The healthcare industry and the information it stores are highly sensitive. Hence, it is mandatory to maintain the database from time to time. The Healthcare sector massively relies on various parties for their functioning. For instance, doctor, pharmacy, insurer (if needed), surgeon, laboratory, and more. They all don’t work with the same information instead they require different data pertaining to their requirements. How to make sure that a person who showed up at the or hospital is the actual patient? As per HIPAAJournal, 1,531,855 records were falsely breached across 39 health centers as of February 2020.
This is a big number and it will increase because medical identity theft and data breaching are commonplace. Here the readily available remedy is the Know Your Patient (KYP) tactic. It has easy-to-follow steps and numerous benefits. A catch-all phrase, KYP, correlates to Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business standards. Identity verification of patients provides due diligence with minimizing the risk of fraud and fake-profile treatments. Parallel to this works the regulations and strict laws imposed by regulatory authorities.
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How Does Know Your Patients (KYP) Work?
The processing of Know Your Patients (KYP) is easy and quick. Similar to scanning documents for filing a passport request or traveling abroad. After the pandemic hit the shores and started reaching for the houses, the whole worldwide functioning went online. This also includes the healthcare sector. To avoid the spread of disease, the healthcare industry provided solutions like online account creation and storing of data so that the paper method can come to an end.
- To register on the site, the patients will have to undergo various steps.
- The platforms will mainly ask for the id card, passport, or driving license with the picture on them.
- Moving on, it will ask for a real-time picture that the user will capture from their webcam or take selfies from their cell phones.
- Once they do, the system will conduct facial verification by scanning the picture on documents and tallying it with the real-time one.
- Likewise, it carries out identity verification by using its own interface or an intermediary – the most preferred option.
- Later on, if the patient identity matches, the process proceeds further.
Along with this, the system conducts patient age verification that signifies whether the patient is the same person they claim to be. The treatment selected is based on all this. A diabetic patient of age 50 can not be treated the same way as a patient of 35 years of age. They would require different dosages and treatment types. Furthermore, the id verification for pharmaceutical industries is urged by the increased fraud rate in fake prescriptions and illegal drugs buying.
As per the recent report by WHO, an estimated 1 in 10 medical reports is falsified that are circulating in the under-developed and developing nations. Young-aged do this to buy supplements that are age-restricted. Also, if they go without a prescription, they will be in big trouble.
More than One Benefits of patient identity Verification
The information that flows in the healthcare industry databases is greater and more delicate than any other sector. If it’s compromised, the health of the whole wide world will be put at stake and it will become a never-ending menace. Therefore, to ensure a positive experience and the right assistance, patient identity verification along with ID verification for pharmacies is vital. The inability of healthcare providers both big and small resulted in slow and inaccurate treatments during the pandemic.
Prevention of Medical Identity Theft
Throughout the pandemic, there were screams in every street and a massive hype and hassle in all the healthcare providing centers. If the services are advanced so are the fraudsters. They know how to take the edge of any loophole mistakenly left open. This causes the patient, the real ones, to suffer. The major issue here is the misuse of insurance as the medical facilities in developed countries are beyond affordability. Furthermore, criminals attain not-their-treatment by making a fake profile. To reduce and prevent the fraud and misuse of prescriptions, id verification for pharmaceutical industry along with age and identity for centers has become mandatory.
Information Discrepancies Reduction
The most damaging concern here is the entry of mistyped information in the database. The chances of this are great in physical entries. However, if the information is once entered in the database with scanning the documents, it stays there for future and present use. The incorrect records result in inaccurate treatments and facilitation. Therefore, Know Your Patient (KYP) services by online platforms, can rescue the situation.
Compliance with Regulations
For smooth functioning, countries like the US have created compliance regulations for patient age verification as well as their kyb check. These include the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009. Failure in compliance with these will result in hefty penalties.
In a Nutshell
The patient verification is the need-of-the-hour for the healthcare sector due to the increase in fraud and misuse of information. Hence the authorities have made it mandatory for the industry to follow ‘Verify Patient Identity’ protocols.
