Every person your practice talks to has a record here. Open Patients in the left navigation (the label follows your practice type: Patients, Clients, or Pet Parents).
The list
- Search by name, phone, or email.
- Filter by status with the dropdown on the left: All, Active, Prospective, Inactive, New this month, and Discharged, each with its count. Sort by recently added, oldest, last name, client since, last visit, or recently updated.
- Provider filter (practices with two or more providers): All providers, My clients (your own, when you are a provider), each provider by name, or No provider yet for clients with no primary provider. The labels follow your terminology.
- Columns picks which columns show: Relationship (their provider, the children they are a parent for, and portal access), Date of birth, Client since, Last visit, Last updated, Next appointment (or a Book link), and Status. All but Last updated show to start; your browser remembers the choice. The name column always shows, with phone, email, a household tag, and an athenahealth mark when linked.
- Row actions (the ⋯ at the end of a row): Quick view, Open full profile, Book appointment, and, for owners and admins, Delete permanently….
- Tick rows for bulk actions: Add to campaign (when campaigns are on for your account), Mark active, Mark inactive, and in the ⋯ menu Export selected, Archive N patients… and, for owners and admins, Delete N patients permanently…. Ticks on other pages of the list count too.
The ⋯ menu at the top of the page holds Export CSV, Import CSV, Import from SoftDent (when SoftDent is enabled for the location under Settings → Integrations; upload a printed SoftDent report as a PDF, review the extracted patients, import), and Import from SimplePractice (when SimplePractice is enabled under Settings → Integrations; upload the SimplePractice export, review how each client matches and which provider each clinician maps to, import; see Import from SimplePractice).
Add patient (the button follows your terminology) opens the Create client drawer: name, date of birth (which sets adult or minor), a parent, guardian or guarantor, billing type, status, contact details with their permissions, and reminder options. See Add a client from anywhere.
Share documents with many clients
Share documents at the top of the Patients page sends one set of documents to many clients at once through the Client Portal. It opens full screen, starting with any clients you ticked in the list.
- Select recipients. Search and tick clients. Each needs an email, since documents go to their Client Portal; clients without one, and archived clients, can't be picked. The list shows whether each has Signed in before or is Not signed in yet.
- Select documents. Tick any mix of Consent documents, Questionnaires, Scored measures and Files.
- Compose email. Edit the Subject and Email message. The fill-ins
{client_first_name},{practice_name},{document_list}and{portal_link}are filled in for each client, so everyone gets their own email. - Review and share. Check the recipients, the email as the first client sees it, and the documents. It says who will be skipped: clients who already have everything you picked waiting, have no email, are marked do-not-contact or don't allow email, or are archived or discharged. Switch on Also send a text where the client allows it if you want, then click Share with N clients.
The last screen says how many it went to, lists anyone not reached and why (open their chart and use Send documents to try one at a time), and notes texts that wait until 8am the client's time. One share reaches up to 500 clients and sends up to 200 at a time; when there are more, it says how many are left and you share again. Nothing can be shared while the Client Portal is turned off (Settings → Client Portal). For one client, use Send documents on their chart; see Send documents to a client.
Quick view and the full profile
Clicking a row opens the full profile. Quick view in a row's menu opens a drawer instead, with Overview, Payments and Billing (when the location takes payments), Medications (athena-linked patients), Forms, and Notes, plus quick actions: send a message, call, edit, create or manage a household, copy the patient ID.
The full profile (or View full profile in the drawer's menu) shows everything on tabs:
| Tab | What is there |
|---|---|
| Overview | The administrative note, next-appointment banner (Mark confirmed, Reschedule), activity, appointments with Manage upcoming, staff notes, billing summary, patient info, How to reach them, contacts, clinical (diagnoses, allergies and medications), insurance, household and portal access. |
| Notes | The clinical workspace: notes, the treatment plan, and outcome measures. See Write and sign clinical notes. |
| Messages | The conversation with this patient, texts and secure messages. |
| Billing | The billing profile, guarantor, charges, invoices, and superbills. See The client billing profile. |
| Payments | Payments, pay-link requests, new invoices, credit on account, and payment plans (shown when the location takes payments). See Take patient payments. |
| Documents | Portal requests (one Send documents button), Client files (every file on the chart, grouped by kind, with search and source filters; View opens a preview panel), form submissions, and the information captured from forms. |
| Records | Discharge, releases of information, chart export, and the accounting of disclosures. See Discharge and records release. |
The profile header shows the next visit, last visit, provider and balance, with Call, Message, Ask and Book. Its ⋯ menu has Edit profile, Upload photo, Clinical notes, Send documents, Discharge client, Email portal invitation and Grant portal access (copy link) (the portal items only when the Client Portal is on). For a card-by-card tour, see Find your way around a client chart.
Share a file with a client
Open the profile, then Documents, and in Client files choose Upload a file. Chart uploads accept images (JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP), PDF, Word (.doc, .docx) and plain text, up to 15MB. Give it a name, a category (insurance, referral, records, ID, other) and a note if you like, and tick Make this visible to the client in their portal to share it. The row then carries a blue Visible to client tag, and the client finds it in the portal under Documents → Uploaded files with View and Download. Leave the box unticked and the file stays private to staff: it is not listed in the portal and cannot be reached there by link. Delete removes a staff upload from the chart and the portal. If a shared file is not showing for the client, see A client can't see a document in the portal.
Each file in Client files is tagged by where it came from: Uploaded by staff, Intake form (captured through an intake form, such as an insurance card photo or an ID; the client can see these by default), or Imported from SimplePractice (brought in by an import; private to staff). Use the chips to show one source at a time, or search by name. Files are grouped by kind, such as forms and consents, insurance and IDs, invoices, statements and superbills. View opens the file in a preview panel beside the chart, with Open in new tab and Download; the small download button saves it directly.
Households
A household groups family members. From a patient's quick-view menu choose Create household, then Create new household (named "{Last name} Family" by default, with this patient as head) or Join existing household; once they are in one, the menu says Manage household. Each member's profile shows the Household card with everyone in it, the head marked with a crown, and their relationship. When booking a group session, Add household members adds the rest of the family in one click. Households are per location.
Archive, discharge, or delete
- Inactive hides a patient from the default views while keeping everything; Mark active brings them back.
- Discharge (healthcare practices) ends care properly: the plan closes, measure schedules stop, and the patient moves under the Discharged filter. See Discharge and records release.
- Delete permanently is for test or duplicate records, owners and admins only: Delete permanently… in a row's menu, or tick several and choose Delete N patients permanently… from the ⋯ menu. It only works for a patient with no records: no notes, treatment plans, answered questionnaires, completed forms, records releases, invoices, charges, payments or balance. When you delete several, anyone with records is kept and a list says why, for example "This client has 3 notes and 1 invoice. Archive the client instead." It cannot be undone. Real patient records must be retained under record-retention laws; archive those instead.
Good to know
- A phone can carry an extension or a second number: type it after the number in the patient's phone box, for example (555) 201-3344 ext 12. It shows as the number, then the extension ((555) 201-3344 ext. 12), and texts and calls go to the number itself (the first one when there are two). Imports from a CSV, SimplePractice and Practice Fusion keep an extension the same way.
- New arrivals and where they came from are tracked on Review new patients.
- Patients who are due back show up on recall lists.
- Patient records are protected health information, encrypted at rest and covered by your BAA. Every view and change is in the HIPAA Audit Log, and changes such as adding, archiving or discharging a client show in the History tab (both under Settings → Account Activity).