Minimize Duplicate Entries
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Dominic Tsang
Dominic Tsang from Port Elgin Pharmasave would like to begin the discussion of ways to minimize duplicate entries from patient intake forms.
Dominic's example:
"In the patient intake scheduling link, if a patient was able to search for their existing MedMe profile, then add the waitlist request to their existing profile... Such as searching/confirming an existing MedMe profile by their email/birthdate/etc for security purposes."
Ramin Shokrizadeh
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We added the option for automatic patient merge at the end of 2024, you can learn more about the setting here: https://helpcenter.medmehealth.com/en/articles/5176267-patient-profile-management#h_1da5d5319f
We will continue to investigate a patient login option in the future.
Rui Su
Merged in a post:
ability to mass delete unused accounts
Kortright Pharmacy
We have 11,000 patients on our list (many duplicates) and only at most 5,000 valid/used files. It would be helpful to have the ability to filter and batch delete any (or select) patient files without active or completed appts (i.e. those who signed up, but cancelled or never booked an appt).
Rui Su
Merged in a post:
Ability to filter through waitlist and identify duplicates by overlapping information
MedMe Enterprise
Due to patients signing up MULTIPLE times on the waitlist, there can be 3-4 duplicates of the same patient. A way to filter for all the duplicates by identifying patients that have the same name repeated 2x + same DOB or by some other mechanisms.
Albert Lam
under review
Krysta Traianovski
Merged in a post:
Centralized patient profile user account login
Albert Lam
Currently, when patients book multiple appointments with the same pharmacy – a new patient profile is created with each appointment.
As an improvement, allow the patient to create an account when the first appointment is booked and then allow them to book future appointments using the same account.
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Sarah Swanson
This would be very helpful, but I am sure not easy. A typical patient could easily have 5 or more profiles. One from the Kroll upload, one for each vaccine dose, 1 for flu shot etc. At this point, whenever I am looking someone up for information, I am trying to merge them. But, they don't always register exactly the same way, may have been entered as Dave, David, David Frederick, David F. etc.
Dominic Tsang
Thank you, Stephanie.
During the waitlist signup from the public intake link, instead of a repeat/existing patient providing all their personal information details under "Contact Information" again, what if the first step is to ask the patient to login with an existing email address. The next step/screen could be to verify their identity by asking to confirm their birthday.
If there is an existing patient found, then they can proceed to the next screen to input their previous COVID vaccination data, screening/priority questions, etc. All of this data would hopefully link to their existing patient profile rather than creating a duplicate patient profile.
If no existing patient is found, then they're welcome to set up a new profile before proceeding with their previous COVID vaccination data, screening/priority questions, etc.
I feel a login process such as this would greatly help minimize duplicate patient profiles to begin with. Our pharmacy (and I'm sure many others) are inundated with COVID booster shot questions and signups. We'll be better equipped to handle this round of COVID booster shots if we can spend less time with clerical work like merging patient profiles.
Thanks and feel free to reach out to me for any clarification.
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Geoff Sokolowski
Dominic Tsang: This starts to get tricky.
How would we confirm that a patient signs up for a new appointment under the correct profile from their last appointment? Given how many users MedMe now has, there are bound to be duplicates in names, dates, and birthdays. And since the profiles aren't password protected, we can't show a user the personal information of an existing profile, even if it's necessary to confirm that they're booking under the right profile.
I think the best we could hope for would be to mandate the entry of each patient's ID (healthcard etc) when signing up for an appointment. Then the system could link any new appointments to the profiles that are already registered to the corresponding IDs. It's not perfect though - there would still be problems with people using different IDs each time they book (e.g. driver's license for first dose, healthcard for second dose, etc), but it would cut down tremendously on duplicates.
The alternative would be to start password protecting accounts, but I think that would take along time as I believe it would require a substantial re-work of how the system is designed. Plus patients might get turned off to the idea.
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Taline Shalvardjian
My workaround to this is exporting the waitlist to excel and using conditional formatting to find duplicates. Very cumbersome but it is necessary as there are so many duplicates.
Dominic Tsang
Flagging duplicate appointments would also be useful. Had a patient schedule over the phone because her email link wasn't working. Then she got her email link and booked a 2nd appointment.
We didn't realize this until she called saying she received 2 email reminders about her appointment tomorrow.