Chart number

The Chart number is the number used by medical records to uniquely identify a patient's chart. This number is different for the same patients at different hospitals.

The number is assigned to a patient by Admitting. This is done once the patient has been seen by Triage in ER or new to the hospital for clinics, testing and various workups. This number remains the patient's chart number for all hospital visits, admissions, tests, etc.

No leading zeros

If your chart number system uses leading zeros, don't enter the leading zeros, start with the first non-zero number.

Pt Doe

Patient is admitted as an unknown "Pt Doe". They are given a new chart number.

• At HSC the chart number for Doe starts with: 300 then 5 digits. Total 8 digits.
• During a patients stay or after discharge from hospital, Health records may find a match to previous chart and they merge 300.....chart number with original chart number.
• Data Collectors at use the number that Admitting gave John Doe for his entire stay unless they notice the update of chart number if MR finds it before discharge.

Data Processing

• Julie or Pagasa find these when linking data and change to correct chart number from MR at HSC.
  • Pagasa used to catch all Pt Doe's chart numbers at HSC when she downloaded labs for Medicine because usually by the time she does download, chart number has been update on Kea by Health Records. Pagasa no longer downloads lab for Med, so she must manually do a check on Kea after she gets a list from Julie or Trish.

Template:Discussion How is this done now? Ttenbergen 14:48, 2015 April 27 (CDT)

The bottom line is this, the main office make sure that the chart number for each Hospital site is the same for the same patient. We have a program that check LN, FN, DOB and also the Statistician uses SAS to check key identifiers so they are consistent for same patient including Hosp chart etc.

Template:CCMDB Data Integrity Checks

CCMDB.mdb uses function Validate_chart() to validate the Chart number.

• check that the entry is numerical
• check to ensure that PHIN field and Chart number are not identical.
• no further checks at this time because chart numbers are different at different hospitals