Re: [Gnumed-devel] Gui-Designers was the id_name debate

[J Busser]

At 11:39 PM +0200 9/16/04, Karsten Hilbert wrote:
>  > >  OSCAR refuses to permit you to
>  > > create a patient without entering a date of birth
>  > we have patients who refuse to give us a date of birth.
> >  here you can legally see a doctor without giving your correct identity
> Well, that doesn't mean the database should allow you to
> insert an inVALID date but rather allow for unknown (for
> arbitrary reasons) eg. NULL.

Agree

> Other options are "impossible"
> eg. 1.1.1800 or "infinity" or "-infinity" eg. later/earlier
> than any other valid date.

Don't like these

> Yet another possibility would be to assume a pseudo identity
> with formally valid but factually incorrect demographics.

Surely the above is offered (technically) as a way to satisfy the 
software at the expense of being governed purely  by clinical need. 
Moreover, is is not remotely possible that a pseudo-identity could be 
confused as a real patient attribute, and thereby produce a liability 
situation? Permitting the storing of a date that may be incorrect is 
a bad idea, because later enquiries which *ought* to match to the 
patient in question could cause the match to be rejected as "probably 
not the correct patient" on account of the possibly incorrect  date 
of birth.

> BTW what about liability ? I think it might be possible to
> construe cases where the doctor would have done/recommended
> certain checks/procedures had he known the real age but didn't
> in view of the lack of age information ?

I repeat it seems important to be able to create a patient with a 
date of birth that is any of:
- null (default) or
- valid date or
- ? possibly - somehow able to be recorded as "believed to be 
unknowable" or (perhaps) only a year of birth as an approximate year 
which may or not be correct.