Patients

Contacts and guardians

Record the people around a patient, such as legal guardians, emergency contacts and the responsible party, and what each of them may do.

The Contacts tab on a patient's chart lists the people around the patient. Legal guardians show first, then the responsible party, then everyone else by name.

Add a contact#

Open the patient's chart and click the Contacts tab.
Click Add Contact.
Enter the person's name and their Relationship to the patient.
Check every Role that applies (see below).
Add their phone numbers and email addresses, with text message and email consent if you have it.
Add a date of birth, sex and address if you need them (Verify Address checks it, see Verify an address), then click Add Contact.

The tab lists each contact with their relationship, roles, phone numbers and email addresses. To change a contact, open the row's menu and click Edit. To remove one, click Delete and confirm. Removed contacts stay in the chart's change history.

Roles#

A contact can hold any number of roles:

Role	What it means
Legal guardian	Can consent and make decisions for a minor.
Emergency contact	Who to call in an emergency. Needs a phone number.
Responsible party	Receives the bills. A chart has at most one; without one, the patient is responsible.
Insurance subscriber	Holds the insurance the patient is covered under. Needs a date of birth.
May receive health information	May be told about the patient's care.
Receives reminders	Gets appointment reminders. Needs a phone number or email address.
May pick up the patient	May collect the patient after a session.
Caregiver	Cares for the patient day to day and can be listed as present at a session.
Primary caregiver	The main caregiver. A chart has at most one; it is also a caregiver.
May sign sessions	May sign that a session was delivered. It is also a caregiver.

When you tick a role that needs more details, the matching field is marked required right away.

Besides parents and guardians, the Relationship to the patient list includes adoptive parent, co-parent, family friend and nanny, so everyone who cares for a child can be on the chart.

One person for brothers and sisters#

Every contact form shows Same person as. If the parent, grandparent or other caregiver is already a contact on a brother's or sister's chart, type part of their name and pick them: their name, address, phone numbers and email addresses fill in, and both charts now share one person. Leave it empty for someone new.

A shared person is one record. Changing their name, address, phones or emails on one chart changes them on every chart they are on, and so does text message and email consent: if they reply STOP to a text, texts stop on every chart. Each chart keeps its own relationship and roles for the person.

When the shared person is the Responsible party on both charts, the charts also share one account, so the family gets one statement. Changing the person's name or address in the account's Statement Settings reaches every chart too. Untick Responsible party on a chart to take it out of the shared account; the person stays a contact there.

Minors and guardians#

A patient under the age of majority must always have at least one legal guardian. NeatPractice will not let you remove the last guardian of a minor or take away their Legal guardian role; add another guardian first. If a minor's chart has no guardian on file, the chart header shows a warning until you add one.

The age of majority is 18 unless the state of the patient's default location sets another age (19 in Alabama and Nebraska, 21 in Mississippi).

Consent works the same way as on the patient's own numbers: it belongs to the number or address it was given for. Change the number and the new one starts with no consent recorded.

Make a contact a patient#

When a parent, caregiver or other contact starts treatment themselves, open the contact's row menu and choose Make a Patient. The New Patient form opens with the contact's name, date of birth, sex, phones and emails already filled in, and the default location of the chart you started from. Check each field, add a date of birth if the contact has none on file, then click Create Patient. The new chart also takes the contact's address. When the contact is a responsible party, what they owe as a patient joins the account they already pay for.

Consent does not carry over: phones and emails start on the new chart with no consent recorded, so ask again before you text or email the new patient. The duplicate check runs as for any new chart.