Providers are still trying to find  cost-effective ways to precisely match electronic health records with the right patient.

Many EHR systems can’t accurately match EHRs without costly and time-consuming human intervention to resolve confusion over patients with similar names.  Thus, this Modern Healthcare article notes, “The result is a failure to maximize the clinical care and patient-safety benefits of EHRs. It also limits future research opportunities, experts say.”

“According to surveys and published reports, the error rates for automatic patient matching range from 1% to over 50%, depending on whether a requesting provider is querying patient records within an organization, from another provider or from a health information exchange.”