Patient Merge

Is used to merge one or more patient entries. This function is most commonly used when an individual patient has been registered with discrepant details on at least one occasion. A patient is defined in this context as a unique combination of last name, first name, middle name (optional), gender, d.o.b and NHS number. It does NOT include the location or unit number as these do not necessarily relate to an individual patient on a 1-to-1 basis (ie one patient can have more than one unit number and referral location). See below for details of how to merge on unit number.

Duplicate record enquiries can be undertaken by searching on at least one of the fields: last name, d.o.b or unit number, with the optional addition of first name. Search on first name only is not supported.

Search results are displayed in 2 tables. Table 1 lists all records matching the selected patient details. Table 2 lists the unique patient entries found in Table 1. The patient-specific columns in both tables are colour-coded, representing the fields which are subject to change after record merge.

It is possible to sort the list of unqiue patients in Table 2 using the hyperlinked column headers (id, Name, DoB, NHS No, M/F, Unit No, Freq). Column 'id' correspondes to the unique patient identifier, and 'freq' represents the number of times each patient entry is represented in the list of records in Table 1.

Selection of the patients to be merged is performed using column 'A » B' in Table 2, where A (merge from) and B (merge to) represent the direction of change. It is possible to select more than one entry from column A, whereas only 1 entry from column B is allowed. Failure to select at least one record from column A plus one record only from column B will generate an error.

After selection of required entries in columns A and B, form submission generates a tabulated display of demographic details where any differences between pre- and post-merge are highlighted. A final confirmation is required before the merge is undertaken. It is important to note that due to the complexity of changes induced, the merge process is unidirectional - it cannot be reversed.

Unit number merge

To merge records based on unit number, it is first necessary to merge the separate patient entries into one, then as a separate process, select 'edit request' from the 'Edit' section of the record summary display page. Example:

FROM:

TO:

Now we have a single patient (id = 2040), it is possible to select the patient record with unit number = 'UNKNOWN' and merge it with the 3 patient records with unit number = 'A123456'.

Name	DoB	Unit Number	NHS Number	[ .. ]	Edit
GREEN, Olive	01.Jan.1901	UNKNOWN	0123456789