If you wish to remove a patient from your Patients list, you can archive or delete them. Archived and deleted patients can always be retrieved at a later date.

Archiving a Patient

To archive a patient, select their name in the sidebar, then click the red minus button in the upper left corner of the MacPractice window. Depending on the state of the selected account, MacPractice may or may not allow the patient to be archived.

Are you sure you want to archive this patient?

If all the patient's claims have been closed and the patient balance is $0.00, click Archive to archive the patient.

Sorry, you can't delete this patient because there is a balance remaining.

If the patient still has an outstanding balance in their ledger it must be dealt with before you can archive the patient; only patients who have a $0.00 balance can be archived. If you wish to simply remove the balance and zero out the account, you can post a negative adjustment.

Sorry, you can't archive this patient because there are unapplied payments.

If the patient has an unapplied amount on the account, you will need to either make a positive adjustment and apply the payment, or post a refund before you can archive the patient.

Sorry, you can't archive this patient because there are outstanding claims.

Check the Status column in the Ledger to find the outstanding claim. Highlight the claim and go to the Other pop-up menu to select "Set Claim Status to Paid/Closed". This will close out the claim and allow you to archive the patient.

Are you sure you want to archive or delete this patient?

If a patient has no activity at all in their Financial or Clinical ledger, you can delete their record. Click Delete to delete, or Archive to archive the patient.

Deleted and Archived patients can still be retrieved. Click here for more information on retrieving archived/deleted patient records.

A Note on Archived Patients' Appointments

By default MacPractice will delete the patient's appointments when he or she is archived. However, there is a preference that will prevent this from happening. To enable this option, go into the MacPractice Preferences > Patients Ability > Misc. Check the "Don't delete archived patient appointments" checkbox to keep a record of the patient's appointments, even after they are archived.

If the Preference to retain archived patients' appointments is not enabled, once the patient is archived the associated appointment(s) are deleted from the schedule. You cannot retrieve the appointments if the archived patient is retrieved. They will need to be manually re-entered.