Some clinics may have Duplicate Users or Duplicate Patients in the software. Most of the time, this is because, prior to the release of Patient Cases, therapist documentation was completely separated by service type.
Patient Cases gives therapists more flexibility in the system, allowing clinics to transition away from working with duplicates. Patient Cases allow therapists to document on patient goals that are outside of their primary service type, and to keep goals and documentation separate if they are seeing a patient for two different courses of therapy. Before you begin, make sure your clinic admin has already set up the Patient Cases you'll need to use.
What are Duplicate Users and Duplicate Patients?
Duplicate User: A therapist who has more than one user profile in the system, usually in order to be able to document on goals that are not associated with their primary service type. Because each system user is associated with a single service type, a clinic may have set up duplicate user profiles with different service types to allow the therapist to document on goals for both service types. For example, a therapist might have a primary profile with an OT service type for their OT goals and documents, and a duplicate profile with an ST service type for their Feeding goals.
Duplicate Patient: A patient who has been added to the Patient List more than once and therefore has separate patient charts, usually with documentation and goals for one service on their primary patient chart and documentation for a different service on the other patient chart. For example, a therapist might have used a duplicate patient to work with OT goals on one patient chart and Feeding goals on a separate patient chart.
If your clinic has duplicates, we recommend you follow these best practices when transitioning to using patient cases.
Transition Duplicate Patients using Patient Cases
- Pick which patient to use going forward (a Primary Patient) and which to consider the Duplicate Patient. Eventually, you will no longer be documenting on the Duplicate Patient.
- Add the new Patient Case to the Primary Patient.
- Pick a date to stop scheduling and documentation on the duplicate patient. It may be easiest to do this when you are ready to archive the Duplicate Patient's goals, and create new goals for the Primary Patient.
- On that date, edit the duplicate patient's future appointments: Change the patient on the appointment to the primary patient, and select the appropriate patient case.
- Add goals to the patient case for primary patient.
- Optional: Discharge the duplicate patient, or merge the duplicate patient into the primary patient.
Transition Duplicate Users using Patient Cases
- Pick which User to use going forward (a Primary Users) and which to consider the Duplicate User. Eventually, you will no longer be logging in and documenting as the Duplicate User.
- Add the new Patient Case to the Patient.
- Pick a date to stop scheduling and documenting as the duplicate user for each patient seen by that user. This could be done over time (one patient at a time) if needed.
- On that date, edit the patient's future appointments with the duplicate user: Change the therapist the the Primary User and select the appropriate patient case.
- Discharge the patient's old patient case.
- Add goals to the patient's new patient case.
- When all patients have moved to the new case and all of the duplicate user's documents have been completed, deactivate the duplicate user.