Patient records in PhysioDesk: one place for everything about a patient

A patient's record is the part of clinic software you open fifty times a day. In PhysioDesk it holds a patient's whole course of care on one screen: who they are, what you are treating, every session, the exercises they do at home, how they are improving, what they have paid and what they still owe. This post walks through it from enrolment to discharge.

Enrolling a patient

When someone new calls, you enrol them with:

• name and mobile number, with the country code

• date of birth and gender

• the referring doctor, if there is one

• what they are coming in for

• their session rate, which every bill uses from then on

• their primary therapist, the member of staff in charge of their care

Each patient gets a patient ID (UHID). If the number belongs to someone your clinic discharged or removed earlier, PhysioDesk asks whether this is the same person coming back, so one patient never ends up with two records.

The record at a glance

The patient's page opens with four figures that answer the questions the front desk is asked most:

• Sessions: how many are done, and how many are still booked.

• Paid sessions: completed sessions on a bill that is fully paid, and how many have not been billed yet.

• Paid: everything the patient has paid, including money paid in advance.

• Outstanding: what is still owed on bills already sent.

A card on the left keeps the contact details and diagnoses in view while you scroll. From the record you can add a session, a bill, a diagnosis, an exercise or a progress measurement without leaving the page.

Diagnoses

A diagnosis is what you are treating, written the way you would say it: "lower back pain after lifting", "post-operative right knee, week 4". A patient can have several open at once. Sessions count towards a diagnosis, so you can see how many sessions a problem has taken. Nothing closes on its own; you close a diagnosis when treatment for it ends.

Sessions and notes

Every session on the record shows its date, time, therapist, branch (if you have two) and status. Completed sessions carry the clinical note: chief complaint, observation, assessment and plan. A completed session cannot be deleted, only its note edited, so the record always shows what really happened.

Exercises and progress

The home programme you prescribed sits on the record, with each exercise's sets, repetitions, hold and frequency. Progress measures such as pain, range of motion or walking distance are charted across the course of treatment, so you can show a patient their improvement in numbers.

Consent

Each patient's consent to treatment is recorded against a written, versioned wording: signed by the patient in the patient portal, or recorded by your staff when it was given on paper or in the room, with who signed (the patient, a parent, a guardian, a spouse or a carer).

Change history

Records get edited, and that is fine. What matters is being able to see it. The change history panel shows who changed which field, from what to what, and when, for the patient's details, their sessions, diagnoses and bills.

What the patient sees

Patients sign in to the patient portal with the mobile number you have for them. They see their next appointment, their past sessions, their exercises and their bills. You can hide history or bills for an individual patient. The record shows whether a patient has signed in, and lets you send them sign-in instructions or turn their access off and back on.

Who sees which patients

The owner sees every patient. A therapist sees the patients they treat and the patients for whom they are the primary therapist, and can read their whole record. A clinic admin who manages a branch sees that branch's patients. Money figures are shown only to the owner and clinic admins.

Discharge, and nothing ever lost

When a patient is done, close their diagnoses and discharge them. Their record stays exactly as it was. PhysioDesk does not delete patients: a record that is removed is hidden from the clinic's lists and kept, because medical records have to be. If a patient returns, you take them back on and their history is there.

You can export a single patient's full record at any time, and the owner can download all of the clinic's data from Settings, under Data.

Try it

Enrol a patient, book a session and open their record in the 30-minute demo on the pricing page. No sign-up is needed.