Registering at Cleveland Clinic Akron General is as simple as unlocking your iPhone.
No driver’s license, no insurance card, no other form of identification is necessary.
All you need is your finger.
“Put your right index finger on top of here,” patient registrar Breana Lewis explained Thursday, pointing to a scanner about the size of two thumb drives. “Now just press like you’re pressing a doorbell.”
Jackie Paparella, who was at the hospital’s Heart and Vascular Center for a routine check of her pacemaker, had never used the system before, so Lewis asked her to scan her finger five times.
Next time, whether Paparella visits the Heart and Vascular Center or another Akron General property, a single press of her finger, or sometimes two, will check her in for an appointment.
“We are the first adapters of this technology in Summit County and we’re very excited about what it can do,” said JoAnne Matz, assistant director of patient access at Akron General.
Speeding up patient check-in is only a side benefit, she said. The over-arching goal is preventing medical fraud and limiting medical record mistakes.
The hospital is using biometric equipment and software developed by CrossChx, a Columbus-based startup founded in 2012.
CrossChx provides the system free to hospitals and makes money selling premium products, like another system that claims to reduce health care wait times by 80 percent.
Two Miami University graduates launched CrossChx in 2012 after trying to help the city of Gallipolis in southeastern Ohio battle prescription drug abuse.
They discovered a health care system there often had duplicate records or incomplete information on patients and no fail-proof way to confirm people’s identity.
People craving opioids could exploit the flaws in the system, seeking opioids from different doctors and different facilities without one necessarily knowing what the other had prescribed.
Between 2012 and 2013, CrossChx launched its health care biometric system there. It was funded as a pilot program by the state of Ohio.
During that time, Ohio recorded an overall 3 percent decline in per capita opioid doses. Gallia County — where Gallipolis is and where CrossChx was running — saw a 16.2 percent decrease.
Unique identifier
Since then, CrossChx has grown with an infusion of $20 million in venture capital from both the Midwest and Silicon Valley. More than 300 health systems nationwide are using the software, including Akron General and 50 others in Ohio.
When Paparella scanned her finger Thursday at Akron General, CrossChx didn’t store her fingerprint. It converted the points on her finger into a unique identifier with more than 2,500 characters.
That unique identifier, tied to her finger, aims to stop 2.3 million medical identity thefts in the U.S. each year.
Just like thieves who try to steal identities to cash in on credit cards or bank accounts, medical thieves swipe people’s identification and health insurance numbers to see a doctor, get prescription drugs and file claims without having to pay.
At the same time the CrossChx system was coming up with Paparella’s identifier, it was also scanning Akron General patient files, searching for and flagging any duplicate medical records that may exist for Paparella so hospital staff could merge the information into one error-free file.
Patients sometimes get multiple files if there are variations of a name — James versus Jim, for example — or if a patient declines to provide a Social Security number one visit, but provides it the next, Akron General’s Matz said.
“This is cleaning all of that up,” she said.
Since launching CrossChx in November, Akron General has scanned the fingers of more than 18,190 patients.
CrossChx said its system works on most people between 1 through 108 years old.
But there are exceptions. About 2 percent of the finger scans fail at Akron General.
Often, it’s because the skin on people’s finger pads is too dry, or because they work with chemicals that gnaw away the distinct ridges that make up points on their fingers, she said.
On Thursday, Matz pressed her index finger — its nail painted bright red for Valentine’s Day — onto the CrossChx scanner.
“Did it work this time?” a hospital employee asked.
“No,” sighed Matz, who is one of the 2 percent unable to use the system. “Too much paperwork over the years ...I’ve worn off my fingerprints.”
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.