UHIN turns to NextGate for Reliable Patient Matching and Statewide Data Exchange

PASADENA, Calif., Jan. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- NextGate, the global leader in healthcare enterprise identification, announced today that UHIN, a leading health information exchange (HIE), has selected its cloud-based Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI) as the foundation for patient identification and interoperability across the state. NextGate's market-leading EMPI, which manages patient identities for more than two-thirds of the U.S. population, will replace UHIN's preceding IBM patient matching software. 

UHIN enables electronic medical records exchange and direct secure messaging services for 95 percent of hospitals and 90 percent of large clinics in Utah. The new technology will enable key improvements in care coordination and outcomes to support its network of 25,000 provider participants, including Intermountain Healthcare and University of Utah Health. As a full-service healthcare clearinghouse, the UHIN network currently encompasses more than 214 million claims records and 6 million clinical patient records across the state.

Migrating to a newly modernized EMPI that enables cross-system interoperability was central to UHIN's mission of creating a sustainable, fully integrated network that promotes operational efficiency, care quality and patient safety. For state designated HIEs like UHIN that integrate clinical and claims data from multiple systems, NextGate's robust software solution empowers physicians, hospitals and payers by seamlessly linking records in any given system and reconciling data discrepancies across multiple sources and sites of care.

The EMPI will also impact UHIN's ability to map a patient's entire care journey for population health analytics and quality reporting for members participating in value-based care initiatives.

"UHIN is proud to be working with NextGate to ensure our providers have the most complete and accurate information to deliver the high-quality level of care every patient deserves," said Brian Chin, CEO of UHIN. "Consistently connecting the right data to the right individual is a critical requirement in today's growing digitized environment and we are dedicated to supporting our members with technology that reduces errors, improves point-of-care decisions and enhances the overall patient experience."

As organizations transition to value-based payment and care delivery models, the need for a complete and accurate view of patient data across the continuum becomes increasingly critical for greater clinical, operational and financial performance. Inaccurate patient identification costs the U.S. healthcare system $6 billion annually and results in medical errors, data quality issues, administrative waste, and poor patient and provider satisfaction.

"Healthcare organizations continue to struggle with poor data quality when managing their patient population. Fragmented multi-vendor systems only compound the problem, giving rise to inaccurate and outdated patient information," said NextGate CEO Andy Aroditis. "We are honored to support UHIN and its members with an automated solution where individuals are properly identified and matched to their data."

As part of the agreement, UHIN will also leverage NextGate's innovative location intelligence in tandem with the EMPI to standardize and verify address information. Using the U.S Postal Service (USPS) format, location intelligence ensures addresses are consistently formatted to prevent fraud and avoid data entry errors at key stages where patient information is collected. The technology has the added benefit of geocoding to enable location-based searches of patient populations.

"We believe NextGate's EMPI is the ideal solution to support our network's digital maturity and empower our members with mission-critical information," said Cody Johansen, Director of HIE Services at UHIN. "Having an established, best-in-class partner like NextGate that can integrate data from multiple participants and make it actionable for our providers will be critical to advancing data-driven, value-based care initiatives across the network and providing the best possible care for our residents."

About NextGate
With over 200 customers in four countries, NextGate is the global leader in healthcare enterprise identification. Committed to helping organizations overcome the clinical, operational and financial challenges that result from duplicate records and disparate data, our full suite of identity matching solutions connects the entire healthcare ecosystem to drive critical improvements in quality, efficiency and safety. NextGate's market-leading EMPI currently manages 300 million lives and is deployed by the nation's most successful healthcare systems and health information exchanges. For more information, visit NextGate.com.

About UHIN:
UHIN's mission is to increase adoption of technologies that assist healthcare organizations to collaborate, take care of patients, and share information. By creating electronic exchange solutions that work for the entire healthcare community, from single-provider practices to large integrated healthcare systems, UHIN is connecting disparate systems across the healthcare continuum. UHIN is a nonprofit coalition of healthcare providers, payers, state government and other stakeholders, working to reduce healthcare costs and improve quality and access for all. For more information, visit www.uhin.org.

Media Contact:
Stephanie Fraser
Director of Communications and Media Relations, NextGate
c: 734-233-1483 | o: 734-399-9336
[email protected]

SOURCE NextGate