Articles on: Patient Management

What is the Patient Visibility setting?

The Patient Visibility setting is a site wide setting that allows you to choose between one of two visibility models:

Visible to all users (default)
Visible to responsible user

We strongly advise you to read the whole of this article and ensure that you fully understand the implications of changing this setting before you choose “Visible to responsible user”

Site Administrators will always be able to see all patients regardless of the visibility setting.

The 'Visible to responsible user' functionality is intended specifically for organisations that operate an agency-style model where patients are linked to a “responsible” clinician or multiple "responsible" clinicians. Using this setting will mean that only the responsible clinician(s), and the Site Admin, will be able to see data relating to the patient.

You should not use this setting if you want to share records between all users. Turning it on and making a user responsible for a specific patient will make that patient invisible to all other users on the system, except the Site Admin. The unintended consequences of this action might include: duplication of records and concerns raised by staff that they can no longer see a record.

Site Administrators can change this centrally by going to Settings -> General and scrolling to How do you manage your customers?:

Visible to all users

This is the default setting in WriteUpp.

All users will be able to access all patient records and associated information, subject to their user role. Assigning a user as "responsible" will simply associate the patient with the treating clinician. This is useful if you want to define a primary contact or caseworker for a patient.

Users can be made responsible for a patient by selecting their name from the Responsible dropdown list within Edit Details on the Patient tab of the Patient Summary:

You can select as many users as you wish from this dropdown. All selected users will then be responsible for that client and will be listed in this field on the saved profile.

All users will also be able to allocate and change who is responsible for a patient via the Responsible dropdown list.

This is not a mandatory field and there is no requirement to make a user responsible for a patient.

Visible to responsible user

Only the user(s) assigned to a patient as responsible and the Site Administrator will have access to the patient and anything connected to them. There will be no evidence of that patient anywhere within WriteUpp to any other user.

As above, users can be made responsible for a patient within Edit Details on the Patient tab of the Patient Summary.

Site Administrators will be able to assign any user(s) as Responsible for any patient via the dropdown list:

All other users will only be able to make themselves responsible for any new patients they create (or have created in the past) by ticking the Make me responsible tick box which will appear to them:

Users other than Site Administrators will not be able to make themselves responsible for a patient they did not create; they will not be presented with any options under Responsible when editing patient details:

Only the Site Administrator will be able to change who is responsible for a patient, if a user has already been entered and saved.

If the Patient Visibility setting is set to Visible to Responsible User but no user is entered within the Responsible box within the Patient tab, all users will have access to the patient record.

Got more than one clincian working with a patient or need more than one user to have access to a patient record? That's fine, you can assign as many users as you'd like to be responsible for a patient. All responsible users will then have access to the patient record and the contents within and the patient will be hidden from any users who are not responsible.

Updated on: 14/06/2023

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