People — patients & providers

What it does

The People and Patients areas are where you register and manage individuals — patients and providers. Each person has names, gender, date of birth, addresses, phone numbers, and identifiers. Patients also get a system UHP ID at registration. From a patient record you open clinical care (visits, ADT, observations) — see Clinical care.

Where to find it

• People — /people (searchable person list)
• Patients — /patients (patient search / list)
• Register patient — /patients/register (registration wizard)
• Person detail — /people/[personId] (demographics, identifiers, visibility, consents, grants)
• Patient detail — /patients/[patientId] (clinical hub)

📸 Screenshot: the People list (people-list).

📸 Screenshot: register patient (patient-register).

📸 Screenshot: patient detail (patient-detail).

Common tasks

Find a person or patient

1. Open People or Patients.
2. Type a name or identifier into the single search box — the system matches either.
3. Open the matching row. Only people you’re permitted to see appear — see Visibility & consent.

Register a new patient

1. Open Register patient (/patients/register) from Registration / Patients navigation.
2. Create a new person or link an existing one (for example by UHP ID when offered).
3. Fill required demographics (name, gender; date of birth and contacts strongly recommended).
4. Under Patient identifiers, add facility-issued numbers (e.g. hospital number). Pick the type, enter the value, Add identifier for more.
5. Complete address/geography fields your site requires, then Save / finish the wizard.
6. Note the UHP ID shown after success — staff can use it later to find the person.

About patient identifiers

A patient identifier belongs to the patient at your facility. Your facility is recorded as the issuer automatically, so two facilities can each issue their own hospital number to the same person without clashing. This differs from a person identifier (e.g. national ID) and from the UHP ID, which the system generates and you never invent. Administrators manage types under Setup → Reference data → Patient identifier types.

Correct or retire a person identifier

On the patient chart, the Identifiers section lists the numbers the person is known by. If you hold person-identifier write you can also maintain them:

• Add identifier: pick the type, enter the value, Add.
• Edit (pencil): correct a value that was captured wrongly. This changes the existing record; it does not create a second one.
• Retire (bin): stop using a number, giving a reason. The record is kept, not deleted, so anyone reading the chart later can see why a number they relied on is no longer current.

⚠ If the value already exists for that type, the platform refuses it and says so. That is a real duplicate, not a glitch: check whether the person already holds the number before entering it again.

⚠ Values are stored exactly as you type them. The platform never reformats an identifier, because a number reformatted by software is a number somebody reads back incorrectly over the phone.

⚠ Person identifiers (a national ID, for instance) are not the same as patient identifiers, which belong to the patient at one facility and are set during registration. See above.

Record who an unidentified patient is

Someone brought in unconscious is registered under the Unknown patient mode, with a placeholder name and a temporary number. When somebody can say who they are, open the person record and use Identify this person.

Give their name, gender, date of birth, and how the identity was established: a relative attended, a card was found. That last one is stored on the record, because whoever reads this chart later needs to know where the name came from.

⚠ Nothing is merged and nothing moves. It is the same record and the same UHP number, so every visit, observation and order recorded while the patient was unidentified stays exactly where it is.

⚠ If the platform says the record was not registered as unidentified, the form is fine: that record simply never had a placeholder identity to complete.

Open the patient clinical hub

From Patients, open a patient to:

• View summary, visits, encounters, observations
• Start/end visits and run admit / transfer / discharge (ADT) — documented under Clinical care
• Jump to billing and programs tabs when those modules are enabled

Edit a person's details

1. Open the person under People → Edit (or demographics tab).
2. Update names, addresses, or phone numbers and Save. Mark one address/phone as preferred.

Manage visibility, consents, and grants

On the person record, use Visibility, Consents, and Access grants so care teams can discover and write clinical data appropriately — see Visibility & consent.

Restrict a patient's record (VIP marking)

Some patients' presence in a facility is itself sensitive — a public figure, a member of staff, someone fleeing violence. Their record can be marked Restricted.

You will only see this on a patient's record if your account holds the dedicated confidentiality permission. It is not part of the ordinary patient-editing rights: being able to edit a patient does not let you change this, and the control simply is not shown to accounts that do not hold it.

1. Open the patient under Patients.
2. Find Confidentiality on the record. It shows either Standard or Restricted.
3. Choose Mark as restricted (or Remove the restriction).
4. Read what the change does, tick the confirmation, and confirm.

What each level means:

• Standard — staff sessioned at this facility can find and read the patient, as they can any patient registered here.
• Restricted — the patient is not discoverable at this facility. Access runs only through an individual access grant, a treating provider's scope, or break-glass.

Both directions take effect on each user's next request, and both are recorded against your account in the access audit trail.

:::warning A restricted patient still needs treating Restricting a record does not make it unreachable. Grant access to the individuals who need it, or rely on the treating provider's scope; in a genuine emergency, break-glass remains available and is time-boxed and reviewed. Do not use the marking as a substitute for those routes. :::

:::note Why there is no list of restricted patients Knowing that a particular person's record is restricted says something about them. That is why the marking appears only on the individual record, and why there is no badge in search results, no filter, no "restricted patients" count and no report. A list would identify every one of them without anyone opening a single record. If you ask for a patient you may not see, you get the same "not found" answer as for a patient who does not exist — that is deliberate, not a fault. :::

Remove a person

Removing hides (voids) the record rather than erasing it. You’ll be asked for a reason.

Tips & limitations

• Some organizations encrypt sensitive personal details at rest; day-to-day search and edit still work the same way.
• Duplicate people should be flagged for administrator merge when that tool is available — do not edit both records as if they were different people.
• After registration, clinical write access still depends on visibility/consent/grants for your account — being able to register someone does not always mean every clinician can chart yet.

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When something looks wrong

What you see	What it usually is
A patient cannot be found by name	Names are stored encrypted; after enabling that, existing records need the one-time backfill. Searching by identifier still works
A duplicate patient appears	Register once and link thereafter; duplicates are merged rather than deleted
A person cannot be created directly	Deliberate — people exist only by registering a patient, staff member or provider
A patient is not visible although they exist	They belong to another tenant or facility

For the causes common to every screen — a missing menu item, an empty list, a refusal — see Why a screen will not work.