Unique Identifier Quandary Exemplifies Health Net Obstacles

The world's economy has been profoundly transformed since the US Congress authorized commercial use of the Internet in 1992.However, an industry with perhaps the most to offer humanity via ubiquitous networked records - healthcare -- lags far behind most others in adopting network technologies. In the US, for example, most industry experts agree that only about 20 percent of physicians use electronic health records (EHRs). The US federal government has recently offered its largest incentive yet to healthcare providers to adopt EHRs. To qualify for these incentives, healthcare providers must prove their records systems can communicate with other providers' systems as well as report patient outcomes to federal health funding agencies. Vendors are encouraging physicians and hospitals to begin evaluating EHR systems sooner rather than later as the rush for stimulus funding begins. Hospital executives, however, are uneasy about rushing into a stimulus-qualifying EHR because it's currently not possible to ensure the integrity of the very foundation of interorganizational care, a unique patient identifier that will confirm a patient's identity from provider to provider. Healthcare networking executives are recognizing the importance of the unique identifier. Unfortunately, although the need for unique identifiers might be universal and although a ubiquitous global ID could ultimately give travelers peace of mind that emergency care they might receive anywhere away from home would take their existing records into account, there are myriad obstacles in the way of achieving a global healthcare identity platform any time soon. This paper discusses these concerns.