[Gnumed-devel] Re: linked improvement requests: "Register new person" widget and Patient details plugin

[James Busser]

On 21-Jan-08, at 7:33 PM, James Busser wrote:

> 1) "Register new person" be expanded to hold the four External_ID  
> fields to support one non-mandatory external ID as part of the new  
> patient creation, often that is key to identifying the patient so I  
> would insert those 4 fields below Title, after which the phone  
> number is often more vital than the address... maybe the widget  
> could be made wider and the address info moved to the right side as  
> a second column. If it is visually unattractive to widen it, maybe  
> we can get by with just 2 external_id fields (ID Type, Value)  
> because the issuer may be able to be known from the ID type.

This reminds me it is wise to avoid too easily creating a patient  
when they already exist. As a general specialist who would use GNUmed  
I may be more at risk, but there are GP offices that also accept walk  
in business and so the information from a patient (or someone phoning  
to refer the patient) about whether or when they had been there  
before is unreliable.

Also if originally only a first name or preferred name (but not both)  
were entered there is a risk of double-entry. And we do not presently  
have a merge function developed in GNUmed.

So my questions are (#2 will be in next posting)

1. Shall the "Register new person" widget give a warning if the
        last name and date of birth or
        last name and first name
already exist in the file? If this were to be done, it would be  
helpful to see the list of possible matches. Then if it were desired  
despite these matches to create a new person it could be done from  
this point. So I am thinking that in a similar or even the same  
"Select person from list" dialog to have a button that says "Create  
new". There is some circularity here that would first need to be  
worked through, in case the sequence had been
        Search -> no matching values
        -> raise "Register new person" with option to go back if wrong search
        -> enter data
        -> now there are matches... why were there no matches before?
        ... could be some problem with the first/nick names in the search

Also, the flow above does not take into account that you can enter  
search info for Wong, David and decide that none of the existing  
matches show the correct Wong, David because this one has a different  
date of birth, and needs to be created. Another reason it would make  
sense to have "Create new" in the "Select person from list" window.