If a patient is seen at multiple facilities, how does the system record the patient?

• A. One patient record with multiple contacts
• B. Multiple patient records
• C. One per facility
• D. Not stored

Answer: (A)

Maintaining a single, longitudinal patient identity across facilities is essential. A master patient index assigns one persistent identifier to a patient, so every encounter, test, medication, or contact from any facility is linked to that same record. This means you end up with one patient record that contains multiple contacts (encounters) across different locations. This unified view supports complete history, safer care, and better coordination between providers.

If there were multiple records for the same patient, care could be fragmented, leading to duplicate data or incomplete information. A setup with one record per facility would similarly fragment the patient’s history. Not storing the patient at all would be unusable.