PATIENT
- Only patients that have clinical records are included in this table (patients without any clinical records – no records in any table – are scrubbed prior to release of the national database).
- While there is a field for ethnicity and occupation – this data is largely unpopulated, even in the orig fields.
- The active status indicates whether a patient is active, inactive, or deceased. This field reflects the status of the patient at the time of the data extraction. Not all patients have a status – it can be dependent on the EMR and the jurisdiction.
- A calculated start date has been created to provide researchers with the last record of activity for a patient (the last observed record date in any CPCSSN table). This date can be used to determine a patient’s active status.
- Date variables: use Start Date.