If I search for a patron barcode, particularly one that has been deleted, there is a slight chance that this number could be part of another searchable field in the patron record, like a phone number. In that case, the Koha might just go straight into the record without skipping a beat, and staff make the assumption that they are in the correct record. It would be preferable that unless an exact match is made on search criteria, Koha only displays search results rather than going straight into the record, if it is only the closest match. There is still room for error, but this would help shave that rate down a bit. Close or partial matches should not go straight into a record. If you are typing a patron name or number and the suggestions show up, it is on the staff member for picking the right or wrong patron. But if the system is throwing us into a record based on loose information, that is a problem.
We've had staff feedback about this as well. When they are working quickly, they may not see that the patron record retrieved was not the intended record on an inexact match.
We see this as a problem as well. Going straight into the wrong record causes also unnecessary viewing of patron records.
Since there is now a system preference RedirectToSoleResult for catalogue searches, could this kind of preference be made for patron searches as well? It is much more important for patron searches that you aren't redirected to a result because there are many possibilities for wrong matches and this kind of preference would allow us to select the behavior we want. The only time we would like patron search to go straight to the patron record is when the search is an exact match for a patrons library card. There probably should be a preference also for which exact matches are redirected. This new preference should therefore have options for redirect, don't redirect and redirect on an exact match, which in turn has its own preference for selecting exact matches that do redirect to patrons record.