Just Associates
Data Integrity Services to Ensure Accuracy of Patient Data

As the healthcare industry evolves into a quality-based system, reliance on various technologies that pave the way for better, safer care has increased. Central to the success of these technologies—and healthcare’s evolution as a whole—is data integrity; in particular ensuring that patient medical records are properly populated and linked across disparate systems. It goes without saying that preventing mismatches and maintaining accurate, complete, and consistent patient data is imperative to safe, effective care across the continuum. “If data isn’t clean or accurate, it cannot be used for effective population health management,” says Beth Haenke Just, CEO, Just Associates. “We address the issues related to maintaining the quality of patient database by creating stronger algorithms that drive more accurate matching and ensure the authenticity of the flowing data.”

Having established a reputation for excellence with its Master Patient Index (MPI) Clean-Up services, Centennial, CO-based Just Associates now provides innovative solutions and services designed to assist healthcare organizations with resolving and maintaining data integrity issues. Among these unique services is their ongoing MPI Management service IDManage®. This technology enabled outsourced service is designed to quickly eliminate duplicate patient records from the MPI system before they can negatively impact data integrity. Through ongoing monitoring, this service helps to prevent potential duplicates from ever entering the system as well as identifying other harmful issues that affect data integrity. “With IDManage, our experts can access clients’ systems remotely to validate and merge duplicate records,” says Beth. “To ensure the highest level of accuracy, IDManage operations are subjected to a rigorous Quality Assurance (QA) protocol and all staff decisions regarding the validity of possible redundant records are reviewed by our QA team,” she adds.

IDManage® enables customers to access the system remotely, validate, and merge the repeated records

Rounding out Just Associates’ MPI management services is the IDOptimize® patient matching algorithm optimization service that

“leverages our knowledge of industry systems to enhance performance through improved patient matching capabilities, increased duplicate record identification, and enhanced operational output,” describes Beth.

Alongside its data integrity services, Just Associates provides a comprehensive suite of “Positive Patient Identification” services that deliver a solid framework for operational and technological excellence. This includes expert guidance and assistance with policy framework to support Health Information Organizations (HIOs) and encourage provider adoption of health information exchange (HIE).

As a trusted healthcare solution provider, Just Associates has assisted a myriad of customers with resolving the complexities related to patient data management and data integrity. For example, the Children's Medical Center Dallas engaged the firm after identifying a significant number of duplicate records that were impacting clinical workflows, care quality and safety because physicians weren’t able to effectively locate the correct patient information. Just Associates first performed a MPI clean-up eliminating existing duplicates followed by a comprehensive assessment to identify the root cause of duplicate creation enabling them to craft policies and processes preventing the creation of new ones. “We helped them to improve the quality of patient care and increase physician acceptance of the new Electronic Health Record,” asserts Beth.

Today, Just Associates maintains its position as a top provider of MPI data management services by continuing to focus on delivering innovative solutions to emerging problems. “We ensure that our offerings will benefit our customers in the future by focusing on better and earlier detection of data integrity issues,” concludes Beth.