iNTERFACEWARE™ Inc.

Understanding the Purpose of the Merge Message

A patient merge message occurs when it is realized that a duplicate patient record has been made. Its purpose is to instruct your system to merge two records in your Patient table (each with a different Patient ID key) into a single record with a single ID (i.e. the two records in the Patient table actually represent the same patient).

There are two ways in which patient merge messages can be handled:

• Manually - a human operator is made aware of the duplicate issue and decides whether or not to merge patient records, or
• Automatically - the system automatically deletes the duplicate record according to the information received in the message.

The right solution for your institution depends on the quality of the merge messages. Initially, the safest approach is to insert merge messages into a merge table and then write a screen within your application to allow a human operator to decide whether or not patient records should be merged.

Over the long term, if a particular site proves that patient merge messages are accurate, a database trigger can be written to operate off the same table to achieve an automatic patient merge.