Know Your Patient (KYP)
What Is Know Your Patient (KYP)?
How Does Know Your Patient (KYP) Work?
- Collect patient information. Registration gathers identifiers such as name, date of birth, address, contact details, and medical-record or insurance numbers.
- Match or create the patient record. The organization compares the information with existing records to determine whether the patient already has a record or needs a new one. This helps reduce duplicate and mismatched records.
- Verify identity where appropriate. Government-issued identity documents, trusted data sources, or other approved evidence may be used to confirm the patient’s identity. Insurance cards and medical-record numbers can support record matching but do not necessarily prove identity by themselves.
- Confirm the remote applicant. For telehealth, portal enrollment, or other higher-risk remote interactions, face matching may compare the patient’s facial image with an identity document or approved reference image. Liveness detection can help determine whether a real person is present.
- Protect and update the record. Verified identity information is securely linked to the patient record and reviewed when demographic information changes, access is recovered, or possible fraud or matching errors are detected.
Who Uses Know Your Patient (KYP)?
How Can Regula Help with Know Your Patient (KYP)?
FAQ
Is Know Your Patient the same as Know Your Customer?
No. KYC generally applies to customer identification and due diligence in financial or commercial relationships, while KYP applies identity controls to patient registration, telehealth, record access, and other healthcare interactions. Both may use similar methods, such as document verification and biometrics, but healthcare workflows involve distinct patient-safety, privacy, accessibility, and clinical considerations.
What is medical identity fraud in a Know Your Patient context?
Medical identity fraud occurs when someone uses another person’s identity — or a fabricated patient identity — to obtain healthcare, prescriptions, insurance benefits, or unauthorized access to medical records. It can introduce incorrect information into a patient’s health record, produce fraudulent claims, and cause billing or clinical errors. KYP controls help reduce this risk by verifying identity during registration, remote access, account recovery, and other sensitive interactions. Payment fraud that does not involve misuse of a patient identity is a separate issue.
What should staff retain from a Know Your Patient check?
Healthcare organizations may retain verified demographic information, the identity evidence examined, verification results, decision records, and authorized manual-review notes. The amount of information retained — and whether document images or biometric data are stored — should follow applicable privacy, security, and record-retention requirements. Access to these records should be restricted, and unnecessary identity data should not be kept longer than required. Complete and accurate records can support future visits, account recovery, audits, and investigations into fraud or patient-matching errors.
When should Know Your Patient identity be re-checked?
A patient’s identity may need to be rechecked when demographic information changes, records conflict, the patient returns after a long absence, or possible fraud is detected. Additional verification may also be appropriate during account recovery, remote enrollment, or access to particularly sensitive services or records. For known patients, step-up authentication may be sufficient in some cases rather than repeating the entire identity-proofing process. The method used should reflect the risk of the interaction, applicable privacy rules, and the organization’s policies.
How do document verification and face matching support Know Your Patient?
Document verification helps determine whether a patient is presenting an authentic identity document and extracts reliable information for registration. Face matching compares the patient’s facial image with the document portrait, while liveness detection helps confirm that a real person is present during remote verification. Together, these checks can strengthen identity proofing for telehealth, portal enrollment, account recovery, and other higher-risk interactions.
