When you create a Family File record for a new patient in Dentrix Enterprise, you will notice that there are four different patient statuses you can assign to the patient. You may be asking, “What is the difference between these statuses, and when should I use them?” Knowing the difference between these patient statuses is helpful because how you use them affects your active patient base numbers.
Read below to learn what the different Patient Status options in the Family File mean and how they affect your patient database.
Patient
This is the most common status you will have in your patient database. Anyone with a Patient status is an active patient in your practice and seen regularly. Patients with this status will be included in search results and reports.
Non-Patient
Use the Non-Patient status if the person is not a patient in your practice but is a guarantor or insurance subscriber for another patient in your practice. For example, the father of one of your patients who is not a patient himself would be entered in the family’s account as a non-patient guarantor. Anyone with a Non-Patient status should not have a first visit date or a last visit date listed in the Family File. Also, you cannot post procedures, set treatment-planned procedures complete, or create new prescriptions for anyone with a Non-Patient status.
Inactive
Most often, patients are given an Inactive status when they have not been seen for a while, and you have tried to contact them without results. Inactive patients are removed from continuing care lists and can be filtered out of reports. However, clearing out an inactive patient’s continuing care or rejecting their treatment plans will help to keep your database clean. Also, you cannot post procedures, set treatment-planned procedures complete, or create new prescriptions for anyone with an Inactive status.
Archived
The Archived status is best for patients who have notified you that they will no longer be seen as a patient in your practice or for patients who have died. Archived patients are removed from all search results and continuing care lists, all future appointments for the patient in the Appointment Book are deleted, and all insurance information in the Family File is deleted.
Using these guidelines for how you assign patient statuses will help keep your numbers more accurate in Dentrix Enterprise and will also help keep your database clean.
We recommend you take each status into consideration and decide which to use on a patient-by-patient basis based on your organization’s policies.
Additional Information:
- For more information, see the Updating patient information Help topic.
