This allows you to move duplicate patients forward or backward in time to help you build out their history.

• A. Time shifting
• B. Timeline adjustment
• C. Date sliding
• D. Time travel

Answer: (C)

Adjusting historical timestamps to build a single, coherent patient history is the idea here. Date sliding is the technique of moving the dates of events for duplicate patient records forward or backward within a controlled window so you can weave together one continuous timeline without changing the sequence of events. This keeps the history plausible and consistent while allowing duplicates to be merged effectively.

This approach is preferable because it uses defined, limited date adjustments to create a complete longitudinal record, rather than broad or unrealistic changes. Other terms are less precise: time shifting is similar but not the standard term, timeline adjustment is vague, and time travel implies actual movement through time rather than careful date edits in the data. For example, if two duplicates have events clustered around the same period, date sliding can place one record’s events slightly earlier or later to produce a seamless, non-duplicative history.