Patient records

Patients is your clinic’s register of everyone you treat. Each patient has a record with their personal details, contact details and an emergency contact. Appointments, invoices, prescriptions, lab orders and other records all link back to it.

Who can do what

To…	You need
Find patients when picking one, for example while booking an appointment	List patients
Open Patients and view patient records	Read patient profiles
See and change a patient’s contact details and emergency contact	Read patient contact info
Add a patient	Create patients
Edit a patient	Update patients
Delete a patient	Delete patients
See the patient’s Appointments tab	Read appointments

Contact details are protected

A patient’s email, phone, address, city, state/province, country and their whole emergency contact are only shown to staff with the Read patient contact info permission, and only on the patient’s own record.

Without it, the record says Contact and emergency contact info are restricted. Ask an administrator for access.
Without it, you can still enter contact details when you create a new patient. You just can’t see or change them afterwards. When editing, those fields are locked, with the note You don’t have permission to change these fields - any changes here will be ignored.
Patient lists never show contact details, whatever your permissions.

Find a patient

Open Patients in the sidebar (under Patient Management). The list shows each patient’s name, External ID, gender, age and when they were registered. Select a column heading to sort by it.

Use the search box, Search name, email, phone, or #id/external ID:

Type any part of a name, email or phone number. With several words, each word must match somewhere. For example, “Sana Malik” finds a patient whose first name is Sana and last name is Malik.
Type # followed by a number or code, such as #1024, to find one patient by their Meddesk ID or External ID exactly.

Select a patient to open their record.

Add a patient

In Patients, select New patient.
Personal (name, gender and date of birth):
- First name and Last name (required)
- Gender (required): Male, Female or Other
- External ID: an ID from another system, such as a paper file number. It’s searchable and helps catch duplicates.
- Date of birth, Marital status, Blood type
Select Next. Meddesk checks for possible duplicates (see below).
Contact (how to reach this patient):
- Email and Phone
- Communication language: the language for every message the clinic sends this patient (see below).
- Phone messages: tick if the patient agreed to get messages from the clinic, such as WhatsApp, at this phone number. It’s ticked by default for new patients.
- City, State / Province, Country (starts as your clinic’s country) and Address
Select Next. Meddesk checks for duplicates again, now with the email and phone.
Emergency contact (who to call in an emergency): Name, Phone and Relationship.
Review: check everything. Select Edit next to any section to go back to it.
Select Create patient.

You see Patient created.

Duplicate warnings

When you move past the Personal and Contact steps, Meddesk looks for existing patients who might be the same person. If it finds any, a Possible duplicate patient window lists them with the reason:

Reason	Meaning
Same External ID	Exactly the same External ID.
Same email	Exactly the same email (capital letters don’t matter).
Same phone number	Exactly the same phone number.
Matching name	First and last name both match, including close spellings such as Karim and Kareem, or small typos.
Matching name & date of birth	Same date of birth, and either the first or last name matches.

Select a listed patient’s name to open their existing record.
Go back and review returns to the form so you can check what you typed.
Continue anyway carries on. The Review step still reminds you: “This may already exist as …”.

The warning never stops you. If you’re sure it’s a different person, you can create the patient.

Communication language

Communication language decides the language of emails and other messages the clinic sends this patient. It starts as your clinic’s default language.

If you pick a language your clinic doesn’t send messages in (it isn’t one of your clinic’s languages), the field warns you, for example: “This clinic doesn’t send messages in this language. All communication from this platform will be in English.”

A patient’s record

Opening a patient shows a side panel with their name, Meddesk ID, age (hover it to see the date of birth) and gender, and a list of tabs. When there are more tabs than fit the window, the list switches to smaller rows so all of them stay visible. The patient page has no Actions menu: each tab has its own buttons, at the top right of the tab.

With every module on, the tabs are:

Tab	Shown if you have	What it shows	Buttons
Overview	Read patient profiles	The Patient 360: alerts, key figures, a summary from every module and the activity timeline.
Details	Read patient profiles	Patient details (Personal, Contact, Emergency contact) and the Patient portal card.	Edit (Update patients), Delete (Delete patients)
Appointments	Read appointments	Every appointment of this patient. Select one to open it.
Treatments	Read patient treatments	“Treatments & Plans”: “Every treatment and plan on this patient’s record.”	Add treatment, New plan (Create patient treatments). See Patient treatments and Treatment plans.
Invoices	Read invoices	“Every invoice raised for this patient.” Switch between Invoices and Statement.	New invoice (Create invoices). See Invoices and Patient statements.
Vitals	Read vitals	The latest value of each vital sign, a trend chart and every reading.	Record vitals (Record vitals). See Vitals.
Medical	Read medical history	“Medical overview”: “Everything to check before treating this patient”: allergies, conditions, medications, complications.	Add record › Allergy, Condition or Medication (Create medical history). See Medical History.
Prescriptions	Read prescriptions	“Every prescription issued to this patient.”	New prescription (Create prescriptions). Each prescription can be opened, and cancelled with Cancel prescriptions. See Prescriptions.
Laboratory	Any of: Read all lab results, Read lab results of patients in their care, Create lab orders, Process lab orders, Verify and release lab results	“Lab orders and results for this patient that you’re allowed to see”: Accession, Tests, Status, Ordered, and a Critical mark.	New lab order (Create lab orders). See Laboratory.
Forms	Read forms	“Filled forms” on the patient itself. Forms filed on the patient’s appointments or treatments are on those records instead.	Add form (Submit forms). See Forms.
Documents	Read patient documents	The patient’s scans, images, letters and reports, as a grid or list.	Upload (Upload patient documents). See Documents.
Notes	Always listed	Notes on the patient’s file, and with the filter, notes on their visits, treatments and other records.	Add note, if you may add notes to patients. See Notes.
Inventory	Read inventory movements	“Every consumable use, asset assignment, and return on this patient’s record.” Filter by All, Consumables or Assets.	See Inventory.

The Patient portal card

This card shows whether the patient can sign in to the patient portal.

No portal access means they can’t sign in yet. With the Manage patient portal users permission, you can select Create portal user. See Give a patient portal access.
Otherwise it shows whether the account is Active or Disabled, when they last signed in, and the name, email and phone as the patient entered it on the portal. If those differ from the clinic’s record, a note tells you which ones changed. The clinic’s record isn’t changed automatically.
With Reset patients’ passwords, you can select Reset password.

Edit a patient

On the patient’s Details tab, select Edit.
Go through the steps and change what you need.
Select Save changes.

You see Patient updated.

Delete a patient

On the patient’s Details tab, select Delete.
Confirm with Yes, delete.

Deleting is permanent. To protect patient history, Meddesk only lets you delete a patient who has no linked records: no appointments, no patient portal account, and no records from modules: invoices, treatments or treatment plans, prescriptions, allergies, medical history or medications, lab orders, filled forms, inventory movements, or documents. This holds even if the module that owns those records is turned off. Prescriptions, filled forms and inventory movements are kept for the record and can never be deleted, so a patient who has any can’t be deleted at all. If something is still linked, Meddesk tells you what, for example “This patient still has 3 appointments. Delete those first before deleting the patient.”

Deleting a patient also deletes their notes.