Archiving a Patient

How to archive a patient, find archived patients

Shelley Withington avatar
Written by Shelley Withington
Updated over a week ago

Archiving a patient removes them from searches and takes them off the recall list for your dental practice, without deleting their history. This can be done if a patient has become deceased, moved away or has changed dental practitioner.

Example GIF below 👇

To archive a patient

archive patient

You can archive a patient by navigating to the Details tab in a patient’s account, clicking the More button and selecting Archive Record.

You will be asked to confirm the reason for archiving the patient by selecting one of the following options:

  • Deceased - If the patient has died.

  • Lapsed - If the patient has not attended the practice for some time you should consider them lapsed.

  • Duplicate - If the Patient record was created in error.

    • Note: If the patient file contains appointment data we recommend using the Merge Patient Record function instead.

  • No reason given- If none of the above applies.

Once confirmed the patient record will be archived. The reason for archiving will be displayed on the patient record.

If the archive reason selected was Deceased, note that the patient will be removed from the recall list and you will be unable to send communications to the patient as email reply functions will be disabled for the patient.

Tip: When choosing "No reason given" as an archive reason, it can be a good idea to put the reason on a sticky note on the patient record and pin it, for others to see.

Locate an archived patient

Once a patient has been archived, you can still find their records using the patient search. To find an archived patient, add an asterisk (*) at the front of your search criteria (name, mobile number or DoB).

To un-archive a patient

Once you have found and opened an archived patient, you can unarchive them if required using the Unarchive button in the Details tab of their records.

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