Hopefully the admitting clerk was demoted or harshly disciplined. Your
system needs a strict procedure to avoid those mistakes. The very best
method is a minimum of a double-identifier that will prevent mistakes of
that sort. Hard to believe that was not setup orginally as that is pretty
basic in patient searches. If they balk at the cost, ask if they would
rather pay millions in a lawsuit for releasing private info to an
unauthorized person, or doing surgery on the wrong person! Personally, I
would consider it a defect in the system and ask Meditech to fix it gratis.

Tim Morken
Atlanta

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike & Phyllis Thaxton [mailto:thaxfax@msn.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 9:21 PM
To: histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: same name / different number/ different patient



Hi Histoland,
  Recently we have had cases where a person has a stereotactic breast biopsy

procedure at a facility owned by the hospital network, a week later a 
lumpectomy at the main facility's same day surgery unit. The patient later 
asked for copies of her medical records. One of the records sent to her was 
correct, the second record was a different patient with the same name, 
different social security number, different medical record number. The first

admission for the stereotactic biopsy had all correct information. The 
lumpectomy did not. So what happened was that when the patient was admitted,

a name search was performed and the admitting clerk did not check ss# nor 
med record number, and this is why the mistake happened.
  We use meditech system wide, and this is my question. Is there a foolproof

way to admit patients into the system that could prevent this from 
happeneing again. My suggestion was to set up meditech to eliminate name 
search, and search by birth date and ss# only, or by name, plus add fields 
for ss# and date of birth before the search would begin. For some reason my 
ideas weren't well received for various reasons, would require major 
changes, cost, etc...BUT!!!!!This is a patient we are talking about...this 
was an easy fix THIS TIME!!!
  I am counting on you wonderful histonetters to share with me what the rest

of the world is doing to prevent this from happening, especially meditech 
gurus.
  Thanks all.

Phyllis Thaxton




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