Master Patient Index list

[Lewis Lorton <llorton@shell.portal.com>]

  Please forgive the level of explanation; this posting will reach people of
  all levels of background in health informatics.
  
  We are inviting inquiries from parties to be included on a list to receive
  routine updates on a health care effort to resolve problems with connecting
  a patient's records which may reside in different health systems.
  
  Please understand that this invitation and description of our activities are
  not official products of the workshop but a preliminary view of the
  activities by the sender.
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  Explanation of the problems around patient indices:
  ----------------------------------------
  Most hospitals maintain a list of patients and associated patient id
  numbers.  Hospitals may merge or change associations and patients may shift
  their care to different sites -often with completely different different
  filing systems and associated numbers. There are many vendors who provide
  very excellent and secure patient record systems to facilitate patient
  record management for single enterprises but there is no standard method for
  interfacing between different systems to locate patient records which works
  between all systems.
  
  The HOST consortium (http://HOST.scra.org) and the Computer-based Patient
  Record Institute (CPRI) are co-sponsoring an on-going work-group on this
  problem, to define the problem, to look at current solutions and to suggest
  specifications for a standard, public-domain solution.  This product
  specification will be freely available for commercial production.  This
  effort is aimed at improving the healthcare process by:
          making the consensual connection of record fragments possible;
          easing the integration of disparate parts of possible enterprises; and
          making the transition to new organizations easier
  
  This effort will not be to develop commercial products but will only support
  the problem definition for the integration of commercial index products.
  
  The workshop and subsequent specification will be concerned with describing
  the structure of a product which would, beyond technical issues, validate
  the right of any site to make a query, the type and credential of the person
  making the query and the approval level of the patient-client as indicated
  at both initiating and receiving organizations. The final specification
  would be placed in the public domain
  
  No patient data would be exchanged by the query, merely a binary response
  about the presence of client-patient data -(if allowed by the rights of the
  inquiry and the permissions of the client-patient).
  
  This system is not intended to, nor will it, support:
          a national patient index
          any unapproved access to records
          any unapproved release of any information or even of its presence
          blanket 'trolling' of patient databases 
  
  We encourage the nomination of other parties who may be interested in
  subscribing to this list.  
  
  CAVEATS:
  The posted communications to the list are expected to be oriented to the
  technical agenda.  
  Subscription does not confer posting rights. 
  Submissions will be posted only if they pertain to the technical agenda -
  this is not a         discussion group for ideologic positions.
  
  To be placed on the list send e-mail to the address above with the subject as:
          MPI SUPPORT
  You should include your name and affiliation(if any) in the body of the
  e-mail.  We will not limit access but are interested in knowing that we
  reach as many segments of the HC informatics community as possible.
   
            
  Lewis Lorton, Executive Director
  Healthcare Open Systems and Trials