Appriss Health Revolutionizes PDMP Patient Record Matching with ApprissID

Louisville, KY, May 14, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Appriss Health, provider of the most comprehensive platform for substance use disorder in the U.S., today announced that it has leveraged machine learning and its 20-plus years of experience accurately matching billions of records across thousands of sources to deliver ApprissID, an innovative patient record matching solution based on statistical linking and consolidation algorithms within PMP AWARxE, Appriss Health’s prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) solution that serves 44 PDMPs across the U.S. ApprissID utilizes combinations and segments of various identifiers to connect multiple records together to identify a unique patient and provides a significant advantage to its users over any other PDMP or identity resolution solution available in the market today.

In healthcare IT, patient record mismatches often occur when connecting information from multiple facilities or systems, and manual consolidation methods are subject to human error. Poor record linking can result in real patient harm. And, as much as under-linking (or false negatives) can provide an incomplete patient history, over-linking (or false positives) can provide an incorrect patient history.

ApprissID’s matching and consolidation process is dynamic, allowing new IDs to be connected, deleted, and evolve in real-time via machine learning. Utilizing a combination of probabilistic matching, referential matching, deterministic matching, and manual matching, ApprissID overcomes issues with minor data entry errors, variations in spelling, diminutive names, maiden name changes and more to provide the most accurate results possible. It allows for the correction of irregularities noted by healthcare providers, and an audit trail of all changes made to the system ensures that manual changes and improvements can be integrated into the algorithms to continue to improve them. The algorithms can also detect fraudulent or bogus data elements and adapt over time.

“Appriss Health’s ApprissID is an unmatched patient record matching technology and represents a significant advance over prior patient history record linking in the PDMP market,” said Rob Cohen, President, Appriss Health. “ApprissID is a proven record matching solution given its extensive testing and use in billions of dispensations. Its flexibility to evolve, anticipate, and correct various data errors – quickly – makes it an exceptionally smart and especially accurate patient matching solution for the more than 1.35 million registered users of PMP AWARxE across the nation today.”

By linking records and adapting to new information in near real-time, ApprissID ensures that a patient’s history is up to date. Searching for a patient takes 50 milliseconds, on average. Providers are alerted when multiple patient matches are found, which only happens in 0.26 percent of all searches with ApprissID, striking the right balance between being conservative and comprehensive.

ApprissID is also custom-built to seamlessly ingest and match additional data sets with the same speed and efficiency. History of non-fatal overdose, toxicology data, and any other data sets valuable to the care of patients can now be linked to create holistic patient views.

ApprissID’s algorithms have been tested rigorously with four different methods:
• An internal manual review of thousands of key cases, focusing on cases known to cause problems in other systems.
• An internal comparison of ApprissID against the prior linking logic used in production for more than three years on billions of dispensations in 40-plus states.
• An external validation against a national, third-party identification service from one of the largest U.S. data providers, improving upon the third-party’s match rate by 0.2 percent.
• And, a national roll-out in one of the three largest U.S. pharmacy chains.

Prescribers should always discuss the PDMP report with a patient if there is concern that the information presented is incomplete or inaccurate. PDMP reports are meant to guide clinical decision making; prescribers should not depend on PDMP reports alone to make clinical decisions.

About Appriss Health
Appriss Health provides the nation's most comprehensive platform for early identification, prevention and management of substance use disorder (SUD). We provide state government agencies with the most advanced repository of controlled substance dispensing information, and deliver real-time clinical decision support, critical insights and interventions to physicians, pharmacists, and care team members through millions of patient encounters each year. Our solutions enable healthcare providers, pharmacists, and care team members to assess and manage clinical risk in order to positively impact patient safety and population health outcomes. For more information, please visit www.apprisshealth.com.