Identify Your Patients

Throughout the healthcare industry, the failure to correctly identify patients continues to result in
medication errors, transfusion errors, testing errors, wrong person procedures, and the discharge
of infants to the wrong families.
The practice of having the patient involved in identifying themselves and using “two patient
identifiers” is essential in improving the reliability of the patient’s identification process. The use
of two identifiers also helps ensure that a correct match is made between the service or treatment
and the individual. This process will help eliminate errors and enhance patient care.
Patient identifier options include:
Name
Assigned identification number (e.g., medical record number)
Date of birth
Phone number
Social security number
Address
Photo
The two identifiers must be directly associated with the individual and the same two identifiers
associated with the medication, blood product, specimen container (attached label), treatment, or
procedure
Patients may wonder why their identity is confirmed so often. Staff members should always
explain that it is done to ensure the right care is provided to the right patient all the time.

What you can do:

Know that you have a primary responsibility to check the identity of patients and match the
correct patients with the correct care (e.g., laboratory results, specimens, procedures) before that
care is administered. Every time.
Use at least two identifiers (e.g., name and date of birth), according to the standards/policies of
your facility, to verify a patient’s identity upon admission or transfer to another hospital or other
care setting and prior to the administration of care. Neither of these identifiers should be the
patient’s room number.
Use active communication whenever possible and ask the patient to state his or her full name and
date of birth. (e.g., “Can you tell me your name and date of birth?” not “Mr. Smith I have your
medicine for you.”). Know and use the protocols for identifying patients who lack identification
and for distinguishing the identity of patients with the same name. Know and use non-verbal
approaches for identifying comatose or confused patients. Educate patients on the importance
and relevance of correct patient identification in a positive fashion that also respects concerns for
privacy. Encourage patients and their families or surrogates to be active participants in
identification, to express concerns about safety and potential errors, and to ask questions about
the correctness of their care. If your facility utilizes automated systems for patient identification
systems (e.g., electronic order entry, bar coding, radiofrequency identification, biometrics) to
decrease the potential for identification errors, know how to incorporate them into the patient
identification process.

Importance of Patient Identification in Hospitals

How many hospitals, genuinely understand the importance of patient identification needs that are
adequately recognized and followed? The answer may surprise you, and that fact is that the
number of hospitals now taking account for this need is quickly rising each day. The crucial
reason behind this is, accurate patient identification is extremely important in any organization,
but is also a severe issue in many hospitals today.

A patient that has been misidentified can lead to a fatal error in regards to prescribing drugs or
medicine. Imagine an individual in critical condition is rushed into the hospital emergency room.
Without some identification on hand, it will take longer to identify him and understand his
medical condition accurately. These concerns call for immediate action to determine the patients
and tend to their needs entirely.
Sometimes during an emergency, patients come in with a severe condition and doctors have little
time on their hands to treat the patient. That is where accurate patient identification comes in
handy the most. It potentially saves lives! Through precise identification of the patient, doctors
get to know the full medical condition & history of the individual and quickly can provide the
treatment they need.
Let us study another possible scenario, in where, a patient comes in with a gunshot wound in his
left arm, along with another man. The doctors ask him how it happened. Pointing to the man
accompanying him, the man replies his cousin accidentally shot him during a hunting
expedition. Doctors treat him and release him only to discover later that the man was a wanted
fugitive. If there were a proper identification process, the doctor could’ve stopped the man and
informed the police.
Another crucial fact is data theft. Millions of patients have their personal data stored in a hospital
that is not only sensitive but subjected to individual privacy rights. Personal information is the
new oil to any business or service, and because of this data breaches are happening nearly every
day. Large scale data breaches are a reality now, and these type of attacks are increasing day by
day. Sometimes these breaches can create a significant impact on our lives.
So what should be the right way to identify patients in a hospital? Is there a solution that can help
overcome all of these issues?

The perfect solution to this problem is Cloud ABIS™, a highly scalable cloud-based biometric
matching system. With the help of this solution, doctors can quickly identify patients using
robust biometric identification. Cloud ABIS™ is a multimodal biometric matching server, which
means it supports fingerprint, finger vein, palm-vein, and facial recognition.

Cloud ABIS™ can help in different hospitals to save patient lives and also improve the doctors
with their treatment by doing in quickly. This matching system performs fast, large-scale
identification of fingerprint or any other biometric templates. Utilizing Cloud ABIS™ in
hospitals benefits both the doctors and the patients. It creates an added layer of security for all
the other patients and individuals at the Hospitals