For those of you faced with connecting patient records with different patient ID domains across enterprises, or within an enterprise, this article is worth a read.
Some thoughts…
- The need/want for privacy is not the real issue. The issue is the general lack of understanding in patient ID management and strategies for dealing with them.
- I am interested to see what the ONC (through their new Patient Matching Initiative) does to solve this issue. Many enterprises have invested heavily to implement solutions (technical and staffing and policies) for dealing with multiple patient IDs. A new solution, however novel, will not be enthusiastically embraced by organizations that are committed to a path already.
- Beyond cost and technical issues, there are societal ones. Not all people will be willing to be assigned a number by their government to track all their health data.
- I believe observations that “nobody under 30 cares about privacy” are misguided and just wrong. It is true that younger people are more open about their social lives and personal interests, but that does not mean they want their sensitive health (or banking) information in the public domain.
Don K Dennison 
This is an enormous issue in HIT. Those familiar with it know the pain of trying to keep one ID for one patient within a single organization, and the problem gets inestimably complicated as patients go between different organizations and providers. The creation of a standard ID would be an enormous benefit to anyone trying to get medical records from one provider to the next.