Question: A patient died before their identity was confirmed, and so only had an anonymous Connect Care chart. Is it possible to initiate and complete a digital Medical Certificate of Death (MCoD) for them?
Context: When an unknown patient is admitted to a Connect Care facility (emergency or inpatient context), they are assigned an anonymous name, chart, and record numbers so that care can proceed. Some demographic details are also system-generated and defaulted into the anonymous chart. As soon as the unknown patient is formally identified, patient registration (Health Information Management [HIM], sometimes referred to as “admitting”) is informed and the anonymous chart is moved to a permanent chart with the validated information. Until that chart merge occurs, clinicians can work from the temporary Connect Care chart, using the defaulted anonymous details.
If an unknown patient dies prior to identification, in expectation of identifying information soon becoming available, a prescriber may wish to defer creating a MCoD until later within the 72-hour post-death window allowed, as it is best to work with an updated chart with validated values. However, if this is not possible, the prescriber can create an interim digital MCoD for the unknown patient. The prescriber can later change/re-issue a MCoD when requested.
Answer: An interim digital MCoD can be created for an unknown patient using the Deceased Navigator. Just as the "chart abstraction" function pulls details from a fully identified patient's chart into a digital MCoD, Connect Care will pull the system-generated defaulted values for an unknown patient. The author should leave these defaulted values unless correct details are known. The rest of the MCoD generation and signing process replicates what is done for fully identified patients, and the interim digital MCoD can later be edited or re-issued when validated information is made available (see separate FAQ).
For more details, see the tip sheet: