Patient Finder

Overview

In the left hand menu of Medicus, you can click the magnifying glass icon which will open the patient finder. This is the main way to find a single patient record.

Alternatively, you can use one of the following keyboard shortcuts:

Ctrl + K on Windows
Cmd + K on Mac

Once the search dialog opens any recently visited patients are displayed before any search term has been entered.

There are two options for finding a patient:

Text search
Advanced search

Text Search

The text search works on either a patient name,, Date of Birth or NHS number. The search algorithm is designed with these rules to speed up use:

Type as you search
- It takes the input query (e.g. “John Smi”) and looks for any patient names that contain the prefixes “John”, “Smi”.
Case Insensitive
- “john smith” and “John Smith” both match “John Smith”
Special cases that must work
- Hyphenated words:
  - both “Wittington-Smith” and “Wittingtonsmith” match “Wittington-Smith”
  - “John Paul”, “Johnpaul” and “John-Paul” match “John-Paul Smith”.
Boosting
- Exact matches are boosted to the very top of the results
  - e.g. if you input “John Smith” then “John Smith” is the top result.
Ordering
- Order alphabetically
No Results - Fallback to perform fuzzy search
- Normally the algorithm will not perform a fuzzy search
- To help users recover from a typo, it will perform a second fuzzy search ONLY as a fallback if 0 results were returned from the usual search
- Each word in the search query has a fuzziness applied to it. Fuzziness uses Levenstein Edit Distance, and we use the Elasticsearch “AUTO:2,5” rule which is defined here: Common options | Elasticsearch Guide [8.5] | Elastic
  - Length of search word: 1 character
    - Must match exactly
  - Length of search word: 2-4 characters
    - One edit allowed
  - Length of search word: 5 or more characters
    - Two edits allowed

No Results - Fallback to patient identifier
- If no results are returned, and the search term matches the format of an NHS Number (e.g. 10 digits either with spaces or without: 123 456 7890 or 1234567890) then the search returns the patient that exactly matches on that patient identifier
Search on Date of Birth
- If the search string is in the following format, the search switches to a date of birth search and matches on any of the date formats (case insensitive):
  - D{D}/M{M}/YY{YY}
    - 01/01/23
    - 01/01/2023
    - 1/1/23
    - 1/1/2023
  - D{D}.M{M}.YY{YY}
    - 01.01.23
    - 01.01.2023
    - 1.1.23
    - 1.1.2023
  - D{D}-M{M}-YY{YY}
    - 01-01-23
    - 01-01-2023
    - 1-1-23
    - 1-1-2023
  - D{D}[/.- ]Mmm[/.- ]YY{YY}
    - 01-jan-23
    - 01-jan-2023
    - 01.jan.23
    - 01.jan.2023
    - 01/jan/23
    - 01/jan/2023
    - 01 jan 23
    - 01 jan 2023
    - 1-jan-23
    - 1-jan-2023
    - 1.jan.23
    - 1.jan.2023
    - 1/jan/23
    - 1/jan/2023
    - 1 jan 23
    - 1 jan 2023
  - When the date format includes only 2 year digits (e.g. 31/12/22), then the search assumes that year is “1900” + the YY input e.g. 1922. If that year is more than 100 years ago (which it is in the example 31/12/22), then instead the search assumes that the year is 2000 + the YY e. g. 2022

Advanced Search

The advanced search takes structured inputs such as first name, last name, date of birth, gender and uses them to find matching patients.

Search Results

For both the text search and advanced search, the results are displayed in the same way.

Clicking on a result will take you to the patient record for the chosen patient.

The Good Practice Guidelines for GP Electronic Patient Records recommends the following to reduce the risk of patient misidentification:

It is essential to match patients across several data fields to get a positive match and we advise that current best practice to achieve (near) certain identification requires a confirmed match in all the following data fields;

Last name (or family name)
First name (calling name)
Date of birth
NHS number
Sex (administrative gender)
Address (including postcode)

Source: Main heading (publishing.service.gov.uk) (P.104)

Deceased Patients

Deceased patients will be returned in search results and can be identified by the presence of a badge on the patient result card that says “Deceased”.