Automatic Patient Status Change

Automatic Status Change Rules

Every night the server will check the Inactivity years in system parameters and use it to change a patient's status after the specified number of years, based on the existence of contact services and patient address. A contact service is defined as any service with a mode that does not contain the words 'no client contact' or "telephone". Changes to this value will not take effect until the Daily Process is run.

Note: Blank Inactivity years will effectively disable the automatic status change facility.

Inactivity years is the number of years as set in the system parameters.

New patients are treated as if they "were serviced" on the day they were recorded for the purpose of status updates. This means a new patient will have a status of either current or transient.

Automatic status change

These are the rules to be followed when changing the status automatically:
  • A health service may determine a patient inactivity period in years ('n'). This can be anything they want but is usually 2 or 3.
  • If an inactivity year has been entered, the patient status change is automatic.
  • If n is not set, all patient statuses must be determined manually.
  • Statuses of Fictitious Patient or Non Patient are never changed automatically.
  • If n has been set, a health provider may set a patient's status manually if they want and their decision will be respected for n years after they set this status. When a new patient is added it is assumed to be a manual status that has been set at that time.
  • If n has been set and a patient's status has not been manually set or adjusted in the previous n years then the following changes are implemented automatically every evening after the database restarts:
    • If the patient has at least one contact service either booked, cancelled, waiting, withdrawn, started, paused or completed, excluding telephone calls, within the previous n years, and they live in the region defined in the database as the Health Service Area, then their status remains or is changed to Current Patient.
    • If the patient has at least one contact service either booked, cancelled, waiting, withdrawn, started, paused or completed, excluding telephone calls, within the previous n years, and they do not live in the region defined in the database as the Health Service Area, then their status remains or is changed to Transient Patient.
    • If the patient has no contact services either booked, cancelled, waiting, withdrawn, started, paused or completed, excluding telephone calls, within the previous n years, then their status remains or is changed to Past Patient.
  • In rare cases a health service may implement additional statuses of Banned 30 days and Banned 60 days. These are automatically set to Current after the appropriate period.
Table 1. Rules for status change
Current Status Status manually changed in the last Inactivity years Was Serviced in the last Inactivity years Lives in Health Service Area New Status
1 - Yes - - No Change
2 Past No Yes Yes Current
3 Past No Yes No Transient
4 Transient No Yes Yes Current
5 Transient No No - Past
6 Current No No - Past
7 Current No Yes No Transient

Notes

Was Serviced means the patient has at least one contact service. The addition of an appointment even if the patient did not turn up is counted as a service because the booking implies intent to become a patient of the health service.

Address in service area means the patient's home address locality is listed in the Health Service Area locality group.