There are times when a GMS Family consists of patients who have different Card Numbers.

For example a married couple who both had GMS Medical Cards in their own names prior to getting married will have different Medical Card numbers but when they are married they will be considered part of the same GMS Family.

In these cases instead of the system being able to automatically link patients we will need to manually tell the system that Patient A and Patient B are part of a GMS Family.

How to manually set up a GMS Family for the first time:

• Choose a patient in the family to act as "Head of Family" - it doesn't matter who it is, we just need to pick one person in the family

• Navigate to that patient's PMR

• Click Edit (F3) or press F3 on your keyboard

• Select the Family tab or ALT + F on your keyboard

• Click the Head of Family button

N.B. If there is no Head of Family button then the patient is already part of a family in the system

• You will now see that the Family Identifier box is populated with the ID of the patient

• This ID is what is used to specify that patients are part of the same family e.g. patients who share the same Family Identifier ID will be considered to be in the same family

• You will now be able to Link patients to this family

How to Link Family Members For the First Time:

• Once you have completed the above steps you will now see a Link Family Members button, select this

• In the below screen, you can search for the person you wish to link by using either scheme reference or surname

• You can use the Select All to select all patients on the list OR highlight the patient you wish to link to the Family

• Click the Link button

• You will then get the below confirmation box. Click Yes to complete the linking process or No to cancel

• The linked patient(s) will then appear at the bottom of the screen as displayed below

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How to add a patient to an existing GMS Family:

• Navigate to the patient's PMR you wish to add to the family link

• Click Edit (F3) or press (KEYBOARD: F3)

• Select the Family tab (KEYBOARD: ALT + F)

• Click the "..." button beside Family Identifier and search for the "Head of Family" patient

• The Family Identifier will now be populated with that patient's ID

• The linked patient(s) will then appear at the bottom of the screen

• Now you will need to specify the Relationship that this patient has to the "Head of Family" e.g. Brother, Daughter etc...

• Click the Relationship dropdown and choose the relevant option

Please note: To REMOVE a member from the Family Link, navigate to that patient's PMR , select the Family tab, and press the CLEAR button