Manage patient identifiers
Overview
This flow describes how to set, view, and change the identifiers of a patient in Care.
Identifiers name a patient in a way that goes beyond the name and the phone number. A national ID and a facility-specific ID are two examples. An administrator configures each identifier type with these properties:
- Required or optional for every patient.
- Unique. No two patients share the same value.
- Validated against a specific format.
- Available at one facility only, or across the whole instance.
- Auto-generated by Care. You cannot enter or edit an auto-generated value.
Pre-requisites
- An administrator of a facility.
- You have the permissions listed below.
Permissions
| Permission | Access |
|---|---|
| Can Create Patient | Set the identifiers of a patient at registration. |
| Can Update a Patient's data | Change the identifiers of a patient who is registered in Care. |
Steps
1. Set the identifiers at registration
- Register the patient. See Register a patient.
- Enter a value for every required identifier.
- Skip the identifiers that Care generates. You cannot enter these values.
Note: Which identifiers are required, optional, or auto-generated depends on your deployment's configuration. The scope of an identifier also depends on this configuration.
2. See the identifiers of a patient
- Open the profile of the patient. See View a patient's profile.
- Go to the "Identifiers" section. This section shows all the identifiers on file for the patient.
3. Change the identifiers of a patient
- Open the profile of the patient.
- Edit the details of the patient. See Update patient details.
- Add a value for an identifier that has no value.
- Change the value of an identifier that has a value.
- Save the changes.
Note: You cannot enter or edit an identifier that Care generates.
Expected Outcome
- The "Identifiers" section of the patient profile shows the identifiers that you entered.
- Care generates the values of the auto-generated identifiers.
- Care rejects a value that does not match the format of the identifier.
- Care rejects a value that another patient already uses, when the identifier is unique.
Related
Concepts:
Flows: