The Person Names to Use Sequence (0010,0011) enables care providers to use the name that is chosen by the person. These names may differ from a person’s legal name. They are the appropriate names to be used in person-centered healthcare conversations. The name to be used in conversation might not be the same as the Patient’s Name (0010,0010) used in the SOP Instances.

Different cultures and social structures can result in a wide variety of kinds of names and name usage. Person Names to Use Sequence (0010,0011) allows support of this variety.

For example, the Swiss have identified seven (7) kinds of names that they officially recognize. See http://fhir.ch/ig/ch-core/ValueSet-ech-11-namedatatype.html. In addition, there are unofficial informal name uses that can be critically important in social interactions with patients.

For example, there is the use of a “customary” name in cultures where the registered name is inconvenient and used only in special legal circumstances. There is a Dutch photographer, cinematographer, and director whose official registered name is "Anton Johannes Gerrit Corbijn van Willenswaard" and he uses "Anton Corbijn" for almost all purposes. There will be a local policy for which of his names is used as Patient’s Name (0010,0010), and this may be different from place to place. The Person Name to Use Sequence (0010,0011) for him will contain "Anton Corbijn".

The Person Name to Use Sequence (0010,0011) can also reflect name changes that are in process, and name uses that are informal personal preferences.

The Person Name to Use Sequence includes optional applicability dates and comments. These can be used to capture information about change history, which can be important when understanding the patient record for a patient that has a long history and whose name has changed during that history.

For example, the HL7 v2.9 encoding of Anton Corbijn’s name might be any of the following five encodings:

1. PID|||patientID^^^^MR||Corbijn van Willenswaard^Anton Johannes Gerrit^^^^^L~^^^^^^N^^^^^^^^^^
        Anton Corbijn||19550522000000|M|
2. PID|||patientID^^^^MR||Corbijn van Willenswaard^Anton Johannes Gerrit^^^^^L^^^^^^^^^^Anton Corbijn||19550522000000|M|
3. PID|||patientID^^^^MR||Corbijn van Willenswaard^Anton Johannes Gerrit^^^^^L~Corbijn^Anton^^^^^N||19550522000000|M|  
4. PID|||patientID^^^^MR||Corbijn^Anton^^^^^N||19550522000000|M|
5. PID|||patientID^^^^MR||Corbijn^Anton^^^^^L||19550522000000|M|

The last entry is incorrect, because it has marked his name to use as his legal name.

The corresponding Name to Use (0010,0012) for encodings 1 and 2 would contain:

Anton Corbijn

The Person Name to Use Sequence (0010,0011) cannot be determined from encodings 3, 4, and 5. It could be provided based on other information, or could be absent.