“Creating a unique patient identification number for every person in the United States would help reduce medical errors, simplify the use of electronic medical records, increase overall efficiency, and protect patient privacy, according to a recent RAND Corp. study.
Creating such an ID system could cost as much as $11 billion, but the effort would likely return even more in benefits to the nation’s healthcare system, said researchers from RAND Health, a nonprofit research organization.”
Article
Marcia Gulesian, The Information Technology Forum, 17 November 2009
