Data Collation For Monthly Reporting Problem

[VinylKnights]

I work for the NHS and every month one of my tasks is to go through a pile of what is called 'thermometer surveys' there will be one filled in per day for any member of staff who administers care to a patient. Recorded on the sheet are the NHS numbers of patients. Now when I compile my (similar to) Exel report each month there is no way for me during entering the NHS numbers to see if this NHS number (patient) has already been administered care on a different day or by a different member of staff. So I am currently laboriously have 17 A4 pages as a template that I photocopy the masters of having the NHS number format first 3 figures (of 10) then I hand write each entry down and if I come across a duplicate, backtrack through my paperwork to collate that patients care record. This takes me a huge amount of time, I usually take it home to do at the weekend, but I am sure there must be a program or something I could use like scanning them then they can read and as I'm typing a number on my laptop the program will tell me if that number has already been entered that month..?

[New Judge]

"...you would use Find and Replace - in this case find-only"

Find what, Peter? The user would have to know the identity of the duplicate record to find the duplicates!

Anyway, no matter. There's stacks of ways this can be done. But it seems that there are fundamental shortcomings with the system used. It needs a drains up along the lines twix describes. I have spent a lot of my working life devising such systems. The NHS is clearly a couple of decades behind the private sector. The sort of thing the OP describes is bread and butter to many companies and they would not pay for staff to sort through photo-copied sheets of paper to manipulate the data they contain. No wonder the NHS costs so much to run.