About 20% of Patients Listed as Alive in Their Electronic Health Records Were Actually Deceased According to California Data

This important study from UCLA Health clearly encapsulates the need for accessible mortality data for health systems. Wenger et al show that 20% of seriously ill patients thought to be alive were actually dead, “… leading to hundreds of unnecessary interactions such as appointment reminders, prescription refills and other kinds of wasteful outreach…”

As mentioned in the article, government sources are nearly impossible to obtain even if they have the exact information needed by providers to prevent this waste. That lack of accessibility is why Veritas created our Fact of Death data set. With it, we can help reduce the immense amount of time and money being wasted on unnecessary outreach, as well as improving risk models and population health studies. And with weekly updates and availability in either identified or deidentified format, providers can continuously monitor for death events and update their operational systems accordingly.

Read the article here from UCLA: uclahealth.org

Neil S. Wenger, MD, MPH: uclahealth.org

Contact us via our website or email us at sales@veritasdataresearch.com to get more information about our Fact of Death dataset