new patient entry warnings?

[enamelrod]

last week we had two female patients come in that had a change in last name. neither informed the front office they had been patients before, so both were entered as new patients. my quest ion is why doesnt OD check ssn and birthdates to see if there is a duplicate record being entered? the only way I found it was because we also have Apteryx which informed us that the patients info was a duplicate for another patient? it just seems like an obvious check feature to reduce duplicate charts. The same also exist with insurance. One staff member has entered a patients employer as Military and the other staff member entered the patients employer as US Army, now we have two different names for the same insurance plan?

[drtech]

sounds like a reasonable check feature to implement and yes, that would help to avoid that situation.

[afeuer]

That is a really good point! I've had apteryx catch the very same thing many times. The problem is that by the time apteryx catches it I have already entered so much information into their chart it takes a long time to combine the two charts. While this probably isn't possible in OD due to its complexity, apteryx also allows you to combine two different charts into one when this type of thing happens.

[jordansparks]

There is an existing request to combine two patients.

[Jorgebon]

Vote for feature request 721, "Warning when entering a duplicate patient". Right now it only has one vote.
Jorge Bonilla, DMD

[enamelrod]

love to vote but ive used them on other things and i feel this is a serious bug not a request. I can see it now when i need to produce documents and i only have half the story because i didnt know the person has two charts. as soon as i have some votes available ill vote for it.