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  Health Care and CRM
 
In no industry is identity more important than health care, where accurately tracking and identifying your customers could literally be a life-or-death situation. As health care organizations began implementing new technology initiatives to streamline their patient information, many have turned to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as a solution for their data issues. While CRM has proven to be an effective strategy for managing customer information in other industries, the complexity of managing patient records in a health care organization has intensified the impact that "dirty data" can have on the success of these initiatives.
 
Though not typically associated with innovations in information technology, health care was one of the first industries to recognize the need for enterprise identity management (EIM). For decades, health care organizations have grappled with their own version of CRM, as they sought effective tools to integrate widely disparate sets of clinical data.
 
CRM initiatives in any industry need to begin with the same building block: the identity of the customer. Even before CRM became a buzzword, health care organizations have understood the importance of tracking the identity of their patients' medical information. Indeed, all of CRM is built on one basic premise: that an enterprise can accurately identify and track each in its database. There must be one comprehensive and accurate profile of each patient.
 
This may sound simple. It's not. In fact, research shows that poor data quality at the most basic level is one of the primary reasons that so many CRM initiatives fail. No matter how comprehensive the CRM effort, it will fall short of meeting the desired objectives if the health system cannot effectively track a patient's identity: if it cannot accurately distinguish one patient from another. This is where the concept of identity management originated. Identity management, in making sure that the information on every customer is accurate and consistent, enables organizations to pursue strategies such as CRM.
 
A CRM Case History
The initial CRM implementation revolved around a paper-based record, where all customer information was stored in one place - like a medical history. In much the same way, once upon a time, the vision of health care was a single file, one per patient, that could track an individual's medical history over time: visits, medications, allergies, insurance, immunizations, etc.
 
In the 1980s, as health care itself became more fragmented, delivery systems recognized the need to track their patients more systematically. Organizations across the health care industry - hospitals, physicians' practices, pharmacies, payers such as HMOs - began creating electronic databases in the hopes of more accurately tracking their patient/customer information. The intentions were good, but the results were inefficient and ineffective. There were two areas of breakdown - each dealing with a failure to recognize the data integrity issues, and each relevant to the struggles of CRM initiatives today.
 
The first area where breakdown commonly occurs is inconsistency within a database. The most common problem was a component of EIM; the duplication of identity. For example, presume that over the period of three months, John Smith has three medical events, and three trips to the hospital. The first time his name is recorded as J. Smith, the second time, Jonathan Smith and the third time, John Smith. This hospital now has three separate records, completely unconnected, to track one man. No record has all three events - and therefore, no one will be able to quickly access all the relevant facts of his medical history. CRM implementations have attempted to resolve this problem by utilizing merging and purging utilities to clean up existing databases.
 
The second area of concern is inconsistency across databases. Over the years, as each healthcare enterprise created their own process for electronic medical records and tracking systems, each assigned different identifiers for their databases of patients, payers, providers and employees that participate in the exchange. Therefore, even if an individual organization has an accurate record of their patient, there is no collaboration or connection between the databases. In other words, an HMO could not track a patient as he progresses from doctor's office to pharmacy to hospital, because each system has a completely different - and completely disconnected - EIM program. The overall upshot was an inefficient and ineffective attempt at maintaining a comprehensive view of the patient.
 
A Proven Solution
Today, accurately tracking identity is more critical - and more complex - than ever before. Technology, such as EMPI software, is giving many health care organizations the know-how to implement revolutionary e-health strategies that will allow patients to refill prescriptions online or access their own medical history via the Web, etc. In the process, however, these enterprises have found that the integrity and quality of their data is so compromised that it would not be feasible to move forward without first implementing an EIM solution. Fortunately, technology also exists that has allowed healthcare enterprises - and will allow other CRM initiatives - to streamline and coordinate their information so that they can truly, effectively, and consistently track the identity of their customers.
 
There are three basic steps to implementing an EIM solution: analysis, remediation and implementation.

1. First is analysis. Analysis determines the amount of fragmentation within each individual system as well as the amount overlap throughout the enterprise. It is through analysis that you discover J. Smith, Jonathan Smith, and Jon Smith are all, in fact, the same person.
2. Second is remediation. This is where one merges the files of J. Smith, Jonathan Smith, and Jon Smith to create one - and only one - file that represents the full history of Jonathan Smith.
3. And third is implementation. Identifying and fixing the problem is all well and good - but if left unchecked, the problem will only recur the next time "J. Smith" goes to the hospital, or orders a new product, or enters into any kind of transaction. The final stage of EIM is setting up a platform that controls customer's identity over time and across systems. A comprehensive EIM system will index multiple identifiers and support customer data integration strategies to ensure that duplicate records are not created. This system will interface with all customer databases on an on-going basis, so that every time J. Smith enters into a new transaction he will be identified correctly. In this way, CRM initiatives can effectively track each customer's needs and behaviors, individually and over time, to provide the most personalized service and enhanced customer loyalty.