Person Merge
You can merge duplicate person and patient records. The merging process is based on one of several search scenarios that identify potential duplicate person records. After potential duplicates are identified, you can view the person and patient information details, and the practice that is associated with the records.
When duplicate patients are merged, all patient information, such as general, status, provider, employer, pharmacy, insurance, immunizations, and contact; chart information; and history are pulled from the merged record and added to the retained record. Patient notifications for the retained person remain during the merge process. For example, if the retained person has patient notifications for a practice, only those patient notifications are displayed after the merge.
For more information on patient notifications preferences, go to NextGen Healthcare Success Community, and download the latest File Maintenance Preferences Guide for NextGen Enterprise. Medical records templates for both patients are automatically merged along with all other applicable patient data.
The following scenario provides a summary of the demographics template data that is merged. If the demographics template only saves practice-level data, the retained person’s data is kept for that template.
The patients (persons) that need to be merged:
- Patient A (the retained person)
- Patient B (the merged or dropped person)
These patients have charts in different practices:
- Patient A has a chart in practices 1, 3, and 4.
- Patient B has a chart in practices 1, 2, 3, and 5.
The patients have templates saved in each practice:
- Patient A has a demographic template (demo_1) in practices 1 and 3.
- Patient B has the same demographic template (demo_1) in practice 1, 2, 3 and 5.
Keeping Patient A and merging Patient B
When you assign templates and elect to keep Patient B’s demo_1 template, you see the following after the merge:
- All cross-reference fields, such as medications, allergies, and so on, are merged so that the list is consolidated for Patient A and Patient B.
- In practice 1, Patient A’s demo_1 template has the data previously saved in Patient B’s demo_1 template.
- Common fields (for example, name, address, and so on) are overwritten with patient B’s data.
- Patient A now has a chart created in Practice 2.
- The demo_1 template has the data previously saved in Patient B’s demo_1 template.
- In practice 3, Patient A’s demo_1 template has the data previously saved in Patient B’s demo_1 template.
- Common fields (for example, name, address, and so on) are overwritten with patient B’s data.
- In practice 4, Patient A’s demo_1 template has no data in the demo_1 template.
- Because Patient B never had any data in practice 4, when selecting Patient B’s data, it overwrites the template with blank data.
- Patient A now has a chart created in practice 5.
- The demo_1 template has the data previously saved in Patient B’s demo_1 template.