1. A central record management system for assigning a patient specific record identifier for use by a plurality of healthcare related organizations, said plurality of organizations including individual organizations potentially having an existing record identifier associated with said patient, comprising: a search processor for determining, for a plurality of organizations, an identifier associated with a particular patient and used by an individual organization of said plurality of organizations; a rules processor for examining determined identifiers and for assigning a patient specific record identifier for use by at least one of said plurality of organizations based on predetermined identifier allocation rules for preventing assignment of the same identifier to different patients; and a database for storing said assigned patient specific record identifier.