Which method is used, if a birth date is different by one day in a patient record in an incoming data file, the match to the patient record in the database can still be made.

• A. Deterministic
• B. Manual adjudication
• C. Probabilistic
• D. Neither

Answer: (C)

Probabilistic matching is designed for linking records when data aren’t perfect. It doesn’t require every field to be identical; instead it evaluates how likely it is that two records refer to the same person by weighing agreements and disagreements across multiple fields (like birth date, name, sex, address). A birth date that differs by one day is a small discrepancy that can occur from data entry errors or different data capture times. In a probabilistic approach, that one-day difference only slightly lowers the overall similarity score, and if the other fields align well, the combined probability can still exceed the threshold to declare a match. This makes it well suited to real-world data where exact matches aren’t guaranteed. Deterministic matching would fail in this scenario because it needs exact birth dates, and manual adjudication is more labor-intensive and used mainly for uncertain cases. So probabilistic matching best enables a correct link despite a one-day difference in birth date.