1. Do you use at least two identifiers? “The baseline is you always need to have a minimum of two identifiers,” says Dr. McDonnell.“You can’t just look at the patient’s bracelet. You need a name, ...

Universal patient identifiers—unique IDs for every individual in the US—would improve the accuracy, efficiency, and safety of health care. But a ban on the use of federal funding to develop ...

Q: What strategies can be used to ensure the correct identification of patients in a hospital's medication-use process? At our institution, members of the medical center leadership meet monthly as ...

A national strategy for patient identification is essential for connecting the fragmented health care system, while making it safer and more efficient for patients and health providers.

But even if it didn't, “it actually doesn't solve the problem, because what happens is at that point, the national patient ID will just be included as another identifier,” Tripathi said.

Portable handheld iris readers, about the size of many mobile phones, enable caregivers to use biometrics virtually anywhere – at a patient's bedside, in a surgical suite or at an outpatient ...

Patient identification errors are fairly common, with as many as 7 to 10 percent of patients misidentified during medical record searches at hospitals, according to Imprivata, a health IT security ...