More about Mass Casualty IDs

This expands the discussion in the Users Guide about the New Report's Mass Casualty ID (aka Patient ID)

Duplicate Detection

When a candidate Mass Casualty ID is entered/edited in the New Report field, if a conflict is detected, the field will turn orange and a brief message appear.

In versions of TP8 before December 2015, a ID had to be unique within the disaster event, but not across events. In late 2015, TriageTrak (and with Release 8, this app) revised this conception, to instead require global (across event) ID uniqueness. Excluded from this check will be IDs that have already expired or been deleted at TriageTrak. This approach will make treatment of manual and AUTO-generated IDs (discussed below) more similar. When looking for a conflict, IDs are considered to match whether or not they have an "AUTO" suffix.

As of Release 8, conflict messages and their meanings are:

• "Used - in Outbox". This means the ID was earlier reported by your station, and is still present in your local cache. Note that only reports for the current event are checked for this.
• "Used - This Event" (called "Used - TriageTrak" before Release 8). This ID was not found in your Outbox for the current event, but was found on TriageTrack for the current event, so was likely sent by a different station.
• "Used - Other Event". Like the foregoing, but for any other event than the current one. (It may or may not be in your Outbox.)
• "Reserved". Another station (with a TriagePic app available for other platforms, that supports reserving blocks of "AUTO" IDs in advance), has reserved but not yet used the ID.

If Wifi/network connectivity is down, then only the first of these messages might appear. In that case, duplication detection is limited, and so external guarantees of uniqueness will be important.

In deployments where there is reuse of IDs between events, consider asking your TriageTrak administrator about these policies and practices to reduce ID conflicts:

• Drop older events from the system, or mass-expire their records.
• Change the hospital-specific ID prefix periodically (though this may cause some other problems).

Reservation of AUTO Ids

TriagePic versions on other platforms are taking the lead on an alternative method of ID assignment, in cases where it's preferable to ask TriageTrak to generate a block (e.g., 32) of Mass Casualty IDs in advance. These are reserved for use by the requesting app, which remembers them and subsequently doles them out. They start with the string "AUTO", followed by the organization-assigned prefix and a number guaranteeing uniqueness across events. At this time, such numbers are chosen by TriageTrak and cannot be specified by the app user. While the current version of TP8 does not support this method, you may see "AUTO" IDs in the All Stations list or Search results, if your hospital uses the other platforms with TriagePic. Also, a particular ID without AUTO and with it are considered to be the same patient. So when New Report checks to see if an ID is already in use, and colors fields accordingly, it checks both with and without "AUTO".

Other ID Entry Features of TriagePic on Other Platforms, but Not (Yet) Here

• ID bar coding reading. TP8 is limited to using an external barcode reader. Other platforms offer other choices. For instance, on TP on Windows 7 (TP7) has some experimental webcam barcode capability using the webcam, not present in TP8. (TP7 also has a separate dialog tool to use with an external barcode reader. This is less necessary in TP8.)
• TP7 also has a separate "Practice" mode, that can use a separate enumeration for Mass Casualty ID with a "Practice-" prefix. This is becoming less supported over time.