Case Logbook docs

Help › Capturing cases › The MRN

The MRN

In short. The MRN is the hospital number that ties a case to your hospital’s own records, so it is locked once a case has one. If it is genuinely wrong, the app corrects it the safe way: a fresh copy of the case with the right number, and the old one hidden.

Why the MRN is locked

Every case carries an MRN, the same number your hospital’s records use. It links the case to an eLogbook export, a settlement sheet and your credentialing report, and the app uses it to match the same patient across all of them. Changing it quietly would cut the case loose from those records.

So once a case has an MRN you can see it but not edit it. When you add a patient name to a case that came in without one, you fill in the name only; the MRN stays fixed beside it.

Correcting a wrong MRN

Use this for a real error: a digit slipped, or it was typed from the wrong record. Open the case, tap the menu, and choose Correct the MRN. A four-step guide follows.

  1. Review. You see the case as it stands, including the MRN on it.
  2. Enter the corrected MRN. Type the right number. Other details are pre-filled, and you can fix them too. The hospital cannot change; the corrected case stays at the same hospital. The new MRN is scrambled on your phone before it leaves it.
  3. Choose what carries over. The procedures, your surgical team, teaching tags and photos move across by default, because the operation still happened. Authority sign-offs and import history stay behind by default, because they may belong to the wrong record. Each is an on/off switch, and anything you leave off stays with the old case, hidden but kept. If the case has earnings, the guide asks whether to move them too; leaving them behind is the safe default.
  4. Confirm. Type the corrected MRN once more and tap Correct the MRN. You land on the new case.

The old case is hidden, not deleted. It drops off your case list and is kept as a record of the correction. If the corrected MRN is on a hospital sheet, the case is confirmed the next time that sheet is matched. If you moved the earnings, that match also lines them up with the settlement sheet and marks the case verified again.

Less common

  • Earnings move only if you say so. Moving them re-links the figures to the corrected case. The amounts never change.
  • Bilateral pairs. Correct the MRN on the main case of the pair, and the other side follows it, so both stay linked. If you open one side and choose Correct the MRN, the app sends you to the main case instead.
  • You can always add or correct the name without this guide. Only the MRN is locked.
  • Your data stays scrambled. The servers only ever store the MRN as unreadable bytes. See Where your data lives.