Patient Master Index

Intersystem’s TrakCare™ software is a Web-based, patient-centric healthcare information system used by leading healthcare organizations around the world. It is comprised of a comprehensive portfolio of application modules, including patient.

Healthcare organizations in 25 countries are making breakthroughs in patient care with TrakCare, a unified healthcare information system that enables coordinated care within a hospital or across care settings throughout a region — facilitating a seamless patient journey.

Patient Master Index (PMI)

The PMI is the cornerstone of the TrakCare system, supporting the patient-centric EPR. As well as being able to run the PMI functions independently, these functions are an integral part of each TrakCare module (e.g., when a patient is admitted to the hospital, the PMI Search and Registration functions can be included as part of the workflow for the admission process).

The PMI can be run as a stand-alone within the hospital (or group of hospitals) or can be part of a larger state or national system. In the latter situation, a patient may have a local identifier as well as a state or national identifier. The TrakCare system allows for this identifier to be assigned by the appropriate provider.

A unique hospital identifier differentiates each patient. The format of this identifier is definable by the hospital and may be purely numeric or a combination of alpha and numeric characters. The hospital identifier can be automatically assigned to the patient or manually entered at registration time.

The TrakCare PMI provides healthcare facilities with the ability to record extensive information about a patient. The details displayed can be configured by the hospital using the TrakCare Layout Editor.

Typically, this screen would contain:

  • Fields for entering a patient’s socio-demographic details to defining mandatory fields (e.g., patient title, surname, given name, sex, date of birth, address, language spoken, country of birth, etc.)

  • Links to other screens for entering:

  1. Other address details (e.g., previous addresses, postal address, and mailing address)
  2. Contact details (e.g., next of kin, nearest relative, or guarantor)
  3. Alerts (e.g., medical, administrative, and clinical)
  4. Alias details (e.g., names, sex, date of birth)
  5. General practitioner details (or viewing these details)
  6. Family doctor history
  7. Links (e.g., family, mother/baby)
  8. Audit details, such as who last updated the record, all changes made to the record, and details of who has viewed the record

Other functionality within the PMI includes:

  • Specific edit restraints set for each field

  • If the patient’s name, sex, or date of birth fields are changed, the user is asked whether to create an alias of the old details

  • If the address or phone number information of the patient is changed, a history of previous addresses/phone is maintained

  • When the suburb is entered, a postcode search facility is available

  • If the patient’s exact date of birth is unknown, an estimated date can be recorded and a flag can be set to indicate this

Case Study

The NHS Scotland Patient Management System program for hospitals gives authorized users immediate access to better clinical and administration information from one standard healthcare information system. It is a strategic part of the Scottish Government’s e-health transformation to empower a 21st century Scottish NHS to provide effective, fair, and affordable care.

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