Challenge In 2007, The Children’s Hospital (TCH) became the first in the nation to implement a fully integrated pediatric EHR system. However, the new electronic environment exposed patient identity issues that have been hard to rectify. With Epic and Initiate plus approximately 70 additional systems on the back end, patient identity management at TCH had become a daunting task. Melinda Patten, director of health information management, joined the hospital in March of 2009. She inherited a backlog of duplicate records and overlays that was more than her department could handle. Solution TCH had one fulltime staff member dedicated to identity patient access management issues and was looking for another line person to help. But Patten soon realized the real solution

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