A very common question I get from offices is, “What is the difference between Inactivating and Archiving a patient”? This is a good question because the way you use your statuses affects your active patient base. There are 3 different patient statuses in Dentrix.

Dental patient

Our first status is Non Patient. This status is for patients that have never been seen for an office visit. You would use this for a guarantor/head of household or an insurance subscriber of a family account. A Non Patient should not have a first visit date or a last visit date.

The second status is Archived. Archived are patients that are deceased or that are definitely not coming back to your practice. Dentrix will automatically remove their continuing care, insurance, and future appointments.  Before Archiving a patient, you will want to reject any outstanding treatment. When you archive a patient, it removes that patient from your search fields. You can reactivate a patient only through the search from Family File.

The third status is Inactive. When you Inactivate a patient, it does not clear any information automatically, and they will still appear in your search fields. You can put a patient alert on them to pop-up or include/exclude them from certain reports. Clearing out an Inactive patient’s continuing care and insurance, and rejecting their treatment plans will help keep your database clean.

Using your statuses will help keep your numbers more accurate in Dentrix and will also help keep your database clean.

So, Inactivate or Archive? Take each status into consideration and make a decision on a patient-by-patient basis.

Learn More

If you found these ideas helpful, learn more about the Dentrix Profitability Coaching Program, where one of our highly skilled and experienced profitability coaches teaches you and your team these and many other great concepts, strategies and ideas. To find out more about Dentrix Profitability Coaching, CLICK HERE.