and develops a comprehensive roadmap for continuous improvement.

Verato’s maturity model scoring approach consists of five stages:

Level 0 – Exploring: Organizations may have had initial discussions and minor investments in identity data management, but there are no plans or use aside from applications and tech that deliver identity as part of their function. This level is typically characterized by a lack of formal identity data management strategies and solutions.

Level 1 – Doing: Represents an improvement over Level 0, as organizations begin leveraging clinical systems for identity resolution activities. However, data is still siloed, and strategies and solutions exist per disparate EMR or central system, resulting in highly inefficient capabilities.

Level 2 – Becoming: Represents a successful transition to a centralized identity strategy and solution beyond clinical systems and purely patient/clinical data. However, processes are still mostly manual at this level, resulting in slower and less accurate identity resolution.

Level 3 – Being: Identity data management becomes centralized, automated, and covers a wide array of data types, delivering value throughout many aspects of the organization. This level marks a significant improvement over previous levels, with the implementation of advanced technology and processes.

Level 4 – Actualizing: Identity data management is fully ingrained in the organization’s culture, leading to data-driven decision making across all aspects of the enterprise and serving as a true differentiator. At this level, organizations can unlock the full potential of optimized and efficient healthcare as a personal/identity business.

With the Verato Maturity Model Assessment process, hundreds of healthcare organizations can move from merely exploring identity data management to a culture of data-driven decision making. By investing in the people, processes, and technology to ‘Master’ Identity Data Management, leaders within our vast healthcare landscape can achieve greater efficiency and unlock the full potential of optimized healthcare.

Upon reaching the uppermost stages of the Verato Maturity Model, Verato’s trusted advisors engage in a validation process with partners to gain official recognition for their achievement. Partners who successfully complete the validation process join an elite group of high-performing healthcare organizations. 

The sooner our healthcare landscape gains control of identity resolution on the front-end as the enabler – the sooner we can all work together to solve the critical digital transformation initiatives to better serve our communities.

Click here to learn more about the Verato Universal Identity™️ platform.