Patent ID: 7318059

Claim:
A central record management system for assigning a patient specific record identifier for use by a plurality of healthcare related organizations, said plurality of organizations including individual organizations potentially having an existing record identifier associated with said patient, comprising: a search processor for determining, for a plurality of organizations, an identifier associated with a particular patient and used by an individual organization of said plurality of organizations; a rules processor for examining determined identifiers and for assigning a patient specific record identifier for use by said plurality of organizations based on predetermined identifier allocation rules for preventing assignment of the same identifier to different patients; and a database for storing said assigned patient specific record identifier, wherein if said search processor determines a first identifier is used by a first organization for a second patient different from said particular patient and said first identifier is also used by a second organization of said plurality of organizations for said particular patient, said rules processor assigns a patient specific identifier unused by patients in said plurality of organizations.