Sample Hospital Database

Submitted to:

Dr. Tinnakornsrisuphap

Prepared by:

Crystal Liang

HCIN-543 Database Design and Knowledge Management

8/27/2018
 Executive Summary

Databases and Database Management Systems (DBMSs) are critical to the success of any

business or organization. The purpose of an efficient and effective database is to provide fast and

easy access to information in order to make important operations decisions, increase

productivity, minimize inconsistency, and much more. In this report, a sample Hospital Database

is created to demonstrate the benefits of a database, as it depicts the Patient-Physician

relationship in a hospital or medical facility. Having this database can allow quick information

retrieval in determining the affiliation each patient has with the physicians in the hospital, and

vice-versa, where the patients of any physician can be easily defined. In addition to this, any

specific information pertaining to a patient in the hospital database such as PatientID, Name,

Date of Birth, and SSN can be retrieved and any information pertaining a physician, such as

Hospital ID, Name, Title, Specialty, Department, and NPI Number can be obtained.
1.0 Introduction

A database is a structure that contains information about many different categories of

information and about the relationships between those categories (Pratt & Last, 2016). Databases

must be properly structured to provide quick and efficient access to all of the organization’s

information necessary to run it successfully. This report will demonstrate a database with tables

that have many-to-many relationships between Patients and Physicians. It will illustrate an

example of how patients can be affiliated with multiple physicians, while physicians can have

multiple patients in their patient-base. Within this sample hospital database, specific information

will be manipulated to show the efficiency and effectiveness of proper database utilization and

management.

2.0 Methodology

Tables

The Sample Hospital Database created for this report contains three separate tables: the

Patient table, Physician table, and finally a joint (or junction) table of the two: PatientPhys. Each

individual table contains columns, or attributes that are data items stored in the database. In the

example, the Patient table contains the Patient ID, Patient’s First Name, Patient’s Last Name,

Date of Birth, and Social Security Number. Within this table, the primary key—a column that

uniquely identifies a record, is the Patient ID, as each individual patient has his/her unique ID

number within the hospital database system. This is identified in Database Design Language

format (DBDL) by the underline, as shown below. The alternate key (AK)—a column that could

have been chosen as the primary key, is the SSN, as it is a unique non-primary key that can be

used to identify a row in the table. The secondary key (SK)—a column that is of interest strictly
for the purpose of retrieval is the patient’s date of birth (DOB), as this is an item often used to

search for patients.

The second table is the Physician table, in which its columns contain the physician’s

hospital ID, Physician Name, Title, Specialty, Department, and NPI Number. The primary key

for this table is the PhysHospID, as it uniquely identifies each physician in the database, while

the AK is the NPI Number. Furthermore, the SK is the PhysName, as it is often indexed for

faster retrievals and searches. Finally, the third and last table in this sample hospital database is a

joint/junction table created between the first two tables to allow the occurrence of many-to-many

relationships between patients and physicians. By creating a new table called PatientPhys, in

which the primary key is a combination of PatientID and PhysHospID, this then provides a one-

to-many relationship between Patient and PatientPhys, and a one-to-many relationship between

Physician and PatientPhys, eliminating any possibilities of update anomalies.

Hospital Database
1 Patient (PatientID, FirstName, Lastname, DOB, SSN)
AK SSN
SK DOB
2. Physician (PhysHospID, PhysName, Title, Specialty, Department, NPINum)
AK NPINum
SK PhysName
3. PatientPhys (PatientID, PhysHospID)
FK PatientID, PhysHospID à Patient & Physician

Forms

In the Sample Database, a form is created for each table, with the specific intent for users

that do not have access to the tables directly. The forms are interfaces that allow users to enter

information, or retrieve information without altering or re-designing the tables. We have a

Patient Form, Physician Form, and PatientPhys Form, which allows authorized end users to enter
a new patient or physician if needed. In addition, forms tend to be more user friendly than

generating queries.

