Merge Entire Patient Profiles
under review
M
Mohammad Aldarawsha
Please add the ability to merge two separate patient profiles into a single patient record in Heidi. Currently, users can manage or link sessions, but there is no way to combine full patient profiles that were created separately.
Created by Kathleen Bernardo
D
Dan Michael
- The priority when merging two patient profiles should be preserving all clinical data and consolidating it into one record. This includes all sessions or encounters, clinical notes, treatment records, attachments, and any documentation tied to the patient. These should merge automatically and remain in chronological order so the full patient history is preserved.
Demographic fields such as phone number, email, address, and date of birth should also carry over so the final profile reflects the most current information. System identifiers such as patient ID or intake forms should remain connected to the merged profile. For list-style data like symptoms, conditions, or tags, it generally makes sense to combine and deduplicate them rather than overwrite them.
- A common scenario is when a clinician begins typing a patient’s name but accidentally clicks “Create New Patient” instead of selecting the existing one. This creates a duplicate profile. If it happens more than once, you can end up with multiple profiles for the same patient, each containing different sessions or notes.
At that point, reassigning sessions manually becomes difficult because the clinician may not know which profile contains the most complete or correct information. Being able to merge profiles cleanly into one complete record is important so clinicians can fix the issue quickly without risking lost information.
- Conflicting information should generally be handled based on recency, meaning the most recently entered or updated value becomes the default. This works well for fields like phone number, email, or address, where older data is more likely to be outdated.
For information that can logically coexist, such as symptom or condition lists, the system should combine and deduplicate entries rather than overwrite them. Ideally there should also be a simple merge preview so clinicians can see what will carry forward if there is a conflict.
Anya Sharma
marked this post as
under review
Tom
Hey Mohammad Aldarawsha, thanks for your feedback! Following up on this:
- What specific information or data fields should be prioritized when merging two patient profiles?
- Are there any specific scenarios or use cases where merging patient profiles is particularly important?
- How should the system handle conflicting information between the two profiles being merged?
M
Mohammad Aldarawsha
very well much needed feature please!