If an existing patient books online with different information to what is already present on their patient record, a duplicate patient record will be created. This information includes the following;

• Sex of the patient
• First Name of the patient
• Last Name of the patient
• Date Of Birth of the patient
• Email Address of the patient

Potential duplicates

If a patient record created via online booking matches either of the following, it will be flagged as potentially duplicate;

1. If the first name and last name are an exact match.
2. If sex and date of birth are an exact match and at least one of the following match (this is only available from EXACT 13.226).
   • Email.
   • Phone.
   • Surname.

If EXACT determines that a new patient record is a potential duplicate, it will be flagged on the online appointments tab on your appointment book.

This is indicated with a triangle with an exclamation icon next to their name.

Reviewing duplicate patients

1. Highlight the patient to select the row.
2. Click the duplicates button, or click on the exclamation icon next to the patient name.
   
   • The top portion of the screen displays the new patient details.
   • The bottom portion of the screen displays the existing records that are potentially the same patient.
3. After clicking the duplicates button the duplicate patients windows will display.
   • You can now check which details are mismatching and if the records are for the same patient.
   • Click the merge button, to merge the records.
     
   • The destination patient would remain and the source patient will disappear.
     
     
   • Selecting yes on the prompt will cause the system to do the following;
     • Merge the two records.
     • Associate the appointment to the existing patient record and retain it in the appointment tab.
     • Erase the now redundant new record.
     • Add a pop up NOTE to the destination patient.
       

Users can see details of a merged patient via the a system generated pop-up note and can use this to check that the two records have merged successfully.

Merged details

Patient fields:

• First name
• Second name
• Last name
• Title
• Initials
• Sex
• Date of birth
• Home address and post code
• Work address and post code
• Home, mobile, and work phone and work phone contact
• Alternative phone number and contact
• Fax number, pager number
• Email addresses

Patient records:

• Patient x-rays and video
• Contacts
• Patient notes and dated notes
• Charting
• Appointments
• Perio WHO and BPE
• Transactions and associated invoice lines
• Waitlist entries
• Denplan OHS
• Pathology
• Medical History (integrated medical history only)
• Prescriptions
• Recalls
• Smile Surveys
• NHS Pilot Information
• Examine-Pro
• 3rd party link records (but not the actual third party data, which isn't held by an EXACT database)
• Custom tabs

Tips and Tricks

• EXACT will automatically merge existing patients who were marked as new patients, rather than having the same record for two patients.
• Manually merging two patients: When EXACT merges an online booking patient with an existing patient record, the new record is made inactive (this change was introduced in EXACT V13.1016, previously the record would be deleted).
  However, if a practitioner manually merges two patients by means of the merge button in the patients file, the practitioner needs to manually mark the source patient file as ‘Inactive’.