Federated master patient index for autonomous healthcare entities

A method that provides fully autonomous patient matching by federated healthcare entities, comprising:

• receiving, by a processor of a patient indexing system, an electronically formatted query for a patient from a processor of an autonomous healthcare entity in a federation of healthcare entities, wherein the query includes at least an identifier of the entity, a unique patient identifier of the patient generated by the entity, and demographics of the patient, wherein each autonomous healthcare entity generates and maintains its own unique patient identifiers for its patients, and wherein the patient indexing system is an entity separate from the autonomous healthcare entities in the federation of healthcare entities;
• searching, with the processor of the patient indexing system, a federated master patient index stored in master patient index storage of the patient indexing system for an entry likely to correspond to the patient, wherein the federated master patient index includes, for patients registered in autonomous healthcare entities in the federation of healthcare entities, entries with all of the unique patient identifiers identified as likely to refer to a same patient and links established by each entity where that patient is potentially known;
• linking, with the processor of the patient indexing system, the entry likely to correspond to the patient in the federated master patient index for the patient to the unique patient identifier, thereby creating a link, wherein the link is non-transitive;
• and
• updating, with the processor of the patient indexing system, the linked entry in the federated master patient index to include at least the identifier of the entity, the unique patient identifier of the patient generated by the entity and the demographics, wherein, prior to the updating, the federated master patient index did not include the identifier of the entity, the unique patient identifier of the patient generated by the entity and the demographics.