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Re: [Gnumed-devel] An Analysis of Demographics - Comments RT
From: |
Jim Busser |
Subject: |
Re: [Gnumed-devel] An Analysis of Demographics - Comments RT |
Date: |
Mon, 19 Jul 2004 01:22:47 -0700 |
On Jul 18, 2004, at 9:36 PM, Richard Terry wrote:
Also I would be keen to here from those of us in different countries
about the
extent of differences on the clerical side of demographics - ie we
have the
medicare number, dva number, health entitlement cards.
In Canada each province has is own "main" health-related patient number.
In British Columbia (my province) it is only pseudo-unique, for example
newborns are assigned their mother's "personal health" number plus a
"dependent number" of "66" until granted their own, unique personal
health number - this can take several weeks.
DVA is sometimes used.
Beyond the above, a patient may have several forms of health care
registration / coverage numbers (a Workmen's compensation file number
is also common), and while any one payer may be most relevant to a
given patient, perhaps in a lookup screen, to resolve excess matches,
it may only be practical to list whatever is the "main" health related
number for whatever is the locality. Alternatively, to be able to
over-ride on a per-patient basis which number(s) to display in the
lookup, but then you;d have to provide a label in context with the data
as a 'column heading" would be meaningless.
In contacts with the local hospitals, for example to obtain lab results
(not yet interfaced electronically) or to request documents (not
reliably dispatched to all appropriate doctors) the hospital staff rely
on this number heavily, though it does little good in a lookup screen
if there is more than one local hospital. Locally, you can tell them
apart but that will not be true everywhere.
I imagine that by "clerical" you do not mean date of birth, city of
residence, or preferred contact number, any of which can also help (the
last-named especially if you are on the phone with the patient at the
time of the lookup).