Ditch activation codes and automate portal enrollment with integrated identity authentication solutions

Other blog posts in this series: Segmenting your patient population for the COVID-19 vaccine Engaging patient segments with convenient, secure scheduling solutions The patient portal can play an important role in COVID-19 vaccination efforts, allowing patients the ability to both schedule their vaccines and keep track of where they are in the process, at least for those vaccines that require more than one dose. We interviewed Victoria Dames, senior director of product management at Experian Health, about how providers can authenticate portal access with automation, while also protecting patient identities. As portal traffic increases, what are the authorization concerns? Many providers who are supporting the mass vaccination sites are leveraging their existing patient portals to schedule patients for the vaccine. As providers are now seeing individuals sign up for portals at scale it can difficult to ensure that the individuals being granted access to the portal are in fact who they say they are. That is a huge concern knowing the patient portal contains PHI that is commonly a target for fraudsters. What are the benefits of automating portal enrollment and access? Automation alleviates two things. First, it provides an industry-wide level of security and assurance. It provides the market standard for identity proofing before granting access to a patient record. Second, it alleviates a lot of the administrative burden put on provider staff. Automating portal enrollment allows staff to focus their attention on other, more important efforts. And, for portal enrollment at this magnitude, automation really is necessary. Providers are seeing individuals going back multiple times to the same portal, signing in more than once and sometimes with multiple log-ins, just to schedule an appointment for a vaccination. Our recent survey on patient access found that 54% of patients are concerned about security when accessing their personal details online. From a provider’s perspective, does having a system like this help with the objective of making patients feel more secure? One area where patient and provider views align is around the security of digital access solutions. The balance, though, between security and convenience can be a tough one to maintain. Moving quickly while maintaining security – and without adding undue friction – is a tall order, but it’s not optional. With the right tools and support, providers can safeguard patient data throughout the vaccination process with confidence and make the portal enrollment process as frictionless as possible. Interested in learning more about how Experian Health can help supercharge the COVID-19 vaccine management process?

Published: March 18, 2021 by Experian Health

The urgency to move quickly and vaccinate the population has introduced an entirely new set of challenges for providers regarding patient identity. Many continue to leverage existing processes and solutions already in place, manually handling the pain points that come with them, but now at scale and at an unprecedented rate. As the rollout moves forward, the strain on provider resources will only deepen, as will the risks associated with patient misidentification. The data mess behind the scenes Many patients are registering for the vaccine through a patient portal. While the self-service nature of signing up for the vaccine via a portal is beneficial, patients are unfortunately able to register for a portal account more than once. In fact, some of our clients have reported seeing as many as 1,800 duplicate records created per day. Those duplicate records are generated from some individuals who forgot their log-in account information and opted to create a new account, and others who simply forgot they had an account. With the sense of urgency to secure a vaccination appointment, consumers are moving at a rapid speed and simply want to grab a spot with the quickest credentials available. Regardless, multiple registrations for a single patient will create duplicate patient information. Duplicate records are not only costly (the estimated cost of remediation is $96 per duplicate pair), but they are an incredible drain on staff productivity, and ultimately, they are detrimental to patient safety. Multiple records of a single individual pose a risk for potential allergies, reactions, medical history and more. Even more, it is detrimental specifically to the efficacy of the vaccine as it will be harder to gauge in real time how many patients have been vaccinated, and at what stage, and make it more difficult to truly understand what percentage of the patient population has actually been vaccinated. UIM: not another stop-gap solution Experian’s Universal Identity Manager (UIM) platform is tailor-made for a situation like this as it was developed to create a single view of the same patient with their most current information. The matching technology accurately identifies patients and matches records within and across disparate healthcare organizations, providing a more complete understanding of who a patient is, despite the data gaps or errors that may exist in patient rosters. With it, providers are not only preventing duplicate and overlaid patient records but UIM can also minimize errors and fraud in patient records. It additionally improves staff productivity by decreasing the need for record reconciliation—a benefit likely welcomed by many if they are continuing to see anywhere near 1,800 duplicate records per day. When integrated with a solution like Precise ID, providers can both reconcile duplicate records, and effectively stop them from being created in the first place. By automating the patient portal enrollment process, healthcare organizations can remove the manual processes associated with portal enrollment, optimize critical IT staff resources while securing patient information and support a positive patient experience. State-of-the-art identity proofing, risk-based authentication and knowledge-based questions help providers securely verify each patient’s identity as they enroll for the patient portal. Explore how Experian Health can help resolve and enhance identities as part of the vaccine management process and beyond, not only by resolving duplicate records, but also by enhancing records with the best demographic and social determinants of health data available.

Published: March 10, 2021 by Experian Health

How has the pandemic affected consumer attitudes around patient access? What do consumers want when it comes to accessing care? These are the questions providers must answer if they are to survive the pandemic and lay the groundwork for future financial success. Experian Health’s recent patient access survey offers a glimpse of what patients hope the digital front door will look like in 2021 and beyond. Wherever you are in the digital patient access journey, there\'s an opportunity to improve the experience for patients to one that will not only survive the tumult of the pandemic, but also thrive in the years ahead.

Published: February 24, 2021 by Experian Health