Patient ID (0010,0020)

What it holds

The primary identifier for the patient, usually the hospital's medical record number (MRN).

In migrations and validation

The single most important field in reconciliation. After mergers and multi-site consolidations, the same person often appears under several MRNs, and the same MRN can mean different people at different sites. Pair it with Issuer of Patient ID, and map identifiers against the master patient index before loading the target.

Related tags

• Issuer of Patient ID (0010,0021): IssuerOfPatientID, LO
• Other Patient IDs Sequence (0010,1002): OtherPatientIDsSequence, SQ
• Patient's Name (0010,0010): PatientName, PN

More patient tags

• Patient's Birth Date (0010,0030)
• Patient's Sex (0010,0040)
• Patient's Age (0010,1010)

Tag, keyword, VR and VM per the DICOM standard, PS3.6 data dictionary. Notes by DICOMATICS. Looking for another tag? Use the DICOM tag lookup.