Patients

The Patients module holds every patient's chart. Open Patients in the main menu to see the patient list. The Patients panel beside the main menu also lists the referral queue, the recall list, the authorization queue and patient documents across every chart you can see.

What a chart holds today#

Each chart has a header and tabs. A chart opens on its Overview: the patient's care journey, what needs attention and snapshot cards. See Chart overview.

• Header: the patient's legal name, the name they go by, chart number, external id when the chart has one, date of birth and age, status, default location, a Minor badge for patients under the age of majority, and the alerts and allergies indicator.
• Demographics: legal and preferred names, date of birth, sex as claims report it, gender identity and pronouns, status, phone numbers and email addresses with communication consent, mailing address, default location, language and interpreter needs, message language, statement settings and school details. Message language picks the language of reminders and of the pages the patient opens from them; Automatic follows the primary language when your clinic sends in it (see Message languages). Under Statements, choose whether statements go out by Mail or Email and turn on Leave out of batch statements for a patient you bill by hand; statements print in the patient's primary language. Turn on Has an id in another system to enter the External id a school district, a referral partner or your former system uses for the patient. No two charts share one; search finds the chart by it, and Update from CSV can match on it.
• Contacts: guardians, emergency contacts, the responsible party and anyone else around the patient. See Contacts and guardians.
• Episodes: each course of treatment with its discipline, status, physicians and diagnoses. See Episodes of care.
• Documentation: evaluations, daily notes, plans of care and other clinical documents, with drafts that save as you type. See Clinical documents.
• Flowsheets: the activities recorded on notes, one column per session. See Activity flowsheets.
• Progress: results of your clinic's outcome instruments, with a trend per instrument and person who answered, and the graphs a discipline adds, such as ABA program graphs. See Progress.
• Coverage: insurance plans and self-pay, in billing order, with cost sharing and benefit limits. See Insurance and self-pay coverage.
• Authorizations: payer approvals for visits or units, with what is left, alerts and renewal requests. See Authorizations.
• Care team and Locations: the providers who treat the patient and the locations where the patient is seen. See Care team and locations.
• Alerts and allergies: precautions and allergies staff must know about. See Alerts and allergies.
• Medications: what the patient takes as reported, and each review of the list with the family. See Medications.
• Service addresses: home, school and other places outside the clinic where the patient is seen. See Service addresses.
• Documents: referrals, insurance cards, consents, outside records and other files, filed by category. See Documents.
• Consents: the forms the patient or a guardian signed, and whether claim signatures are on file. See Consents and signatures.
• Notes: a dated log of calls, messages and reminders, with pinned notes on top. See Chart notes.
• Attendance: the patient's appointments and their statuses. See Attendance.

Referred patients waiting for an evaluation are in the referral queue, and patients in active care with nothing booked are on the recall list.

Patient status#

Every chart has one status:

The patient list shows Active and Referral patients unless you ask for the rest. Change the status on the Demographics tab and click Save Changes.

Discharge and inactivation checklist#

When you change the status to Discharged or Inactive, NeatPractice first shows what is still open on the chart: visits not signed, unsigned notes, future appointments, the active care team, open episodes of care and any open balance. Each list has an Open link to the page where you resolve it. Lists your role cannot see are left out.

Two cleanups are one switch away when your role allows them:

• End care team links today takes the patient off each provider's caseload from today.
• Cancel future appointments cancels each upcoming appointment as the schedule would, with the reason you pick. On a group appointment only this patient is taken off. An appointment the schedule refuses to cancel, such as one in a locked week, stays booked.

Click Mark Discharged or Mark Inactive to run the cleanups you chose and save the status. Unsigned visits and notes, open episodes and balances are never changed for you; finish them from their own pages.

If you leave the Demographics tab or reload the page with changes you have not saved, NeatPractice asks whether to save them, discard them or keep editing. If someone else saves the chart while you are editing, your changes stay on screen and a message offers Load Latest; click Save Changes instead to keep yours.

Who can see which patients#

What you can see depends on your role and your locations. A role can let you read every chart or only the patients on your caseload (the patients whose care team lists you), and your account can be limited to some of the clinic's locations. Patients outside those limits do not appear in your patient list.

When you open a patient outside your access, the chart says so instead of showing the record. In an urgent situation you can use break-glass access to open it for four hours with a stated reason.

Next steps#

• Add a patient
• Find a patient
• Contacts and guardians
• Insurance and self-pay coverage
• Care team and locations
• Alerts and allergies
• Medications
• Service addresses
• Documents
• Consents and signatures
• Patient settings