Not only financial institutions or e-commerce related businesses need to verify their onboarding customers. The health industry needs to identify or verify the patients. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act – 1996 also enforces medical institutions. That it has clear formulated patient identification policies. The HIPPA act has five major rules listed below:
- Privacy rule.
- Transaction and code set rule
- Security rule
- Employer identifier rule
- Enforcement rule
The above laws are applicable to the online health sector. The process of verifying an online patient is simply known as Know Your Patient. The National Health Service (NHS) England provides guidelines for verifying patients and attendants on e-health platforms. These guidelines include patient verification, medical history maintenance, and authorization of services.
Covid-19 and social distancing measures, e-health provides the comfort of remotely prescription and treatment of patients. Now patients can get treatment from any doctor in the world without visiting his clinic. The patients and doctor engage in a live video call. The doctor asks questions about the physical and mental condition of the patient and prescribes medicine to him.
Patient Identification Policy
Onsite Method
The hospital staff will ask for personal information from the patient. If the patient is unable to speak due to his physical condition. Personal information can be asked from the family. The hospital staff can verify the information by wristbands issued by hospitals.
Online Method
In the online method, the patient does not have to tell his information verbally. The online verification software does all the verification except hospital staff. The online patient verification is carried through the below step:
- The patient uploads the image of the ID document and his live selfie.
- The software extracts required data from the image
- Matches selfie with an image on the document
- Results show to the patient
If the patient is unable to upload his selfie, some other person can do this also. The document used for verification must be authentic and government-issued like an ID card, passport, or driving license. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can use for online data extraction from document images.
Patient Age Verification
Age is a crucial factor in giving the right medicine to the patient. Sometimes a patient is unaware of his genuine age. If the doctor does not know the real age of the patient it can lead to wrong medicine intake by patients.
Another benefit of age verification is for online pharmacies. Online pharmacies are at potential risk of illegitimate purchase of medicines. Some medicines are only for elder patients. A scammer can buy that for the poor verification system. This can damage the reputation and customer trust in online pharmacies.
Why Online Patient Verification?
Insurance Fraud Prevention
Insurance is greatly affecting by medical insurance frauds. Fraudsters use tempered or fake medical certificates of patients to claim medical insurance. Insurance frauds are causing the loss of millions to the insurance sector. By having identity verification services. Identity is not the only one, the medical records of the patients can be verified. By verifying the medical history of the patients, insurance fraud can be reduced.
Instant Treatment
The condition of a patient does not allow him to move. And the doctor is far away, this service can play a significant role in prescribing treatment to the patient smoothly.
Better Patient Trust
Patients will have more trust in online health services that are using verification services. It will ensure that the patient’s data is secure and can not be used for unethical practices. The patient’s information protection is essential. It is used for blackmailing practices.
Wrapping it Up
Online health websites and the hospitals that provide remote verification services. They have to adopt a patient identification policy to comply with HIPAA rules. The identification and verification service can be availed through Know Your Customer solution providers. The third-party verification is good. Hospitals don’t have to hire staff for verification.
