Patch Tool Artifacts

Hello Forum

I'm hoping that this post will confirm some things for me re: the Patch Tool.  I did follow the instructions on the FAQ page regarding artifacts, but nothing changed.  

The Resources:

Photoshop CC (version 19.1.0)

Win10 64-bit

24 GB of RAM

NVIDIA GeForce  GTX 645 (all drivers updated as of today). 

The Problem:

I used a few layers to remove some skin blemishes using the Patch Tool, Content-Aware, Sample All Layers.  However, now when I create a copy of the original image layer to use the Healing Brush to remove some hot spots on the face, "patches" of artifacts show up from the upper layers where I've used the Patch Tool.  The only thing I can do is merge/flatten the layers and THEN use the healing brush.  Just wondering if that is the only way of doing this.  Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Daryl