I understand. While it's important to be able to identify the patient's record when they're in the clinic, it's also important that all the identifying information on their clinic record not be readily usable to associate their clinic record to their public identity outside the clinic. In other words, they want to be anonymous (for the most part, exempting of course the usual legal contexts) everywhere except in the clinic.
There are several ways this can be accomplished. Where the patient is able to retain a unique number that you give to them, they can come back any time and give that number to the clinic where the record can contain additional identifying information that is not unique but of sufficient identifying quality combined with the number they've been given to sufficiently confirm that they've given the correct number for themselves. (Such non-unique traits may be things like birth city (assuming a sufficiently large city), height, a favorite teacher or pet's name, etc.) Another approach is to collect their public identity but keep that information in an encrypted form which is associated with the local clinic record ID. To find the clinic ID (which is meaningless by itself other than to associate past health information for the patient with new information), the public ID traits are expressed when coming in to the clinic and the encrypted information is used as the "key" to the clinic ID record. The public ID traits are discarded immediately and never retained in the clear. VA uses a slight variation for the aggregation of HIV information in its national registry. The local facility has the identity of the person but when the data is aggregated nationally, only an encrypted value of the local ID is sent with the data to be aggregated. If for some reason those reviewing the national aggregate see that something needs to be communicated to the individual, the only way that can be done is to pass back the encrypted ID and necessary additional information to the site where the data came from for the authorized person at the local site to process. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Zacharias Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2006 9:23 AM To: hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: RE: [Hardhats-members] Non-Nominal Data by non-nominal I mean not that the patient is not identifiable in the medical record. For most of the patients in the STD clinic, they do not wish to be identified. They will either give an alias, or simply there initials. In this way, their medical record is not attached directly to them. Michael Zacharias --- Cameron Schlehuber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The standard FileMan uses for "duplicate" entries is to enclose the name in > quotes. FileMan then asks if you are entering a new entry. > > I don't understand how you're using the expression "non-nominal data". > Could you give some examples? > > Cameron. > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael > Zacharias > Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2006 8:55 AM > To: hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net > Subject: [Hardhats-members] Non-Nominal Data > > The majority of patients seen at our STD Clinic prefer not to give there > true > name. Often times, they are recorded with only their initials and/or an > alias. > I've been trying to figure out how to do this in VistA. I thought that if > I > admit each patient as Doe,John (Doe,Jane) I would then be able to enter the > patients initials/alias. However, I am not able to admit more than one > Doe,John. My question is, how does VistA handle multiple patients with the > same name, and more importantly, how can it handle Non-Nominal data? > > thanks... > > > Michael Zacharias > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language > that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast > and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! > http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642 > _______________________________________________ > Hardhats-members mailing list > Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language > that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast > and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! > http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid0944&bid$1720&dat1642 > _______________________________________________ > Hardhats-members mailing list > Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language that extends applications into web and mobile media. 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