Tue 07 Feb 2012 01:22:41 AM UTC, comment #1:
Hi Chris
Let me just copy / paste my comments on the mailing list and we'll take it from there :-)
I think that this deserves a bit of explanation on my side. At any center, the patient will have two codes
1) SSN : Any state unique ID that identifies that patient (SSN is probably the most used, but any other stated issued ID will work)
2) Health Center Patient ID : Specific for each health center.
The one that is "universal" for all the health centers would be SSN or equivalent. On the patient's clinical record, that is the number to export and to show. You can now retrieve a patient in the patient model from either the Patient ID or the SSN.
So, on this topic... from the GNU Health point of view, the SSN is _very_ important, and the Health Center patient ID is important to the center itself, but it has limited value outside the center.
Now, different health centers and even different scenarios work differently. For instance :
a) Some centers will fill in the patient general information at the front desk. This is :
- SSN
- Gender
- Date of Birth
- Marital Status
- Insurance type
- And at this point, the internal Patient ID is generated.
b) Other centers and scenarios will ask limited (or even none) information before the health professional gets to see it
- Public hospitals
- Emergency departments
- Small offices
- Single practitioner
Actually, the "b" scenario is the most common. In many cases, because there is no health informatics and everything is on paper. What you see in this cases is somebody at the front desk that writes down basic patient info and then send the patient to the doctor room, where she or he starts the interview from zero.
So, in case "b", the health center patient ID and the SSN are generated / retrieved at the same time.
So, when is the patient actually created ? Again 2 approaches show up :
a) Administration department view : A person becomes a patient at the moment that she / he signs up for an appointment at that specific health center. We have to remember that the attribute of "person" exists at the party level, so, for example, all the family members or contacts of an specific patient can exist at GNU Health, but not necesarily are patients.
b) Clinical approach: The patient is actually a patient after the first evaluation / encounter with a health professional (doctor, nurse... ). This is/was the GNU Health approach, but of course, can be modified.
...
I think once we define the first part, implementing the access to the Patient ID will be OK.
Best
Luis
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