>select p.*, s.* from patients p left outer join patientstatus s
>on ((p.id=s.id) and (p.name=s.name)) order by name

>trouble is this returns the rows that have matching records in both tables
>in order and then the records that only have only data in the primary table
>in no particular order.

Simple one. You order by name, but don't specify which name (patients or
patientstatus). IB selects the wrong name, and since some of the records
doesn't have anything in this field, they're ordered randomly. Just change
your query to

select p.*, s.* from patients p left outer join patientstatus s
on ((p.id=s.id) and (p.name=s.name)) order by patients.name

and you should be fine.

Set