Queries

The following queries were created to manipulate specific information pertaining to the

relationship between patients and doctors. The first query, “PatientQuery,” was written to

retrieve information pertaining to patient Holly Jones. In doing so, this query required pulling

information from both the Patient table, as well as the Physician table, meanwhile the

PatientPhys table played the role of conjoining the two tables (relationship) together. In this

query, I wanted to see which physicians patient Holly Jones was affiliated with, using the

following SQL, followed by the table result:

SELECT T3.PatientID, FirstName, LastName, DOB, PhysName, Specialty

FROM (Physician AS T1 LEFT JOIN PatientPhys AS T2 ON T1.PhysHospID = T2.PhysHospID) LEFT JOIN

Patient AS T3 ON T2.PatientID = T3.PatientID

WHERE T3.PatientID = '200001'

PatientQuery
PatientID FirstName LastName DOB PhysName Specialty
200001 Holly Jones 3/1/1921 Barry Kendrick Internal Medicine
200001 Holly Jones 3/1/1921 Randal Redd Orthopedic Surgery

As depicted in the table result, patient Holly Jones is affiliated with two physicians: Dr. Barry

Kendrick, and Dr. Randal Redd. Utilizing this query can be beneficial when obtaining such

information is required for hospital business purposes, such as billing or referrals.

 The second query, “PhysicianQuery,” was specifically designed to retrieve information

pertaining to physician Randal Redd. I wanted to know which patients Dr. Randal Redd was

treating, therefore, with a similar query from the previous, the following SQL was written like

so, followed by the table result:

SELECT T1.PhysHospID, PhysName, T3.PatientID, FirstName, LastName, DOB

FROM (Physician AS T1 LEFT JOIN PatientPhys AS T2 ON T1.PhysHospID = T2.PhysHospID)

LEFT JOIN Patient AS T3 ON T2.PatientID = T3.PatientID

WHERE T1.PhysHospID = '1002'

PhysicianQuery
PhysHospID PhysName PatientID FirstName LastName DOB
1002 Randal Redd 200001 Holly Jones 3/1/1921
1002 Randal Redd 200002 Lloyd Perez 8/12/1933

As shown in the table above, Dr. Randal Redd (PhysHospID: 1002) is treating two patients:

Holly Jones, and Lloyd Perez.

3.0 Results

Reports

After conducting the two queries in the Sample Hospital Database, the final reports

contain all the information required to proceed. The PatientQuery was used to create the final

Patient report, which reflects the exact information listed from the table results. The

“PatientHollyJones” Report states that patient Holly Jones has a PatientID of 200001, DOB:

3/1/1921, and is affiliated with Dr. Randal Redd who specializes in orthopedic surgery, and Dr.

Barry Kendrick, who specializes in internal medicine. For the second report, the PhysicianQuery
was used to determine Dr. Randal Redd’s patients. According to the “PhysicianRandalRedd”

Report, Dr. Redd’s patients include Holly Jones (patient ID: 200001, DOB: 3/1/1921), and Lloyd

Perez (patient ID: 200002, DOB: 8/12/1933).

4.0 Conclusions and Recommendations

As demonstrated with this sample database, proper utilization of a database is vital in any part of

a business’ operations in today’s modern computing as it provides fast, accurate, pertinent, and

valuable information. The examples in this report show that information like so can be easily

retrieved if the data is stored properly, applied properly, and accessed by the right people.

Additionally, using such databases, especially with larger databases with multiple tables, is much

more beneficial than using spreadsheets, where there will be higher risks associated with the

integrity of the data and risks of errors occurring. Inevitably, the more complex hospital database

are, the more challenging, however, with appropriate usage and execution of these

comprehensive databases, the advantageous results are immense.

References

Pratt, P.J. & Last, M.Z. (2016). Concepts of Database Management (8th ed.). Boston, MA:

Cengage Learning