When patients have passed away, moved, or will no longer be seen at the practice, you can change the patient status to “Archived.” Archiving patients simplifies your database and makes selecting patients faster and easier.
Keep in mind that you cannot archive:
- Patients with future due payment plans or outstanding insurance claims.
- Patients who are subscribers to an insurance plan for other family members.
- Guarantors, until you have archived other family members.
- Guarantors that have a payment agreement or an account balance.
To archive a patient:
- In the Patients module, double-click Patient Information.
- From the Status drop-down list, select Archived.
- Click OK to save your changes. Several messages appear asking you to confirm that you want to archive the patient or to tell you that you need to complete additional steps before you can archive the patient. Click Yes to confirm archiving of the patient.
When you archive a patient, the following occurs:
- A note appears in the Journal for any future appointments that the archived patient had, with the date, time, provider, and reason the appointment was deleted from the Schedule. Past appointments still appear in the Schedule, with an {A} next to the patient’s name.
- Easy Dental deletes all recall, employer, insurance, and referral information and adds it to the Patient Note. You can view this information after you archive the patient.
- All address, procedures, insurance claims, payments, adjustments, medical alerts, prescriptions, patient questionnaires, and periodontal exams remain intact.
- Easy Dental will not allow you to edit a patient’s information as long as the patient is archived.
- When archived patients appear on a report or in a module, or appears in front of their names.
Occasionally you may need to retrieve an archived patient’s account or charting information. It is still available! From the patient’s module, click Select Patient. Select the Include Archived Patients option. Double-click the patient information section. Click OK to the message asking if you’d like to reactivate the patient. Ensure that the patient’s status is set to Patient, and click OK. You can then access the patient’s account or chart. Remember to re-archive them after you’ve got what you needed.
