This disclosure relates in general to health information, but not by way of limitation, to health information under regulatory control and preventative care services amongst other things.
In the current environment, healthcare spending in the United States accounts for over 17% of the GDP according to a 2009 report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and healthcare spending has increased over the past few years. While there are many factors involved in this increase of healthcare costs, experts agree that a major factor in the rising costs is a lack of preventive care in the country. In addition to increasing costs due to a lack of preventive care, a 2007 study released by The National Commission on Prevention Priorities concluded that hundreds of thousands of deaths could be prevented each year through the use of preventive care. Other reports have reached similar conclusions regarding preventive care.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (Task Force) propagates preventive care recommendations for primary care clinicians and health care systems. The recommendations are outlined according to a coding method, where a given recommendation is assigned a letter grade, such as A, B, C, etc. A particular grade assigned to a particular preventive care service may indicate the Task Force's assessment of the service. For example, a grade of “A” may indicate a relatively stronger recommendation for a particular preventive care service, indicating that the service may possess a high certainty of benefit to a patient. The recommendations can be calendar-based or require some medical judgment. Grade levels A and B, for example, may entail fairly mechanical qualifications, such as an amount of time since a particular test or therapy was last performed on a particular patient. Thus, proper recommendations for preventive care for the particular patient can depend on the quality of patient records.
However, the current state of medical records, generally, is fraught with inconsistencies, inaccuracies, isolations, and other difficulties. Many medical records are handwritten or isolated on data islands maintained by a provider, a payer, or a governmental agency. Unlike some other countries, the United States has no national health care identifier; newborns and some residents do not have Social Security numbers; and patients may change away from their maiden names, use nicknames, or use other name variations when interacting in various healthcare pockets. All this contributes to inaccurate and fragmented records. As a result, patients and healthcare providers can lack awareness of preventive care options. There is a need in the health care sector to address these and other related problems.