Chart overview

Every chart opens on its Overview. It answers three questions without opening a single tab: where is this patient in their care, what could stop care or payment, and what do I need to know before I see them. Everything on it is read live from the chart, so it changes as soon as someone fixes a record.

The page has three parts, top to bottom: the care journey, Needs attention and the snapshot cards. When someone pinned a note on the chart, the Pinned notes list shows above them, so everyone opening the patient reads it first. See Patient notes.

The care journey#

The care journey is one row of steps for the whole patient:

Referral, Intake, Coverage & authorization, Evaluation, Plan of care, Scheduling, Visits & notes, Billing and Payments. A second row, Progress and discharge, holds the Progress report and Discharge steps that run alongside the visits.

Each step shows a state and the one fact that matters most, such as "Authorization ends in 12 days", "3 unsigned notes" or "$140.00 due".

Click a step to open the part of the chart where you work on it. A step that starts something, such as booking the first appointment or taking a payment, opens that form with the patient already filled in.

Patients with more than one episode#

A patient seen for more than one discipline still has one journey. When a step differs between episodes, for example two plans of care, the step shows the episode that needs you first and says how many episodes it covers. Click it to see one line per episode, each with its own state, fact and link.

Some disciplines follow their own path. For applied behavior analysis (ABA), the journey adds an Assessment step after intake in place of the evaluation, and the treatment plan and its authorizations show in the Plan of care and Coverage & authorization steps.

Needs attention#

Needs attention lists what could stop care or payment for this patient, most urgent first. Blocked items come before items that only need attention. It covers:

• No active coverage, an eligibility check that was never run, failed, came back inactive or was not run this month.
• An authorization that is expiring, running low, used up or expired.
• A plan of care that is missing the physician's signature, is due for recertification, has ended or has used all its planned visits.
• Notes still unsigned past your clinic's signing deadline.
• A progress report that is due or overdue.
• Rejected claims and charges on hold.
• What the first claim needs from the chart, the same checks the Billing readiness section runs: a referring physician with an NPI, a home address, a primary diagnosis and an NPI for whoever renders.
• Missing intake items, such as required consents or the referral document.
• A patient balance due, and an active episode with nothing booked ahead.
• With the ABA module, for users who can read ABA plans: no case lead on the care team, no caregiver contact, no diagnosis on the ABA episode or no signed treatment plan, and a treatment plan or assessment more than six months old. Snooze one to dismiss it until a date.

Click an item to open the place to fix it, or the form to add what is missing. The Opens column says where the click goes.

Snoozing an item#

When an item can wait, for example a balance with a payment plan agreed, open its row menu and choose Snooze. Pick the date it should come back and say why. A snoozed item moves to the end of the list with its date and reason, so the rest of the team can see who set it aside and why. It comes back on that date if it still applies. To bring it back sooner, choose Remove snooze. Snoozing needs permission to edit the chart.

Patient brief#

When your clinic turns it on, a Patient brief card sits above the snapshot cards: a few AI-written lines on what changed lately, goal trends, authorizations and the plan of care, open items and what is next, each linked to its record. It is written only when you click Generate or Refresh. See AI summaries.

Snapshot cards#

Below the list, cards summarize the chart:

• Safety: active alerts (critical ones first), active allergies with their severity, and contact limits such as an interpreter need or a patient who opted out of texts or email.
• Schedule: the next appointment, visits this month and the cancel or no-show rate over the last 90 days.
• Authorization: each approved authorization with what is used against what is approved, a pace bar and its end date. The tick on the bar marks where an even pace would be today; a bar past the tick is ahead of pace.
• Goals: the active goals on each signed plan of care with a small trend line of the values recorded on signed notes. The dashed line is the goal's target.
• Money: the patient balance, the insurance balance, the last patient payment and the number of open claims.
• Care team: who is assigned, their role and discipline.
• Recent activity: the last 10 events on the chart, such as signed notes, booked appointments, posted payments and submitted claims.

The cards come in a fixed order for your role. Clinicians see safety and goals first, front desk staff see safety and the schedule, billers see money and authorizations, and owners and administrators see a mix of all of them. Cards for records your role cannot read do not show.

Printing a face sheet#

Click Face Sheet in the chart header to save a one-page PDF summary of the patient. Use it when a covering therapist needs the essentials or when a referral packet asks for demographics. It lists:

• Demographics: legal and preferred name, date of birth, sex, chart number, address, phone and email, language and school.
• Active allergies with their reaction and severity, or No known allergies when that was recorded.
• Contacts with their relationship and roles.
• Current coverage in billing order, with member and group numbers.
• Diagnoses and physicians on open episodes of care.
• The current care team.
• Approved authorizations with what has been used against what was approved.

Alerts are not printed; they stay in NeatPractice. Sections your role cannot read print as not available. Printing needs permission to export patient charts, and every print is recorded in the access log.

Exporting the complete record#

Click Complete Record in the chart header to build one ZIP file of the patient's whole record, for example when the patient asks for a copy of everything you hold. It needs permission to export patient charts and to read notes, and a code from your authenticator app, unless you entered one in the last 15 minutes. The file holds:

• Demographics: the patient's details, contacts and every insurance coverage on file, as one PDF.
• Signed clinical documents: every signed note, evaluation, plan of care and report as the signed copies, with an index listing each one.
• Chart files: every current file on the Documents page, as uploaded.
• Billing: the patient's statements, superbills and a ledger file with every charge, payment and adjustment. Family statements that also list other patients are left out.
• Consents: each signed consent as a full record, with the signature and the form the signer read.
• Portal messages: every family portal conversation about the patient, as a spreadsheet file.

A manifest.csv file lists every file and names any section left out because your role cannot open it, such as billing without access to the ledger. Psychotherapy notes and school contract records are never included.

To encrypt the file, turn on Protect the ZIP with a password and enter a password of 8 to 128 characters twice. The ZIP then opens only with that password, which NeatPractice forgets once the file is built and cannot recover. Share it separately from the file, for example by phone.

NeatPractice builds the file in the background and notifies you when it is ready. Download it from My exports in Reports within 7 days; only you can download it, and every build and download is recorded in the access log. To hand it over for a records request, start it from the request instead; see Release the complete record.

Next steps#