Patient Demographics

All about Demographics

Patient Demographics is the patient master page where all the personal information about a patient and his/her insurance details are entered and edited.

1. To access Patient Demographics, select Patient from the main menu. A patient search screen opens up (see Image 1).

Image 1

2. To search a patient record, use any of the search criteria such as Last Name, First Name, MR #, or PC Ref number to search for the patient. Clicking  button brings up additional filters such as patient Insurance #, phone (home phone, work and cell phone can be searched using this field), DOB, SSN and checkbox to include Inactive patients. The patients get listed according to criteria; click on any patient in the listing to view/edit the record.

3. To create a new patient record, click on button (highlighted in Image 1). The Patient Demographics page opens up. Enter the patient’s details. The fields marked with * are mandatory. Other fields can be entered then or edited later. On successful save of the patient record, the left menu in the Demographics page gets enabled, as shown in Image 2.

4. When adding new patients into the system if the cellphone# is entered, the communication preference for the first reminder will default automatically to the cellphone. The second preference defaults to email. Practice can always change the preferences if needed.

Demographics Screen

Image 2

Important fields in the Patient Demographics Screen

Field	Description
MR #	This field is non-editable. It is automatically generated the first time the patient record is saved.
PC Ref #	It is also called ‘Other external ID’ or ‘partner system ID.’ It can be used in cases when the practice wants to use a specific id for a patient other than MR#.
Active	It is a checkbox checked by default. Uncheck the checkbox in case the patient record is no longer required. Unchecking the box leads to the logical deletion of the record. Inactive patient records are archived and never physically deleted. They can be brought back into the system by checking the active checkbox.
Last Name	Patient’s last name.
First Name	Patient’s first name.
DOB	Date of birth.
Sex	Gender.
Rendering provider	Select the provider name from the drop-down.
Acc. Type	It is a drop-down field indicating the patient’s account type. Usual values are INSURANCE and SELF-PAY
	It is used to provide the communication preferences of the patient when the practice sends appointment reminders, etc. Select one from either Home phone, work phone, cell or email.
PCP/Referring	Referring provider. Type in the provider name. If the provider exists in the system, it appears in the drop-down. To add a new referring provider, click on button beside the provider drop-down.

Table 1

Patient Image:

The patient’s photo can be uploaded into the system in two ways. Click on the option  to browse the scanned copy from a selected path in the system. The second method is option. This button opens the webcam to capture the patient’s image (see Image 6).

Patient Info. Incomplete:

Though a patient record can be successfully saved by entering the mandatory fields alone, the page shows a warning message at the top-right if the following fields are not populated. This is to avoid charge creation on incomplete patient data.

If all the fields in Table 2 are complete, sign shows up.

First name

Last Name

Address (Including ZIP, City, State, Country)

Home Phone

DOB

Sex

Emergency Contact Information such as Name, Phone, Relation(Other Attributes)

Accept Assignment (Other Attributes) is set to YES

Insurance information, Insured address in case Acc. type is INSURANCE

Guarantor information if the patient is a minor.

Table 2

Relevant Links in the Patient Demographics Page:

A. A summary of the financial transactions of the patient can be viewed by clicking the Financial Summary button on the far right of the Demographics screen.

B. The different tabs in the demographics page are provided below.

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C. Patient Demographics page provides several essential links such as Case, Authorization, Eligibility, Notes, Alerts, etc. for entering information relevant to a patient record.

Links From Demographics Page
	This is used for creating/editing cases related to a patient. More
	This is for adding/ editing authorizations for the patient. More
	This link is used to check the eligibility of the patient. More
	Guarantors for the patient can be added and edited on this screen. More
	Set recalls/alerts for the patient here. More
	The payment entry screen opens up from where the patient payment can be done. More
	All notes about a patient can be entered here. More
	This link helps to setup portal access for the patients. More
	Other attributes of a patient include miscellaneous information such as the employer, attorney, whether the patient to be exempted from reporting and from sending patient statements,  etc. More
	Payment Plan/Installment Plan of the patient can be set up here. More