st: Need help with combing observations by using by: command along with subscripting

[Michael Stewart <michaelstewartresearch@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I need help with following data where I am trying to combine
observations for each patient

PATIENTno   dtbirth	  medicalrecordnumber	accountnumber
    1	          8/10/1907	    1111111	
    1	           .			                                    dddddddd	
   2	         12/14/1910	   222222222	
   2	             .			                                     eeeeee
   3	          4/16/1914	    33333333	              rrrrrrr


PATIENTno,medicalrecordnumber & accountnumber -->STRING format

dtbirth-->%td format


I need to combine row one and row two for patient 1 so that resultatnt
row will have information from both rows one and row two

I tried to use subscripting as follows

bysort PATIENTno dtbirth: repalce medicalrecordnumber= medicalrecordnumber[_n-1]

then all values for the medicalrecordnumber are turning to blank spaces

I also tried bysort PATIENTno dtbirth: repalce medicalrecordnumber=
medicalrecordnumber[1] but it didnt work either.

Can you please help.

--
Thank you ,
Yours Sincerely,
Mike.
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