Tutorial ID | T-14 |
Section | Evidence Processing |
Title | Working with Duplicate Pages |
Subtitle | Identify duplicate pages accurately so your chronology reflects what actually happened. |
Before You Begin
You have a case with documents you want to review for duplicates.
What You Will Accomplish
By the end of this tutorial, duplicate pages in your case will be identified accurately and removed without losing unique information. You will know how to use the Duplicates and Pages compare tool and recognize the situations where a duplicate is easy to miss.
Why Does this Tutorial Matter
A page added twice without anyone noticing can make a single medical event look like two separate occurrences — distorting the true frequency or severity of treatment.
Beyond that legal risk, there's an operational cost: reviewers spend time analyzing what looks like two distinct events when, in reality, only one occurred. In large documents with thousands of pages, catching a duplicate by eye alone becomes impractical, which is exactly why a systematic approach matters.
What to Do if Something Goes Wrong
The list below covers the most common problems with duplicate pages. Each entry follows the same pattern: what you'll notice, why it likely happened, and how to fix it.
Note Identical pages can look different at a glance — a colored original and a greyscale copy of the same document may still be exact duplicates. Judge duplicates by content, not appearance. |
Problem: Duplicate pages enter the case during scanning or uploading and go unnoticed while the chronology is being built.
Likely cause: The same page gets scanned or uploaded more than once. The duplication stays invisible until someone is far enough into building the chronology to notice the same event showing up twice.
Example: Two identical pages of an emergency room intake form are scanned into the same batch — one in color, one as a greyscale copy. Both get added to the workspace as separate entries without anyone noticing they're the same page.
Fix:
Before building the chronology, review the documents for pages that look visually similar — especially pages with the same date, the same provider, and a similar structure.
As you work through pages or through staples in the workspace, click Add page to compare on any page that could be a duplicate.
Open Pages compare in the top-right corner and review the selected pages side by side. Confirm whether they're identical or similar-looking distinct records.
If the pages are confirmed as duplicates, click Remove page from workspace on the unnecessary copy, keeping only one version.
Continue this review systematically across each document. Pay close attention to low-quality or handwritten records and remember that identical pages can appear in different colors, such as a colored original next to a greyscale copy.
Problem: The first pages of two staples match, but the rest of each staple turns out to be different.
Likely cause: Two unrelated documents happen to start with the same page — often a shared cover sheet, intake form, or header — which makes the whole staple look like a duplicate at a glance, even though everything after that first page is unique.
Example: Two staples both start with the same intake form, but one continues into a physical therapy visit while the other continues into a follow-up appointment.
Fix:
If two staples begin with the same first page, don't assume the entire staple is duplicated based on that page alone.
Use Pages compare to compare the staples page by page, scrolling through the full length of both.
If the staples differ after the first page, keep both staples.
Compare staples to their full length whenever you find a partial match, rather than stopping the comparison after the first matching page.
Problem: The duplicate staple is assigned an incorrect date, which separates it from its match in the workspace and hides the duplication.
Likely cause: Duplicate staples with matching, correct dates tend to sit close together in the workspace, which makes them easy to notice. An incorrect date breaks that proximity, so the two copies end up far apart, separated by unrelated entries.
Example: The same physical therapy note appears twice, but one copy is dated correctly and the other is mistakenly assigned a date from three weeks later. The two entries end up on opposite ends of the workspace timeline, so nothing about their placement suggests they're duplicates.
Fix:
Before relying on proximity in the workspace to catch duplicates, confirm that the date assigned to each page is accurate.
If a page's date seems inconsistent with its content, correct it manually.
If you find two pages documenting the same event but dated differently, treat that as a strong signal to compare them directly using Pages compare.
After correcting a dating error tied to a duplicate, recheck the surrounding workspace entries in case the same issue hid other duplicates nearby.
Problem: The same document, completed at two different stages, gets treated as two different documents.
Likely cause: A form or intake sheet filled in gradually can produce more than one version as it's progressively completed. Without reading the handwritten content closely, an earlier and a later version of the same document can look unrelated.
Example: An intake form has one version with only the patient's name and date filled in, and a later version with the full history and provider notes added.
At a glance, the two look like different documents, but they're actually the same form at two points of completion.
Fix:
When two documents share the same printed template or structure but differ in handwritten content, don't assume they're unrelated without reading them closely.
Compare the printed sections of both documents first to confirm they come from the same template and record.
Review the handwritten content on each version to determine whether the later version simply builds on the earlier one, rather than documenting a separate event.
If the two versions are confirmed as progressive stages of the same document, keep the most complete version in the workspace.
Problem: The Duplicates tool clears the obvious matches, but a subtler duplicate still slips through.
Likely cause: The Duplicates tool evaluates pages primarily by structure, so it can miss duplicates with minor but meaningful differences that only become clear on closer manual reading.
Example: The Duplicates tool groups two clean copies of an X-ray order form together but misses a third copy that was scanned slightly crooked, with a corner cut off during scanning.
Fix:
Use the Duplicates tool to identify the most obvious duplicate pages across the case.
Manually confirm that each grouped page is genuinely identical before removing it, rather than assuming the tool's grouping is correct.
After using the tool, continue manual review — particularly in large documents or in documents with handwritten content, low quality, or progressive completion.
When you find a duplicate manually that the Duplicates tool didn't flag, use Pages compare to confirm it.
Summary
Duplicate pages in your case are now identified accurately and removed without losing unique information. The chronology reflects the true number of events, and the combination of the Duplicates tool and manual Pages compare review catches what either method would miss alone.