Which is the recommended ID to refer to patients by?

Management and Administration
#1

I have been under the impression that External ID was only there either for organisations that already maintained IDs outside of OpenEMR, or that were transitioning from another system.

If the clinical organisation doesn’t have an existing mechanism for assigning IDs to patients (External ID in OpenEMR), then what is the recommended way to assign IDs – is it to use the Patient ID which is automatically generated by OpenEMR?

If they’re to use External ID, then that requires some external mechanism to make sure people choose the correct numbers.

Given that External ID is displayed in brackets after the patient name in the header of the page, it would seem External ID is intended to be used as this primary ID?

Or if we’re to use Patient ID as this primary ID, then how do you find a patient’s Patient ID? I know how to find a patient, given their patient ID (Reports > Clients > Patient List Creation > allows you to search by “Patient ID”), but how do you find an ID given a patient name?

Thanks

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#2

Hi @PeteBoyd -

You’re right about some of the uses for the External ID. Another common use is if a clinic needs to keep their records easy to cross reference to a hospital their providers have admitting privileges to, they could use that system’s Pt ID as the External ID. Or if the clinic commonly saw patients referred from other practices, they could use those other practices’ IDs as the Ext ID. Also, I’ve seen when clinic management wants to assign some sort of special- purpose alphanumeric Ext ID for their own internal use, e.g., maybe they want the pt’s DOB in it, or the SSN last 4.

As you say, if no Ext ID is provided, by default the EMR assigns the pt’s PID. It’s not really a case of which number is ‘intended’ to be the ‘real’ ID; if an Ext ID is provided it will be used; if not, the PID will.

In older versions of OpenEMR (pre-v5? Not sure) you could hover the mouse pointer over the pt name and see the PID.

The mechanism you’re looking for to pick the correct ID, and to find the PID, does exist. It involves customizing the patient search tool found from the Main Menu at ‘Patient/ Client -> Patients’; see the pic below.

Now, I’m not sure why they specified ‘External ID’ in that column name, because of course, if you’re not using an Ext ID it will be the PID. But what you can do, if using an Ext ID and you also want the PID available, is to customize the columns provided in this search tool to include both the Ext ID and also the PID. Instructions on how to do this are found in this page from the OpenEMR wiki:
https://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/HOWTO:_Change_Search_Columns_in_Patient_Finder
And you can add any other column you want (or remove unwanted columns) as long as it is contained in the database table, patient_data , which is basically the pt’s demographics data.
Hope that’s useful!
Best- HT

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#3

should have pid search with pub_pid on patient finder pages

#4

Thank you for this htuck.

I wasn’t aware that if no External ID was given, then OpenEMR would assign Patient ID to External ID. That, I think, solves my problem: users shouldn’t be entering an External ID, and everything will be taken care of for them.
(I concur that it thus seems wrong that OpenEMR uses the word “External ID” rather than “Patient ID” in the UI.)

Also, I can now ignore Patient ID. Though I find users refer to this ID “Patient ID”, and if they do that when speaking to me then I don’t know if they mean the internal Patient ID, which can be exposed in the UI, or they mean the External ID.

Thanks also for your info on customising the UI.

#5

But it is the pub_pid field that is displayed so External Id is correct. Say you entered an external id that differed from the sytem generated external id ie the patient id? How would you now find the patient id, literally the pid in the patient_data table? By customizing the demographic layout for such an important id shouldn’t be necc.

nm, can just add it to the list going forward, it’s nicely configured, thank you @PeteBoyd and @htuck

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#6

If I wanted to backtrack, where users have been adding an External ID – an External ID that hasn’t yet been used in any way to relate to anything within the organisation – would it be safe in terms of how OpenEMR works, to overwrite all External ID (pubpid) with Patient ID (pid)?

#7

hi @PeteBoyd, should be fine since not used in any meaningful way other than searching if not customized for it.

#8

Whattya think, @stephenwaite, would the external ID have been stamped on some clinical or administrative forms when they were created, even though it hasn’t been used by users? I have a fantasy that if that’s the case and you went to print/ export those things they might come out with the original Ext ID.

#9

could very well be but soon the uuid will put us all at ease lol

#10

@stephenwaite How’s that going to work? I see real benefits in having separate types of IDs like it is now.

#11

it will be another id, 1 to find them, 1 to bind them and 1 to rule them all :slight_smile:

it’s coming with v6

#12

to mix memes, an image is trying to force its way through the veil of my consciousness, something about, ‘ruling them all with the power of the OpenSource Force’, or something… never mind. :slight_smile:

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#13

okay time for my two cents as most that know me know, I can’t help myself!

What we know as an External Id would be more aptly named Public MRID(Medical Record Id).
A UUID isn’t really appropriate for this purpose as while great for electronic transactions, too difficult for a patient to carry around.

Nope, the External id I think, is meant for record keeping in regards to tracking provider orders, referrals and such. Instead of an integer, yuck!

Okay maybe that was 3 cents worth…

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