Patients

A patient should be uniquely identifiable across the entire health system (especially in multi-facility health systems) as well as across multiple visits/admissions. Typically health systems choose to use a patient account number, MRN, or other field as the patient identifier. The identifier must be unique. Failure to provide a unique identifier will result in improper capture of patient visits/admissions across health system facilities as well as multiple visits over time.

Vocera looks for a unique patient identifier in the following segment elements:

• PID-2: Patient ID

• PID-3.1: Patient Identifier List – ID Number

• PID-4: Alternate Patient ID

• PID-18.1: Patient Account Number – ID Number

• PID-19: SSN Number – Patient

In addition, Vocera can be configured to use a combination of any elements in the PID segment for unique patient identification including using the ‘assigning authority’ element in cases of multi-facility health systems where the patient identifier is locally unique to a single facility.