FILE 2

The PATIENT file contains all the patients followed by the medical center/ Outpatient clinic. At a minimum each patient entry must have a NAME, DATE OF BIRTH and SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER. In order to add a new patient to the PATIENT file the user must also indicate whether or not the patient is requesting to receive care as a VETERAN of the U.S. Armed Forces and specify the TYPE of patient being added to the system. For the most part the information contained in this file is demographic in nature, i.e., address, employment, service history, etc., however data concerning admissions, appointments,etc., is also stored in this file. The ADMISSION sub-field is scheduled to be moved into the new PATIENT MOVEMENT file by the end of calendar year 1989. Care should be used when removing a patient from the PATIENT file since virtually all other DHCP modules do utilize data from this file. Of the many fields in the file you will note that many are preceeded by an asterisk. Those fields are scheduled to be removed from the file due to either lack of use or replacement by another field/file in the next release.