In the Family File, you have the option of setting a patient’s status to one of four settings: Patient, Non-Patient, Inactive, or Archived. But do you understand what happens in Dentrix when you choose a status? Do you know when you should change a status?

Here are a couple of guidelines about patient statuses:

• Someone with a Patient status is an active patient in your practice and will be included in search results and reports.
• Someone with a Non-Patient status is not seen as a patient in your practice, but can be a guarantor or insurance subscriber for another patient. For example, the father of one of your patients who is not a patient himself would be entered in the family’s account as a non-patient guarantor.
• Patients are most often changed to an Inactive status when they have not been seen in more than a year and you have tried to contact them without results. Inactive patients are removed from continuing care lists and can be filtered out of reports.
• The Archived status is best for patients who have notified you that they will no longer be seen as a patient in your practice, or patients who have died. Archived patients are removed from all search results and continuing care lists, all future appointments for the patient in the Appointment Book are deleted, and all insurance information in the Family File is deleted.

By making an effort to keep patient statuses updated and current, you will improve the accuracy of reports that include active patient numbers.