When entering name to search for a new patient, the system could flag matches against the medicare last name or medicare first name fields in addition to the normal name fields. The matches perhaps could show lower in the list of matches but still be there.

Consider this example: Mr Robert Smith, who everyone calls Bob.
- If we enter him as Bob Smith, with a medicare first name of Robert, but the Dr writes a script as Robert Smith. We type in "smith r" and don't get a match so we type all his details in and only when we go to save does the system tell us there is a matching medicare number.
- Alternatively we just enter him as Robert Smith but his friendly GP writes a script for Bob Smith and the same problem occurs.

This system would allow us to use the first name field for the patient's preferred name (which helps us know how they want to be addressed) while not messing with PBS online and not running into the problem of entering in the same patient more than once.

(Obviously, scanned scripts work around this problem by matching medicare number, so the bulk of our scripts aren't affected by this problem)