Patient - Physical Deleted

Former Member · ‎2008 Mar 10

How do I delete a patient (physical deleted)? The patient has no movements.

I need to reuse the assigned number.

Thanks.

Former Member · ‎2008 Mar 10

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Former Member · ‎2008 Mar 10

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... trouble with multible logon certificates in our company ... ;-{ (Martin Nauta)

Former Member · ‎2008 Mar 11

Hi Alberto,

physically deleting patients is not possible in IS-H (a far as I know there is no archivingfunction for patients which provides generally the possibility to physically delete info from SAP).

But you could reuse the patientnumber simply by updating this patient with new patientinformation.

Kind regards,

Martin

Former Member · ‎2008 Mar 13

Hello,

What happens if patient number range has been acheived? as there is no delete patient option in SAP IS-H, our system will soon reach this point? (of course moving into alpha range numbering is not an option).

TIA. Daniel.

Claudius · ‎2008 Mar 13

Hi Daniel,

usually I would think that 10 digits for the patient number are sufficient for a hospital, but I assume that you may not use the full range? Can you give a bit background information on your patient number ranges and why they fill up so quickly?

Regards

Claudius

Former Member · ‎2008 Mar 14

Claudius, yes we are using 6 digits (for client's needs), and case numbers are getting low as well.

thanks for your input. No our client is not a Hospital but a health service agency. thanks,

Claudius · ‎2008 Mar 16

Ok, now I understand your problem better. Are you using 6 digits only for the case numbers? And what are you "doing" with the first 4 digits - I assume you put in some semantics (e.g. a year, an institution or organization)? Couldn't this be handled differently? We recommend to avoid any semantics in the key fields and rather get such information from other fields or tables.

Regards, Claudius

Former Member · ‎2008 Mar 19

Claudius,

Yes I fully understand the point of view, and we have suggested to extend the number range as much as possible. But the point is valid, how to handle the open Patients in a long term perpestive. We are also facing questions from legal aspects, such as the database can only file Patients and Patient Cases (mainly) for a maximum period of time of 10 years. Then files must be removed and archived. So, .. any help is appreciated. Reg Daniel.

Claudius · ‎2008 Mar 19

Hi Daniel,

from my perspective we have to distiguish between patient data and patient case data. For the latter SAP Patient Management offers [Archiving and Reorganization|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp60_sp/helpdata/en/3c/0ebc3959d39c39e10000000a114084/frameset.htm]. For patients we follow the concept of a life-time record, however. So far I have not heard about legal requirements to completely erase all traces of a patient treatment (including the patient master record) from a system of record. It would be good to get more information on the source of such requirements.

Regards

Claudius

Former Member · ‎2008 Mar 19

Hi Claudius,

Again thanks for the pointers. And yes, I gather we will again be first on this matter, and we should contact SAP France (as we"re in France) to get things moving, or can you initiate something from your side? French law imposes to declare time period that files remain active, longest period "to best my knowledge" is 10 years.

Best Regards.

Edited by: Daniel PINEDA on Mar 19, 2008 6:23 PM

Claudius · ‎2008 Mar 25

Daniel,

I think it would be good to raise this requirements to your contacts within SAP France. Still I am very interested to get more details on the exact source or even the respective text. Do you think that there is a certain space how to interpret the law (e.g. that it would be sufficient to archive the cases but leave the patient master data) or is it common sense that all traces of a person have to be erased after 10 years? Does this law apply to Healthcare specifically?

In similar situations we have also consulted lawyers to get their opinion...

Regards

Claudius

Former Member · ‎2008 Apr 01

Hi Claudius,

No the 10 year law is cross areas, but to be honest I think it is not fully implemented. IS H is concerned mainly due to the fact that a patient is an individual person, in that case the law should apply. And most companies are not impacted, (as a company is not an invidividual person) so the law is not applicable in most SAP environments (individual clients infos should be purged after 10 years). I will get in touch with SAP France. Thanks.

Claudius · ‎2008 Apr 01

Hi Daniel,

ok - it would be great to let the community know if there is a legal interpretation of such a law in regards to Hospital Information Systems and Patient data. Maybe the colleagues at SAP France know of examples from other industries where it is relevant too and how it was handled in SAP business applications.

Regards, Claudius