Re: [Gnumed-devel] An Analysis of Demographics - Comments RT

[Jim Busser]

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).