A hospital in New York City has started doing something rather unique. Instead of asking patient’s to show their insurance cards, they scan the patients hands. This makes checking in much quicker, and alleviates some of the insurance paperwork.
The University Langone Medical Center, in New York City, New York, has found a way to speed up the process of checking in patients. The technique also reduces the amount of medical errors. Usually, when someone checks into a hospital, they are handed a batch of paperwork to fill out, and are asked to show their health insurance card. This hospital doesn’t do that. They simply scan the person’s hand, instead.
They use scanners made by a company called Fujtitsu, (a technology services company). The scanners are able to pick up the unique palm-vein configurations of each individual patient that comes to the hospital. Just like fingerprints, or iris patterns, each person’s palm-vein configurations will be different from everyone else’s.
Once the scan is taken, it is sent to a computer. Software on the computer is able to match the person whose palm was scanned with his or her medical record. The first time a patient comes to the hospital, the scan takes about a minute to complete. After that, the entire process can be done in seconds. The only thing that seems to slow it down is if a patient comes to the hospital and his or her insurance had changed since the previous visit. In that case, the person has to fill out one form.
There was a study that showed that hospital errors, from mistakes made on paperwork, result in around 98,000 deaths a year. The scanning system can quickly, and accurately, connect the correct patient to the right medical records. Another advantage to the palm scanning system is that it can be used to check in patients who are not conscious at the time that they arrive at the hospital. This means that the emergency room can really benefit from the palm scanning system.
To be clear, the hospital does take insurance. It just doesn’t use the patient’s insurance card as a starting point for the check in process. The hospital in New York now has 250 of the palm scanners installed. It cost around $200,000, and there have been more than 25,000 patients who have had their hands scanned, and their palm-vein patterns registered into the computer system.
Image by Lee Haywood on Flickr