Adding and Managing Patients

Your Patient Base Is the Clinic

Everything in DentalView hangs off the patient record: appointments, the dental chart, prescriptions, payments, reminders — all of it attaches to one patient. A record with a phone number gets automatic reminders, recall follow-ups, and duplicate protection; a record without one is a name the system can't help you with. So the habit that pays off most is simple: capture at least the name and mobile number at first contact, every time.

On this form: ① First Name / Last Name — the only two required fields; everything else can be completed later. ② Phone — strongly recommended: SMS reminders, recalls, and duplicate detection all rely on it. ③ Chief Complaint and the intake sections — expandable sections for Chief Complaint, Allergies, Personal Details (civil status, occupation, religion, nationality), Medical History (a checkbox grid of conditions, medications, smoking), Dental History, and a full Clinical Examination (vitals, extra-oral, intra-oral, gingiva, occlusion). Fill them for a complete first visit; skip them for a quick registration.

Registering a New Patient

1. Open Patients in the sidebar and click Add patient (on mobile, the round + button).
2. Fill in First Name and Last Name — the only required fields — and add the phone, email, and birth date if you have them.
3. For a full first visit, expand the intake sections and work top to bottom (next section).
4. Review the Patient Consent checkboxes — treatment records, SMS notifications, data processing. They're pre-ticked and stored with the date and method, which is your RA 10173 paper trail.
5. Click Add Patient.

A front desk registering a phone booking needs only steps 1, 2, and 5 — thirty seconds. The clinical detail can wait for the chair.

On this screen: ① Add patient — opens the registration panel for a new patient; this is where every patient record starts. ② Search box — type any part of a name, phone number, or email; with 3 or more characters it searches your entire patient base, not just this page.

The Intake Sections, Explained

The collapsible sections below the basics mirror a paper intake form, and each one feeds a different part of the system:

• Chief Complaint / History of Present Illness / Known Allergies — kept at the top because allergies are safety-critical; what you type here shows as a red alert strip on the profile.
• Personal Details — civil status, occupation, religion, nationality. Useful for rapport and for BIR-compliant records.
• Medical History — a checkbox grid (hypertension, diabetes, asthma, heart disease, and more) plus pregnancy, bleeding gums, current medications, and smoking. Check what applies; it prints with the clinical record.
• Dental History — previous prophylaxis, extractions, dentures and since when.
• Clinical Examination — vitals (BP, pulse, respiration, temperature), extra-oral and intra-oral findings, gingiva status, occlusion classification, and calculus deposits. This is the dentist's part; reception can leave it collapsed.

Duplicate Protection — Trust It

Double records are the classic front-desk mess: two charts, split payment history, reminders going to the wrong entry. DentalView guards this at save time:

• Phone match → the system links to the existing patient automatically and tells you: "Existing patient found — linked to their record." No duplicate is created.
• Name match only → you decide: Link to Existing or Register New (two patients can genuinely share a name). When you link, intake fields you typed are not applied to the existing record — open their profile and edit there instead.

Finding Patients Fast

Type in the Search patients... box: 1–2 characters filter the page instantly, 3 or more search your entire base by name, phone, or email. Since patients often give a number and not a spelling ("naka-register po ako, 0917…"), searching by phone is usually the fastest lookup at the desk. Multi-branch owners also get a Search all branches checkbox, and shared patients carry a purple "Home: {clinic}" badge.

Living With the Profile

The profile is the patient's home page: visit stats and no-show count on top, contact info, engagement score, medical alerts and consent records on the left, and the full history in tabs — Appointments, Clinical Record, Case Record, Dental Chart, Perio, Prescriptions, SMS History, Treatment Plans. The Payments panel opens from the header. Use Edit (top right) whenever details change — a working mobile number is the single most valuable field to keep current.

Archiving, Undo, and the 30-Day Net

When a record was created by mistake or a patient asks to be removed, use Archive Patient in the profile's Danger Zone. Patients with visit history make you type their full name first — deliberate friction, because you're archiving real clinical data. Then three safety nets, in order: an Undo banner for 5 minutes, the Settings > Recently Deleted list for 30 days, and only after that automatic anonymization. Nothing is ever hard-deleted from the interface in one click.