iNTERFACEWARE™ Inc.

Designing the Merge Table

Whenever a patient merge message is received, then you will want to take the pertinent ID data out of it and place it into a special merge table awaiting intervention by a human operator.

Many institutions have multiple patient IDs for a single patient. These might be account numbers, external ID numbers, local clinics, etc. The precise details will vary depending on your institution. Therefore, a good design of a merge table might resemble the following:

This allows you to capture all relevant prior and current IDs so that the person who ultimately inspects this table will know which records to merge.

To create the merge table:

• Open up the same VMD file you have been building in this tutorial.
• Create a new table called PatientMerge by clicking the Table icon on the toolbar.
• Rename the table PatientMerge.
• Define the table as illustrated below:

Defining the PatientMerge Table