February 27, 2019

Dentrix Ascend does its best to prevent entry of duplicate patient records. If you enter the exact same first name, last name, and birth date, an alert appears regarding the similar patient record. But if any one of those three pieces is different, there is no alert. So, it is possible to register a “new” patient without realizing that a record has already been created. In the event that there are duplicate patients in your organization’s database, you can mark the “extra” records as duplicates.

How to:

1. Figure out which record will become the “original” and which will become the “duplicate”.  One way to do this is to visit the Overview screen of each patient.

You must use your best judgment to select which patient record will be marked as the duplicate. It may not always be as easy as the example below, which shows activity in the original:

2. Select the duplicate patient record, and open the Basic Info tab on the Patient Information page.  Use the dropdown to set the Status field to Duplicate. An alert icon will appear next to the field. Click Save.

3. The Save Changes dialog box appears. To continue marking this record as a duplicate, you must now tell Dentrix Ascend which patient record is the original. Note that you cannot click Save until you do this.

4. In the Specify original patient field, search for and select the patient whose record you want to keep as the correct or “real” one. Note that the record you marked as a duplicate is grayed out and is not selectable.

5. Click Save. The duplicate patient record will from this time forward carry a warning message in the Basic Info tab.

NOTE: The only place that you can access the record of a patient that has been marked as a duplicate is from the record of the original or “real” patient. To open a duplicate patient’s record, on the Basic Info tab of the original patient’s Patient Information page, click Duplicate patient(s) to view the associated duplicates, and then click a patient name link.

Additional Information

• To mark a patient as a duplicate and to change the status from Duplicate to another status, you must have the security right to manage duplicate patients.
• You cannot change a patient status to Duplicate if the patient has future appointments, has a balance, has any pending insurance claims, or is the primary contact or primary guarantor for another patient.
• There is no merge function; any clinical notes, documents, medical alerts, and so forth will still belong to the duplicate patient but will not be searchable.