Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Craig Richardville most recently served as the senior vice president and chief information officer for Carolinas HealthCare System. During Craig Richardville’s term at the company, the organization implemented a biometric identification platform designed to eliminate costly mistakes that result from the misidentification of patients.
Incorrectly identifying a patient can lead to a number of consequences that can put the life of the patient at risk and unnecessarily cost an organization time and money. A common problem in the healthcare industry, misidentification can occur when a practice has difficulty locating a record or when multiple records exist for the same patient.
Medical record confusion can also occur when patients with identical names or birthdates are in the system. In organizations with thousands or even millions of records to manage, hunting down or recreating charts can mean huge losses.
Several companies have developed new, biometric approaches that help to ensure that patients are properly identified when they check in. Facial recognition programs, palm vein recognition programs, or fingerprint or retina scanners can be efficient and nearly error-free approaches to patient identification.
The Carolinas HealthCare System implemented a voluntary program that relies on palm vein recognition. The organization chose this approach because palm veins change very little as patients age. Today, 96 percent of the network’s patients have opted to use the platform, allowing the organization to reduce errors while saving time and money.
