title: Identifying health facilities outside the enterprise: challenges and strategies for supporting health reform and meaningful use.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To support collation of data for disability determination, we sought to accurately identify facilities where care was delivered across multiple, independent hospitals and clinics.
  
  
  METHODS
  Data from various institutions' electronic health records were merged and delivered as continuity of care documents to the United States Social Security Administration (SSA).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Electronic records for nearly 8000 disability claimants were exchanged with SSA. Due to the lack of standard nomenclature for identifying the facilities in which patients received the care documented in the electronic records, SSA could not match the information received with information provided by disability claimants. Facility identifiers were generated arbitrarily by health care systems and therefore could not be mapped to the existing international standards.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We propose strategies for improving facility identification in electronic health records to support improved tracking of a patient's care between providers to better serve clinical care delivery, disability determination, health reform and meaningful use.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Accurately identifying the facilities where health care is delivered to patients is important to a number of major health reform and improvement efforts underway in many nations. A standardized nomenclature for identifying health care facilities is needed to improve tracking of care and linking of electronic health records.
authors: a School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University , Indianapolis , IN , USA.|b Center for Biomedical Informatics, Regenstrief Institute , Indianapolis , IN , USA.|c Center for Health Information and Communication, Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, Health Services Research and Development Service CIN 13-416, Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center , Indianapolis , IN , USA.
authors: Brian E
authors: BE
authors: Dixon
authors: b Center for Biomedical Informatics, Regenstrief Institute , Indianapolis , IN , USA.
authors: Cyril
authors: C
authors: Colvard
authors: b Center for Biomedical Informatics, Regenstrief Institute , Indianapolis , IN , USA.|d School of Medicine, Indiana University , Indianapolis , IN , USA.
authors: William M
authors: WM
authors: Tierney
keywords: Computer communication networks; controlled; health care reform; health facilities; health information exchange; vocabulary