A new California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) iHealth Report reviews four commercially available products that budget-conscious health care organizations should consider using to solve their patient data-matching needs. The products are: Linkage Wiz (LinkageWiz Software), SureMatch (DQ Global), Dataset V Suite (Intercon Systems), and DeDeup4Excel (DQ Global).

Prepared by Sujansky and Associates, Patient Data Matching Software: A Buyer’s Guide for the Budget Conscious is available through the link below.

The products described and compared in the guide are aimed at small- to medium-size health care organizations, but the comprehensive list of criteria used to evaluate these products will be useful to buyers of all sizes.

According to the analysis, the overall best products are DataSet V and LinkageWiz. "For the price, these tools provide excellent ease of use, configurability of matching weights, ability to edit and expert results, and user documentation," said Walter Sujansky, M.D., Ph.D., one of the report’s authors. However, the authors recommend that prospective buyers test several of the products to determine which best meet their needs and preferences. Trial versions are available at no cost.

The patient data-matching task is an important and challenging step in the disease management and quality-improvement processes. And, while many health care and provider organizations have homegrown software tools that use simple algorithms to match patient data from disparate sources (hospital and ambulatory encounter data, pharmacy claims, laboratory reports, etc.), the effectiveness of such systems is often less than desired.

"Using the right tools to match the right data with the right patient is a critically important step to improving care delivery," said Sam Karp, who leads CHCF's Health Information Technology work. "With increasing national emphasis on the use of 'real time' clinical information systems, deploying effective patient matching tools is a key component to improving care at the point of patient contact."

In commissioning the guide, CHCF sought to identify products that met the following criteria:

• Availability on a desktop platform;
• Application of advanced matching techniques;
• Ability to integrate into existing patient-matching workflows; and
• A total cost of ownership not exceeding $50,000.

Of the four products that met these criteria, three are appropriate for most provider organizations, while the fourth, DeDupe4Excel, may be appropriate only for very small organizations. The guide documents the assessment of the four products using:

• A qualitative description of each product’s capabilities, including 20 relevant features;
• A comparative quantitative scoring of the products, across these features; and
• A complete inventory of each product’s capabilities with respect to provider organization needs.

The complete report is available through the link below.