Person Merge

The Person Merge utility is used to combine redundant definitions of patients and guarantors. Every patient or guarantor defined in TFM has a person defined at the lowest level. When the same person is both a patient and a guarantor, a single TFM person SHOULD be defined and reused in both places (refer to Related New for details. When defined in this manner, if the person address changes, the staff must only change the address in one place in TFM. When a new patient and a guarantor are created (the same person), occasionally the staff may create the new patient and new guarantor without using the Related New button in the DETAIL screens. This causes the demographic data to be different copies for the patient and guarantor. They are defined in TFM as different people. Editing the address for one does not change the address of the other. A patient may also be mistakenly entered several times and payments, encounters, etc... are assigned to both of them. This screen allows :

• Selecting a patient and a guarantor to merge them to be a single person
• Selecting 2 guarantors/coverages to merge them to be the same person
• Selecting 2 patients to merge them into a single patient

This utility will redefine the underlying person who is the actual patient or guarantor and must be used with caution. Significant modifications may be made to the TFM database when this utility is exercised. For this reason, the following precautions are built into TFM before it will perform any person merges.

• Initial Warning

  When the Person Merge utility is selected from the TFM Main Menu, the following caution message is always displayed.
  
  

• Open Windows

  If there are any other TFM windows open when the Person Merge utility is selected from the TFM Main Menu, the merge operation will not be allowed to continue. Any open windows may be refering to or displaying the same information that the user is going to modify. After a successful merge operation with database changes, these open windows would contain old and invalid data. They must be closed before the merge operation can be invoked.
  
  

• Other active TFM users

  For TFM sites that have multiple client licenses, typically more than one user is accessing the TFM database at the same time. In a similar fashion as was described for Open windows, the merge operation may cause windows on another TFM client to become obsolete, displaying old data. All additional TFM clients must exit TFM before the Person Merge utility will execute.
  
  

Merge Main Window

The main merge window is displayed below.

The Set Patient and Set Guarantor buttons allow the user to select 2 people from TFM. As they are selected, the person information is displayed on the appropriate side of the screen. A mouse click over either side will open a The Patient Detail or Coverage Detail screen allowing the user to examine the person in greater detail to verify they have selected the correct person. These Detail screens are similar to the standard TFM Detail screens however table and button interactions such as new are disabled. The detail screens allow editing both persons however, only the left side person can be saved. Quite often, when the two persons are both displayed, data is needed from both sides to make the merge. By opening both and copying from the right side (read only, Finished button is disabled) and then pasting into the left side, (then saving the person on the left side), data from both sides can be merged.

The person on the left side will be the person who will remain in TFM and whose person information will be reused. The person on the right side will be the one that is merged. The Switch button reverses positions. Both sides have a title that indicates if the person is a patient or a guarantor. Additionally, an internal TFM person ID is also displayed in the title of both sides. When these IDs differ, this is proof that the person data is indeed, stored multiple times in TFM.

When the merge window is initially opened, all potential redundant pairs of patient/guarantors are displayed in the bottom table. TFM determines potential pairs by locating all patients and guarantors with the following matching criteria:

• Last names identical (case sensitive)
• First name starts with the same letter
• Same birth date
• Same sex

If both left and right sides are patients, all appointments, patient payments and encounters assigned to the patient on the right side will all be assigned to the patient on the left side. The right side patient will be deleted. If there are Primary, Secondary, or Tertiary coverages assigned to the patient on the right, they will be assigned to the patient on the left. An exception to this is when the patient on the left already has an active coverage at the same level as an active one that is being transferred. Since only one can be active at a time per level, after transferring, the transferred coverage will be terminated and a message displayed. With a right side patient, a confirmation similar to the following will be displayed:

If the person on the right is a guarantor (the left side is either a patient or a guarantor), the only action taken will be to modify the coverage/guarantor on the right side to be the same person as the one on the left. A confirmation similar to the following will be displayed:

If the person on the left is a guarantor and the person on the right is a patient, the patient will be modified to use the same person as the guarantor. All appointments, patient payments, and encounters assigned to the patient will be modified internal to TFM but will continue to be assigned to the patient.

Important Note: To minimize TFM database changes, if a patient and a guarantor are both selected, keeping the patient on the left (default) and modifying the guarantor (right) is the best option. Fewer database records will be modified.