How to Add a New Patient to the Team

Introduction

Adding a patient to your team allows you to manage their care within CAREFUL. You can search for existing patients in the system, create new patient records, or add patients from external sources. CAREFUL's intelligent duplicate detection helps prevent duplicate patient records while making it easy to add new patients when needed.

Before You Start

• You must be a member of the team you want to add the patient to
• If you belong to multiple teams, you'll be able to choose which team to add the patient to
• The patient's basic information (at minimum, first and last name) should be available

Steps

Adding an Existing Patient

1. Navigate to the team view by selecting My Teams from the sidebar, then click on the team you want to add the patient to
2. Click the kebab menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the screen
3. Select Add patient from the menu - the Find a Patient dialog appears
4. Search for the patient using any of these fields:
   • Nat.ID - National identifier or NHS number
   • Medical Record Number - Hospital MRN
   • First Name - Type at least 2 characters to trigger search
   • Last Name - Type at least 2 characters to trigger search
   • Date of birth - Use the date picker (dd-MM-yyyy format)
   • Gender - Select Male, Female, or Other
5. As you type, matching patients appear in a dropdown below the field - review the results showing patient name, date of birth, and identifiers
6. Click on the patient you want to add from the dropdown results - their information automatically fills the form
7. Click Confirm to proceed to the Add Patient screen
8. If you belong to multiple teams, select the team from the Team dropdown (if you only belong to one team, this field is pre-filled and read-only)
9. Complete the optional fields as needed:
   • New clinical summary - Add clinical notes (appears if the patient was previously inactive)
   • Patient status - Select from your organization's status options or choose "No status"
   • Referral source - Enter where the patient was referred from
10. Click Submit - a spinner appears showing "Adding..." while the patient is being added
11. The dialog closes automatically and the patient appears in your team's patient list

Creating a New Patient

1. Navigate to the team view and click the kebab menu (⋮), then select Add patient
2. In the Find a Patient dialog, enter at least the patient's First Name and Last Name (both required fields)
3. Click Create Patient - the Create a Patient screen appears with your entered information pre-filled
4. Complete the required fields:
   • First Name * - Already filled from your search
   • Last Name * - Already filled from your search
   • Team * - Select the team (or pre-filled if you only have one team)
5. Fill in the optional demographic fields:
   • Nat.ID - National identifier
   • Medical Record Number - Hospital MRN
   • Gender - Select from the dropdown
   • Date of birth - Choose from the date picker
   • Current clinical summary - Enter diagnosis or clinical notes
   • Patient status - Select from your organization's options
   • Referral source - Enter where the patient came from
6. If CAREFUL detects potential duplicate patients, you'll see one of these warnings:
   • Potential Duplicate Patient - One matching record found. You can choose to use the existing patient or create a new record
   • Potential Duplicate Patients Found - Multiple matches found. Review the list and select an existing patient, or click Create as New Patient to proceed anyway
7. Click Create Patient to create the new record
8. You'll be automatically navigated to the new patient's detail page, and the patient appears in your team's patient list

Adding an External Patient

1. Follow the steps for adding an existing patient (steps 1-6 above)
2. When you see a patient with an External label in the search results, click to select them
3. Click Confirm to proceed - you'll see the full patient form with all demographic fields available for editing
4. Review and update the patient information as needed (all fields are editable for external patients)
5. Select the Team and complete optional fields (New clinical summary, Patient status, Referral source)
6. Click Submit to import the external patient and add them to your team

Tips

• Fast searching: You can search by any single field or combination of fields. The search automatically triggers 300ms after you stop typing, so you don't need to press Enter
• Clear and start over: If you've filled in search fields and want to start fresh, click the Clear All button that appears when any field has data
• Already in the team? If the patient is already a member of all your teams, CAREFUL will show a warning and prevent duplicate team assignments
• Invalid dates: Date of birth must be between 1900 and the current year
• Duplicate detection: When creating a new patient, CAREFUL checks for matches by name, NHS number, and hospital number to prevent duplicate records
• External patients: Patients marked as "External" come from integrated external systems. You can edit their full demographic information when adding them to your team
• Required fields: Fields marked with an asterisk (*) must be completed before you can submit

Related Features

• How to Edit Patient Demographics - Update patient information after they've been added
• How to Discharge a Patient from a Team - Remove a patient when their care is complete
• How to Transfer a Patient Between Teams - Move patients to different teams within your organization