Features

Patient History

NPAR™ lets blood bank staff locate and view patient records from visits to other facilities. The patient search feature is flexible and easy to use.

Smart Search: NPAR can identify potential matches despite typographical errors and incomplete records. NPAR also handles special cases such as hyphenated names, initials, and spelling variations. NPAR allows both broad searches - name and estimated age, for example - and very specific searches using date of birth, Social Security Number, and blood type. The user examines the ranked results and decides which records to review in greater detail.

Refining Searches: Users can refine their queries without re-entering all of the search criteria.

Patient Lookup by MRN: Users may enter a patient's Medical Record Number (MRN) from their own facility. This instantly populates the search form, and helps avoid typos. From there, a single click launches the search.

Antibody Test Results: If a patient history includes positive antibody test results, those are highlighted. The blood bank staff can use this information to help direct their antibody screens. If new tests are negative, that may indicate that a patient's antibodies have dropped below detectable levels.

Hospital Contact Info

NPAR provides contact information for each of its subscribing facilities, available with a single click. Blood bank staff often need to speak with their counterparts at other facilities in order to verify patient identity and obtain additional information about a patient’s testing and transfusion history.

Reference Library

NPAR provides on-line excerpts from the AABB Technical Manual, describing the characteristics of each antibody type.

Reports

NPAR provides managers with activity logs showing the total number of times their staff used the system, number of accesses by staff member, and the specific queries that were made. NPAR can also provide data quality metrics for the facility's own blood bank records.

Patient Privacy

NPAR protects patient privacy in a number of ways:

  • NPAR users must provide a password in order to gain access to patient records, and all queries are logged. User sessions time out after a period of inactivity, requiring the user to provide their password again.
  • All communications between NPAR and its subscribers are conducted over encrypted connections. This prevents network eavesdroppers from reading any data they might intercept.
  • Actual Social Security Numbers are never stored in the NPAR database. Instead, NPAR hashes and encrypts SSNs so that they no longer resemble their original values. The hashed values are then transmitted to the NPAR server and stored in the database.
  • NPAR enters into a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement with each subscriber facility. This agreement defines the responsibilties for data handling. In addition, NPAR subscribers agree to use the data for patient treatment and quality control purposes only.

Reliability

NPAR servers are hosted in secure locations with redundant power, networking, and HVAC, with 24/7 on-site support staff.