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 and call medical records to help.
If patient lives out of province and the Province Field is not MB then leave PHIN field blank.
Special Cases
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
In these and similar cases, use 999999999 as the PHIN. The data processor will assign a Pseudo-PHIN.
Canadian Forces
Patients from the Canadian Forces do not have a PHIN. Leave blank. Put CF into province code.
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. List of pseudo PHIN's used and next number available is kept in a blue book at Pagasa work station.
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 blank. (PHIN entered as blank will be replaced by pseudo-PHIN).