hardScenarioCase StudySeniorStaffLead
Two patient records were merged last month and it turns out they are different people. How do you unpick that?
6 min readUpdated 2026-08-15Target archetype: Enterprise Captive
Answer
Short answer
Containment first, because clinical decisions are being made on a chart holding two people's data. Then separate the merge itself from everything it caused - the notifications sent onwards, the orders, results and doses now attributed to the wrong person - and treat unmerge as a clinical exercise with human adjudication.
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Likely follow-ups
- A result on the combined record cannot be attributed to either patient with confidence. What do you do with it?
- A downstream system has no unmerge capability at all. How do you proceed?
- What in your merge design would have made this reversible, and what does that cost day to day?
- How would you decide whether this case is reportable, and to whom?
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