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Administrative
Add and manage patients, manage appointments and manage transport.
Patients
Communicare uses the term Patient to refer to the clients of a health service.
Duplicate patient checks
When a patient is added to Communicare, a series of checks are done in an attempt to identify and prevent duplicate entries.

Administrative
Add and manage patients, manage appointments and manage transport.
- Patients
  Communicare uses the term Patient to refer to the clients of a health service.
  - Biographics
  - Information Sharing Consent
    Health Services have access to any information they have recorded internally. If you have a single database in your organisation used by multiple health services, you can also share information recorded by other health services with the clients' consent.
  - Patient Search
    Use the patient search to select and work with the patient's record, or create a new record.
  - Browse For Duplicate Patient Records
    Use Browse For Duplicate Records to locate all patient records that could be duplicates, based on name, sex and date of birth.
  - Adding a New Patient
    When a patient first makes contact with your encounter place, and before you provide a service to that patient, add a patient record.
  - Current Status
    Use Current status to indicate a person's primary relationship to your health service.
  - Group Memberships
    Use the Group Membership window to review the dates on which a patient joined or exited a group.
  - Deleting a Patient
    You can delete fictitious patients from Communicare.
  - Duplicate patient checks
    When a patient is added to Communicare, a series of checks are done in an attempt to identify and prevent duplicate entries.
  - Recording the death of a patient
    In Communicare, record when a patient dies. Deceased patients are excluded from many reports but will continue to be included if not marked as deceased.
  - Patient Merge
    When a patient has been recorded twice in Communicare, use Patient Merge to combine the two records.
  - Patient alert
    If an alert is added to a patient's biographic information, a popup alert is displayed when the patient's record is opened.
  - Background Work window
    The background work window is displayed when Communicare is busy and you must wait for the described background process to complete before proceeding with other actions.
  - Registering patients with MHR
    If the My Health Record Assisted Registration module is enabled in System Rights and you belong to a user group with the My Health Record Assisted Registration system right, you can register patients with My Health Record.
- Appointments
  Use Communicare appointments to book future appointments and record services provided without an appointment, for example, walk-in patients.
- Transport
  Communicare offers two ways of managing transport services.

Duplicate patient checks

When a patient is added to Communicare, a series of checks are done in an attempt to identify and prevent duplicate entries.

Important: Ensure that each patient has only a single entry in the database.

When you enter a patient's details into the patient biographics window, Communicare checks the database and displays a list of patients with similar details. If a record matches your new patient, do not add a new record. Instead, continue with one of the listed patients by making a selection from the list.

Communicare attempts to match patient records based on the sound of the family name, the first initial of the first forename, and approximate date of birth.

To determine which patients may not be added to the database, additional tests are done on the exact family name, the start of the first forename, exact date of birth and the patient's IHI number. If Communicare does not allow you to add a new patient record because it is identified as a duplicate, but you are sure it is not a duplicate, check that all names are complete (including any middle names), and the date of birth is specified for both the patient you are attempting to add and the one the system claims is a duplicate. You cannot add a patient with the same IHI number as an existing patient; however, if one or both of the patients do not have an IHI number, you can add the new patient.

14 November 2023