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Department of Health

ISSUE 17:May 2012

How to check and merge duplicate clients

Duplicate clients can be a problem in FullADIS as they can cause the application to run slowly and make it more difficult to find clients in the application.

From the ‘Main Menu’ select ‘Activities’ and then select the ‘Duplicate Client Check.’

The ‘Duplicate Client Maintenance’ screen displays all the client records that have been identified by FullADIS as being duplicates.

FullADIS recognises any record as a duplicate if it has the same Alphacode. This DOES NOT necessarily mean that the records are duplicates. That is for you to determine based on the information provided.

You should only merge two client records when you are sure that the two records relate to the same person.

If you are unsure whether to merge two client records please refer to Chapter 6.3 ‘Deleting a Client’ in the FullADIS User Manual, before following the procedure below.

  1. Select a client from the list of duplicates displayed (eg. Fred Flintstone). Click on each record displayed for Fred so that a [+] sign appears beside the record.
  1. Click on the [+] sign for each client to display the treatment records that have been entered against that client. View all the treatment records displayed to determine the ‘oldest’client record. Use this client record as the base to add all the others to. This will keep the date order chronological.
  1. Click on the next ‘oldest’ episode to highlight it.
    With the record highlighted, drag and add it to the ‘oldest’ record for ‘Fred’.
    (To drag the episode, click on the record with your left mouse key and hold the left mouse key down whilst dragging it to the record.).
  1. Once all episodes are added to the ‘original’ record, highlight the record without any services and delete it by clicking the right mouse button, and selecting “Delete”...
  1. A warning message will appear. You will need to click to confirm the record should be deleted.

  1. The client record is deleted and the deleted entry is replaced with the text ‘Client ‘65002’ * Deleted*
  1. Next time you access the Duplicate Client Check function, no ‘Fred’ records will appear in the listing as a duplicate no longer exists.

If ‘Fred’ was the only duplicate record the screen will display the following message:

‘No duplicate records found’

  1. The episodes are now all recorded in one client record and can be opened and viewed in the usual way via the Client Details screen.

What do I do if the duplicate client does not appear?

There may be records for the same client that cannot be merged through the duplicate client function because the alphacode for the duplicate records is different.

If the initial record has different spellings or a different date of birth, the duplicate may have a different alphacode and therefore will not be picked up in the duplicate client check.

In this instance it would be best to keep the two client records, but only add new services to one client record. You could consider typing the word ‘DUPLICATE – Do Not Use’ in the address details of the record you will NOT be using. This will easily identify the two in your list.

Example:

Duplicate clients: Maurice Morgan and Morris Morgan. Same person, name spelt differently.

View the Client Details page for both records and view the treatment history. Decide which of the two has the oldest treatment records and therefore which record you do not want to use.

In the Address details type in ‘DUPLICATE – Do Not Use’ to indicate this client should not be used in the future.

When these records appear in the client list they will appear as follows:

In addition to this you could inactivate the client record you will no longer be using. This retains the client treatment record but hides the client from the Client List.

Information on how to inactivate a client can be found in the ADIS User Manual - Chapter 6- 27.

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Department of Health