Running head: MASTER PATIENT INDEX
Module Three: Master Patient Index
Naomibeth Fonseca
Southern New Hampshire University
MODULE THREE: MASTER PATIENT INDEX
Module Three: Master Patient Index
A master patient index (MPI) is a "patient-identifying directory, referencing all patients
related to a healthcare facility, that also serves as a link to the patient health record or
information, facilitates patient identification, and assists in maintaining a longitudinal patient
record from birth to death (Sayles, 2018). Nanette B. Sayles textbook Introduction to Information
Systems for Health Information Technology states that an enterprise MPI (EMPI) "provides
access to multiple repositories of information from overlapping patient populations that are
maintained in separate information systems and databases" (2018). It will eliminate errors,
improve data integrity, and mitigate the risks of patient record duplication. Managing it allows
providers to access actionable patient information for improved care coordination and clinical
decision-making. It serves an important role in the healthcare organizations health information
exchange (HIE). Providers are able to access easily important patient information to ensure the
accuracy, efficiency and quality of care.
EMPI's must be integrated with a variety of systems and is supported by many healthcare
standards. One of them being the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) Standard, It
promotes the aim of providing standardized interfaces for data exchange in healthcare. It
includes for EMPI such as PIX, PDQ, PDQm, XCPD, and more (Altexsoft, 2021). Another
standard is from HL7 which aims to fill the gaps in HIE. These standards exist to protect patients
from cybersecurity and ransomware attacks.
The quality elements of an EMPI should include the patients demographic information.
social security number, and other patient identifiers that need to be accurate and free or errors.
According to ADL Data Systems, it should be able to link records even in the presence of errors
with algorithms (2020).
MODULE THREE: MASTER PATIENT INDEX
With the growths of electronic health records (EHR), healthcare facilities have hired a
health information management (HIM) professionals as EMPI coordinator to clean and maintain
EMPI systems to ensure that the correct information on the correct patient is available to the
provider and others who need it. If it is not maintained correctly, the healthcare organization can
"typically end up with a higher number of duplicates and a non-performant EMPI, which
ultimately delays and negatively impacts care delivery, and places quality and patient safety at
risk" (Cidon, 2018) . This is to ensure that the EMPI is delivering superior, continuous patient-
matching capabilities.
Patient's full name and any other name the patient uses, date of birth, complete address,
phone number including cellular phone number, health record number, Social Security number,
patients billing or account number, name of attending physician, date of the patient admission
and discharge or the date of the visit or encounter, patient disposition at discharge or the
conclusion of treatment, patient's marital status, patient gender, patients race, and name of the
patient's emergency contact
An EMPI is centralized and designed to link and reconcile records in real time from
diverse setting