Reference no: EM133187202

Draw an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) for a Patient Registration System. Please identify the entities, primary key(s), attributes and relationships (cardinalities).

Patient registration

A patient's fiffirstirst point of interaction after entering the hospital is with the ticket issue counter (hereafter referred to as the 'ticket counter'). This is a very small counter with little physical space available to attend to the registration of all patients at the hospital. There are two different queues: one for the 'first-time' patients and another for repeat patients of the hospital. As no proper directions are given, the patients themselves have to identify the ticket counter, which is situated a distance away from the entrance to the hospital, and they must also identify the specifific queues to which they belong. If it is a fifirst-time patient, he/she will be given a prescription form by the ticket clerks at the ticket counter, to be fifilled in and handed to the Doctor by the patient. The form will require the patient to fifillfill in details such as the name, address, age, gender and the occupation of the patient. At this point, a record starts for the patient at the ticket counter, and he/she will be issued with a registration number. The registration number comes with a numerator and a denominator. The denominator denotes the month (where an alphabetical index is used to represent the different months, where January is represented by A and February by B, etc.) in which the patient visited the hospital for the fifirst time, and the numerator denotes the number that is assigned to the patient. Together with this registration number, the patient is also issued with a registration form that the patient should always bring along with him/her when he/she visits the hospital. This form also needs to be completed by the patient and requires (1) the registration number issued to the patient, (2) the name of the patient and (3) the date. The summary details on the prescription form are also entered by the staff in a separate manual log book that is maintained by the ticket counter. It captures the date, and the patients (including name, age, registration number and residential details) that were treated on that date. This is used for record-keeping purposes to know the exact number of patients who were treated within the day/ week/month and so on. Upon registration, the patient is then directed to the OPD. Here a doctor will examine the patient and will record details of the diagnosis and the prescription for medicine on the prescription form that was issued to the patient at the ticket counter.

If the patient is a repeat patient (either of the OPD or of the clinics that are explained further in the sections 'Outdoor patient department' and 'Clinical care', respectively), the patient's records should already be available with the ticket issuing counter. Upon submission of the registration form (which the patient at the initial visit is given to carry with them on any occasion that they visit the hospital for medication), the ticket clerks will retrieve the records from the fifiling shelf where the records are maintained (see the section 'Record keeping and health information management' for further details). The retrieved record is then handed over to the patient who is either directed or escorted to the waiting area near the consultation chamber.

It is clear that the ticket-issuing process is time consuming and, although the staff do try to be as effificient as possible, there are long queues especially during the peak hours. Often there is a lack of staff to handle the work load, at which times other hospital staff (from various designations) are called in for assistance. This ad hoc allocation of staff as need arises has created obvious issues from a HR perspective, as issues like establishing clear role accountability and training are frequently overlooked.