Removing Patients
We are sometimes asked if there is a tool to remove/delete/archive old patients in Medilink.
The problem with permanently removing patients in Medilink is that almost everything else links back to these patients, so we can’t just delete them out without that having ramifications. For example, say you ran an historic audit trail or appointment list and all the names were blank.
There is a way to achieve this in another way, but it is a manual process - unfortunately there’s no tool to automatically archive old patients.
This is partly because every practice is different and it can be difficult to make automatic decisions on who to to archive - so it's hard to produce a one size fits all utility (without making it very complicated).
In the past certain Medilink practices have commissioned one off utilities to do similar things (i.e. splitting a database etc.), but those are specifically written based on various rules that those practices have wanted. If this is what you would like to do, please contact [email protected]
That said, you can manually archive patients without too much difficulty - it just takes time really.
1. You will first want to produce a list of patients who were “LAST SEEN” some time ago.
Go to Links Menu >> Export >> Patient List, and at the question “Do you want to select a range for last service date” say yes, and put in an old date range (like 01/01/1990 to 31/12/2008).
When the report comes up, print it out or export the list to Excel so that you can work off that list.
Then you would go through each patient, and make a decision as to whether or not you do want to archive them. The simple test is to double check if they have a “Next Appointment” or not (it’s possible that they do because the LAST SEEN report doesn’t take future appointments in to account, so you should check).
Then to actually ‘archive’ them, you would do one of two things (possibly both):
2. Put them on Hold. This will then warn you if you try and make an appointment or bill them etc. If they ever do become a patient again you will be able to un-hold them.
There’s also a way to modify the hold reasons in File Menu >> Change Details >> Edit Lists >> Held Reasons.
3. Put Z dash in front of their name. This is a bit of a workaround way of ensuring that they don’t appear in your searches, however if you ran an audit trail etc they are still easily recognizable.
