Archive Patient Records

Archiving is an alternative to deleting a patient record.

When you delete a patient record, it is irretrievable. When you archive a patient record, it is deleted from the active database and put into an inactive database. You can view or re-activate records from the inactive database whenever you like.

The system will not let you archive a person:

Who has a time payment contract (See Removing a Contract Account).
Who is a guarantor and has dependents still on the system (archive the dependents first or give them another guarantor).
Who is a guarantor and has a balance (enter either a Charge Adjustment or Payment Adjustment on the Family Ledger to set the balance to $0.00).

NOTE: When you archive a guarantor, the transactions for the family are also deleted from the active database and put into the inactive database. Future Production Summaries including the time period when these transactions existed will therefore be inaccurate.

When you select Archive Patient Records, the system asks if you want to archive specific individuals, or if you want to archive everyone who has not been into the office since a particular date.
If you choose an individual patient, click the Change button to select the desired patient. When the patient has been successfully archived , it asks for the name or number of the next patient you would like to archive. When you have archived all the patients you want, click Close to quit.
If you choose all those not seen since a particular date, the system asks you to enter a date. Each patient who has not been into the office since that date will be archived unless:
- He or she has a time payment contract.
- He or she is a guarantor and has dependents still on the system.
- He or she is a guarantor and has a balance.
- He or she has a Recall Span of 0 (which tells the system he is not a patient, but is specifically on the system because he is an owner of insurance, or a guarantor).
- He or she has a future appointment date.

To Access the Inactive Database:

Choose Archive Patient Records.
Click the View Archive button.
Double-click on a patient to look at his ledger.

If you archive patients by date, the system creates a report of everyone whose last visit date is before the specified date. Next to each person it indicates whether the patient was archived or if he was not for one of the above reasons.