Duplicate patient records

Personal Demographics Service (PDS)
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1

Good morning,
Was wondering if there was any broader guidance on how best to deal with duplicate PDS linked records in a PMI?
There are situations where we can end up (in secondary care setting) with duplicate records coming in. Some of these are due to wider system interactions:

  • ERS or BARS cannot find a distinct local match so needs to create a duplicate

  • upstreams systems locally sending in information and so on

  • Existing duplicate records on import of legacy system data

    some are due to user initiated flows:

  • someone turns up in unscheduled care and cannot be identified so they get a new record, when they later get identified they turn out to have an existing record so we now have a duplicate

  • At point of arrival (again normally in an unscheduled care situation) its found a patient has a record but the admitting staff member/patient doesn’t believe its accurate (e.g. a previous error or someone giving the details of someone else in ED to obscure their identity). As its easier to merge records later then unpick them users may decide to register a duplicate patient record to allow immediate treatment needs to be met.

Currently we allow duplicates and flag them to a task list so data quality teams can use appropriate local processes to merge or fix the records but thats not something thats always easy for trusts to keep on top of (particularly when there are historic records already in a duplicated state). Its also a problem that tends to grow, as soon as somethings duplicated once we’ll start seeing more duplicates created in ERS/BARS flows for example.

Was wondering if there was any general guidance on how to best manage these processes or any expectations/rules around it we should implement/RBAC roles, particularly in terms of balancing allowing immediate access to care vs ensuring data quality?

Thanks in advance,
Liam

2

@lnorth could you be clearer about the duplicates we are talking about here?
Duplicates in the local system, or Duplicate PDS records for the same person.

(Not to be confused with Confusions, which is when two people end up sharing a PDS record)

The creation of a PDS record outside of Birth Notification, Home Office or GP Registration processes is (should be) tightly controlled.
The creation of a local record unlinked to a PDS record is a different slant on the same problem you describe.

3

Hi, yes in this case we’re looking at 2 (or more) local system records with the same NHS number attached (pointing at the same single PDS record).