Adding a Patient when Online with your Smartcard
Searching the PDS using the patient's demographic data is known as 'tracing the patient'. Before a patient can be registered, their details must be traced on the PDS so that a valid NHS number can be returned. This is done from the Registration – New Patient. Vision 3 uses advance trace only to find a patient on the PDS. Advanced trace uses either an alphanumeric or algorithmic search depending on the details that you enter and allows patients with limited demographic information to be traced.
Advanced Tracing - Alphanumeric
The alphanumeric trace can return more than one record at a time (however, for the current release only one record is returned at a time). Entering the following criteria will execute an alphanumeric advanced trace:
- Surname
- Gender
- Date of Birth
Wildcard* Search
Within an alphanumeric search, you are now able to use the wildcard * option to trace a patient. This is done by entering the asterisk character * within the forename, surname and postcode boxes. However this must be preceded by at least two characters. Wildcards may only be used with alphanumeric searches.
If you enter the wildcard * before the first two characters, the following warning displays: "Please precede NNN with at least two characters prior to the wildcard character (*) when performing a wildcard search".
Advanced Tracing - Algorithmic
The algorithmic search traces the PDS using a predetermined set of rules for each element and returns those records that most closely match. It is best used once alphanumeric searching has failed. One of the following combinations of information must be provided:
- Surname, forename, date of birth, gender;
- Surname, postcode, date of birth, gender;
- Forename, postcode, date of birth, gender.
Find 
is not available until the criteria for one of these search types have been entered.
Soundex Algorithmic Trace
Ticking the Soundex check box 
runs another type of algorithmic trace. This allows more in depth searches of the PDS ie a search can be run on phonetic spelling of names as pronounced in English or any incomplete details entered (ie 1980 for DOB).
Surnames with Punctuation
If the surname entered contains a punctuation character, an Advanced Trace will be run according to the below criteria:
if one of the first two characters in the surname is a punctuation character an algorithmic trace will be run;
if neither of the first two characters is a punctuation character, any punctuation characters will be replaced by an asterisk and an alphanumeric trace run.
