Merge Patients

If you discover you have duplicate patient records, you can use the Merge Patients button to remove the duplicates and re-link all existing exam forms to a single patient ID. For example, assume there is a single patient with three separate records in the NRDR patient dictionary:

• Patient ID 11111, has 2 exams in LCSR

• Patient ID 22222, has 3 exams

• Patient ID 33333, has 1 exam

The Merge Patients function allows the user to choose one patient record, e.g. 11111, into which the other records will be consolidated. The merge function also propagates patient ID 11111 to the exam form records for patients 22222 and 33333, so that all exams have patient ID 11111.

To merge records, first search for the duplicate records using the filter and appropriate criteria, as needed.

Next, select each record to be merged by clicking the box in the first column and then click the Merge Patients button.

The selected patients are listed. Select the one patient record into which you want to merge all other patient records.

Be sure to review all field values across all records to be merged. The Merge Patients function does not identify differences in field values across records. In the example, above, patient ID 10852818 will be merged into 10852817, even though the Old Medicare Beneficiary IDs are different. Effectively, this means all records in all registries for these patient records will now have patient ID 10852817 and Old MBID 9155749.

Click Confirm Merge Patients to process the request. A confirmation message appears. Click Yes to proceed or No to cancel the operation.

Once processing is completed the screen refreshes and displays the single patient record, along with a message confirming records were merged successfully.

An upload function to merge a large number of patients is available as well, by accessing the Merge Patients Upload link.

Last Reviewed 08/02/2021