Baptist Health, based in Jacksonville, Florida, is a faith-based, nonprofit health system comprising six hospitals with more than 1,100 beds, a cancer center, four satellite emergency departments, and more than 200 patient access points of care throughout northeast Florida and southeast Georgia.

THE CHALLENGE

“Baptist Health is more than a healthcare provider – we are a foundational part of the communities we serve, meaning we work across organizations to provide optimal care and create a healthier society,” said Aaron Miri, senior vice president and chief digital and information officer at Baptist Health. “In addition, Baptist recognizes the shift in patient preferences and expectations, as patients are more willing to switch providers if they don’t have experiences that parallel other industries.

“To improve patient care and experience, Baptist works outside of its organization’s metaphorical walls, including collaborating with neighboring health systems and various payers,” he continued.

Baptist wanted to strengthen these collaborations further and create a digital bridge so families needing to transition to Baptist for services would have a seamless experience. They can focus on the wellbeing of their family member in treatment rather than readmission paperwork.

“Separately, as payer contracts evolved, Baptist Health wanted to ensure no patient was left behind, as some primary care physicians would now be considered out of network,” Miri explained. “Understanding who was impacted in a short period of time was essential to notify the affected patients, guide them to other options and prevent care interruption.

“Both examples rely on having a complete view of patient and member identities to serve the community better but are hampered by identity data in silos across multiple complex ecosystems that contain inconsistent and/or incomplete data,” he added. “Even if two health systems are on a common EHR platform, separate instances mean patient MRNs [medical record numbers] do not align.”

Accurate patient identity is the foundation of virtually everything Baptist does: data sharing, patient care, revenue cycle management and marketing, among other processes, he said.

“Patient data isn’t just in EHRs; it’s everywhere – and we needed a solution that allows us to access complete patient data at every point, both internally and when we exchange data with other healthcare entities,” he explained.

PROPOSAL

As a large health system in one of the top four growth markets in the United States, Baptist deals with a constant flow of patient data from multiple sources and expects that to continue to expand exponentially.

“Ninety-nine percent of my team’s challenges stemmed from identity, as data exists in various formats, some of it inaccurate and incomplete,” Miri noted. “Identity data is the lifeblood throughout our ecosystem, from clinical operations to revenue cycle management to marketing, and we must be able to reconcile patient identities to work safely and efficiently and provide the best possible patient experiences.

“When looking at our identity challenges, we were seeking a single source of truth,” he continued. “The vendor we chose was Verato, as they proposed delivering that single source of truth for patient, provider, member and consumer identity with the highest degree of accuracy so we could act confidently.”

Further, the system is malleable enough to adapt to Baptist’s ever-evolving use cases as the health system becomes more sophisticated, adds new care settings, and delivers personalized care and experiences to improve outcomes, efficiency and retention, he added.

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

Integrating the Verato master data management system was Miri’s team’s responsibility, but it is used throughout the health system, from clinical to customer relationship management. The technology has helped Baptist bridge the gap between systems of record, systems of experience and systems of insight to truly know who is who at every touchpoint of the patient’s journey, Miri reported.

“In addition to creating identity harmony within our systems, it helped us better serve the community,” he noted. “To use the example of digitizing and bridging external referrals, we needed an MDM [master data management] system that would address: obtaining and processing referrals, automated reporting, scheduling and obtaining prior authorization, billing charges reconciliation, and patient access to combined records from both hospitals.

“After studying our systems, the vendor implemented a bidirectional, digital workflow between the two health systems, allowing orders to be sent directly to Baptist, with the results returned electronically to the originating EHR system,” he continued. “That eliminated the need for manual patient identity verification and record resolution, allowing treatment to begin sooner.”

In addition to the various clinical workflows that have been strengthened, the new MDM system integrated with Salesforce CRM and several other vendors in medical joint ventures, he added.

“The next frontier with Verato is integrating data within our Employee Hub, including with PeopleSoft and Microsoft Entra, and adding Verato Verify + CLEAR to confirm employee identities during self-service account recovery or calls to the service desk,” Miri said. “As healthcare cyberattacks remain at record highs, we need to take advantage of every tool available to keep our systems secure.”

RESULTS

The MDM system has helped Baptist improve operations across the board by letting the health system know who is at every touchpoint. Staff have seen measurable improvements in such areas as closing care gaps, improving HCAPH scores and other quality measures, proactive wellness, patient outreach, and enabling more remote care.

In the use case of resolution for radiology patient referrals, for example, Baptist has experienced:

• Reduction in abstraction of records from one EHR to be entered in another.
• Order transcription errors eliminated.
• Less faxing.

“We see about 50 cases per day with one of our referring health systems, which extrapolates to more than 18,000 cases per year where care is improved and patients and their families have a better experience,” Miri reported.

“In the payer example, the quantitative impacts were with patients and time saved,” he continued. “Even one lost patient is too many and the team was able to collaborate and leverage the MDM to understand the population impacted in a number of hours, not days or weeks,” he added.

ADVICE FOR OTHERS

Master data management has advanced greatly in the past few years, and one doesn’t want to get trapped with a vendor whose product is a generation or two behind, Miri said.

“I would advise other health systems to do their homework in finding vendors with the most advanced technology that can solve multiple problems, the most flexible technology to expand to your innovative use cases, and the creativity to explore the art of the possible with you,” he continued.

“In addition, validate that the vendor has earned the necessary security credentials, such as HITRUST,” he concluded. “That vendor will help you achieve your goal of understanding identity across the ecosystem of patients, providers and consumers and provide a safer environment.”

Follow Bill’s HIT coverage on LinkedIn: Bill Siwicki
Email him: bsiwicki@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

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