PHIN field

The PHIN field should be used for the patient's personal health information number (PHIN). The PHIN needs to be entered for all Manitoba patients, and must not be entered for out-of-province patients. Please make every effort to obtain this information. If it is not available, use "999999999" and inform the data processor that you could not obtain it anywhere. You can call your medical records department to help you with it.

= Location Manitoba and no PHIN

There are scenarios where a PHIN will not be available for a Manitoba patient, including but not limited to

• immigrants on visas
• some prison inmates

Canadian Forces

Patients from the Canadian Forces do not have a PHIN. Leave blank. Put CF into province code.

Data Integrity

For patients with Province = MB, the PHIN has to be > 100000000 and < 999999999, i.e. it has to have 9 digits For out-of-province patients, the PHIN must be entered as 0. (PHINs entered as 0 will be replaced by pseudo-PHINs).

Pseudo-PHIN

Since the PHIN is used as a unique identifier for patients to detect repeat and continuous visits, a "pseudo-PHIN" is assigned for patients who don't have a PHIN. At this point, pseudo-PHINS are assigned manually by Pagasa based on a series she maintains.