Clinical Impact of High-Quality ADT, Patient Identity and Patient Tracking Data in Acute Healthcare
Introduction Admission, Discharge and Transfer (ADT) data are often described as administrative data, but that label understates their clinical significance. In an acute hospital, an ADT system establishes the electronic representation of a patient's encounter: who the patient is, whether the patient has been admitted, where the patient is located, when responsibility has moved from one clinical setting to another, and when the encounter has ended. Those events are used by electronic health records (EHRs), laboratory and radiology systems, medication systems, bed-management applications, clinical worklists, discharge processes and, increasingly, health information exchanges. Unique patient identity data perform an equally fundamental function by determining whether information generated at different times and locations belongs to the same person. The clinical value of these systems therefore depends not simply on whether data exist, but on their quality at the point of creation of ...