Patient Demographic Service (PDS) and Selecting a Patient

In England, a patient’s record is synchronised with the Patient Demographic Service (PDS) whenever the patient is selected in Vision. Synchronisation is the most important aspect of connecting to the PDS as it ensures that a patient’s demographic details are up to date and correct when shared across the NHS, it involves comparing the demographic details held nationally for the patient on the PDS with those on the local system. Any differences are highlighted via a split-screen Please resolve the PDS/Vision mismatches screen:

The Please resolve the PDS/Vision mismatches screen allows you to manually align the local patient demographic details with those held on the PDS.

Note - It is essential that the nationally held patient record is correct as other NHS organisations may be updated automatically from it.

From the splits screen you can either align the two records or defer the synchronisation to a later period if more time is needed to you to confirm the correct details.

The first time a record is synchronised there maybe a number of differences that need to be considered to ensure that the aligned record is correct (ie a mixture of local and PDS information). However, once the record has been synchronised then updates from the PDS should be accepted as they will be updates that have been made nationally that are newer than the ones held locally (for example by the patient updating their details at the local hospital). Any updates made locally to a record are automatically sent to the PDS.

If you choose the Update button the selected data fields are compared to the local data and any changes written. Similarly, the data is compared to the PDS data and any changes transmitted to the patient’s national record.

Selecting Defer closes the dialog without transmitting any changes. If you defer and also select the "Suspend National Services" checkbox, the patient session is treated as "unlinked" (not synchronised with the PDS) from PDS and National Services such as EPS, Choose and Book, Summary Care Record and GP2GP EPS are unavailable to the patient for this session.

Note - It is essential that patient records are not continuously deferred as this would mean that correct information held locally is not being be shared with other NHS organisations providing care to the patient.
See PDS Mismatch, Set Contacts, Registration Links Amendments and Event Log for further details.