I’ve been doing experiments in my openemr with test patients. They all have the same name, “Test, Test”. Would there be any negative side effects if I were to delete them? I’m thinking of possible side effects in the DB tables. I notice that the patient_data table has a lot of columns, but not everything, so there must be keys to other tables in there.
I’d like to get rid of them, but I’m hesitant. Any advice, if I really, really want to delete them?
Make a backup first, just in case.
Does your database contain only test patients? If there’s no live data, then experimenting becomes much simpler.
I haven’t looked into this aspect of the database, but each unique patient should have a unique ID since names aren’t guaranteed to be unique. If that’s correct, then deleting some “Test, Test” patients shouldn’t affect any remaining “Test, Test” patients, let alone any other (real) patients.
But this is all theory for me - I haven’t really investigated that and I’m still kinda new to OpenEMR.
There is a global to allow admin users to delete patients safely from the openEMR interface.
Globals->Features->Allow Administrators to Delete Patients
Once saved, a BIG delete button will appear next to the patient name when you open their demographics page…
That should work for your needs.
I’d go back to Globals and uncheck this option when you are done.