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Patient Management
Create patient records, update patient details, maintain patient records, export patient records, and record payment details in Helix.
Maintain Patient Records
To maintain the integrity of your patient database you should merge duplicate patient records and when a patient dies, mark them as deceased.
Duplicate Patient Records
Ideally, you should not create duplicate patient records. However, if you do, link the records.
Link Duplicate Records
Link duplicate patient records.

Patient Management
Create patient records, update patient details, maintain patient records, export patient records, and record payment details in Helix.
- Create New Patient Records
  When a new patient joins your health service, create a new patient record.
- Edit Patient Records
  Edit contact details, identification numbers, payer details, carer details, and patient preferences settings in a patient's record.
- Maintain Patient Records
  To maintain the integrity of your patient database you should merge duplicate patient records and when a patient dies, mark them as deceased.
  - Patient Status
    Manage the status of patients so that you can more easily find active patients, and accurately report patient information.
  - Duplicate Patient Records
    Ideally, you should not create duplicate patient records. However, if you do, link the records.
    - Link Duplicate Records
      Link duplicate patient records.
  - Extract Patient Records
    Extract a copy of a patient record when you need to hand the patient over to another clinician, for example, during medical evacuation; to print documents for medicolegal matters; or if a patient leaves your practice and needs a copy of their patient record.
- Patient Reports
  Generate reports about your patients based on common criteria such as age, SNAP status, conditions and medications using Patient reports.

Link Duplicate Records

Link duplicate patient records.

Before you begin

Permissions:

Patient Management
View Patient
Update Patient

About this task

In this example, the patient changed their residential address, and informed the practice of this change. However, instead of updating the address in their record, a staff member in training inadvertently added a second copy of the patient's record to the practice's database.

Procedure

To locate and link duplicate records:

Select user > Settings.
Select Patient Management.
In the Patient Management section, enter one or more of the patient's surname, given name, date of birth, patient ID, or Medicare number.
A list of matching results is displayed.

In this example, there are two matching records for porter, and we happen to know this is the only Gordon Porter in our database. However, there might have been more; you need to ascertain which records belong to the patient you are looking for. The matching date of birth and mobile phone numbers confirm that we have the correct records.
For each record want to link, click .
The records are moved to the Link Duplicates section.
Specify which record should act as the Master record. The Master record is the record that all other records will be linked to. The master record is indicated in the Status column.
- In our example, the Master record is currently the one indicating that Mr. Porter lives in Kepnock. This is correct, because Mr. Porter used to live in Bundaberg (as indicated by his other record), and has recently moved to Kepnock. It is this Kepnock record we want to keep so it is correctly flagged as the Master record.
- If you need to specify that a different record should be the Master record, in the Assign column for that record, click Set as master.
When you are confident you have all the duplicates you want to link, and you have indicated which of them should act as the master record, click Save to link the records.

Results

After you have linked patient records, an indicator is displayed at the top of the records to show that they are linked.

Example Linked Record Icon

To display a menu of the patients who have been linked, click the green stripe.

The linked records are coded:

Example Master and Duplicate Records

- M denotes that this is the master record.
- the tick icon denotes that this is the active record that is currently open.
- D denotes that this is a duplicate record.

What to do next

Ensure that clinicians use the master patient record for future consults.

1 March 2024