Re: [Gnumed-devel] Demographics > Social network… not yet implemented?

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 05:38:37PM -0700, Jim Busser wrote:

> What about Primary doctor? Will doctors exist as persons
> in GNUmed? We know that the answer for doctor-users within
> the praxis, the answer will be yes, however in my province
> of British Columbia we have > 10,000 doctors so I am not
> sure whether they should all be created in the persons
> table. But maybe they should?

I would say so. That's what they are, after all: persons.

I am not adverse to someone coming along with a *REALLY*
good argument for somehow distinguishing patient-persons
from person-persons but until that a person is just that.

However, this field - as you already deduced - effects
storage of an in-praxis primary provider. Such is used in,
say, notification of incoming clinical items (documents,
measurements, etc).

> One of the practical considerations to keep in mind is
> when a related data file (as describes these 10,000 +
> doctors) update becomes available. If these doctors exist as
> persons, then it should be desirable to be able to isolate
> which of these persons' addresses and phone numbers (their
> office praxis numbers) should be updated, without deleting
> their home numbers or their unpublished back-office line
> previously disclosed to us and recorded in GNUmed and which
> we phone to make referrals.

Such things are entirely at the discretion of the importer
code being run to import the new data. Technically it's no
problem at all given due consideration.

Karsten
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