Constituent entry

Patti Posey:
Hi Linda:<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
I enter all physicians in our database as the primary record since they have the association with hospital.  I give them a constituent code Medical Staff and enter all their info (dept, specialty, location, date of hire, etc.)  If they have a spouse we add the spouse on their record but do not give them their own record unless they are involved with the hospital or foundation in any way (committee member, volunteer, etc.)  On the physicians record for the addressee/sal our primary sal is John Smith, MD, sal Dr. Smith, informal John.  Then we add an invitation addressee Dr. and Mrs. John Smith, invitation sal Dr. and Mrs. Smith, informal sal2 John and Nancy, for mail that we want to include spouse.  If I create a record for the spouse I add an attribute mail code Spouse Record and use that in our queries so we don't send mail to both records.  I also do this for our employees.Hope this helps.

Patti Posey

Stamford Hospital Foundation

1351 Washington Blvd., Suite 202Stamford, CT  06902(203) 276-5975pposey@stamhealth.orgwww.stamfordhospitalfoundation.org 

Patti's response would be my recommendation also.  It may be a matter of symantics - but no you do not want to "merge" the records.  That would leave you with one record. 

As Patti, said relationships are how to manage this in RE.  We have many cases where both spouses have records in RE - they are linked by relationship.  Our addressee/salutations on both records have formats that list both individuals so we can mail from whichever record is appropriate in the situation.  Sometimes just using the Head of Household option gives us what we want other times, we refer to an attribute indicating their spouse also has a record.

A key as you can see in Patti's response is to have add/sal formatted for what you need.  We created a list of those we want/use and can then default to get the different formats.