Change Clinician Access to Unassigned Patients

Practices have two security choices regarding which users can view patients in TherapyNotes: Hide unassigned patients from Clinicians and Interns and Show unassigned patients to Clinicians and Interns. 

The Practice Administrator can manage this setting from the Security settings page. While this setting is not relevant for solo clinician practices, it is especially useful for large practices where clinicians work independently from each other. 

This feature allows practices to completely hide the existence of patients from unassigned clinicians. However, this also means hiding emergency contact information, so be sure to understand each of these choices so you can make the appropriate decision for your practice. Regardless of this setting, only assigned clinicians can see a patient’s medical records, such as notes.

To configure your practice's security settings:

• Click the User Icon > Settings > Security
• Under Clinician Access to Unassigned Patients, select either Hide unassigned patients from Clinicians and Interns OR Show unassigned patients to Clinicians and Interns

• Click the Save Custom Security Settings button.

Option 1: Hide unassigned patients to Clinicians and Interns

This setting is the default for new practices. Unassigned clinicians and interns will not be able to view any patients they are not assigned to, with few exceptions. Therefore, if they search for patients (such as from the Patients page, global search, or when creating an appointment) they will not see any patients that they are not assigned to. 

Some important notes about this feature:

• Clinicians/interns won’t have access to emergency contact information for these patients or know which clinicians they are assigned to.
• If a Practice Scheduler creates an appointment for a clinician and an unassigned patient, the clinician will see the patient’s name in the appointment but no additional information.
• If a clinician is unassigned from a patient, they may still see to-do list items such as notes they need to write for those patients. However, they will not be able to write those notes.
• There is no warning to prevent a clinician from creating a duplicate of an existing patient they aren’t assigned to.

If a clinician is also a Practice Scheduler, Practice Biller, or Clinical Administrator, this setting is not relevant, and they will continue to see all patients in the account. If you want a particular clinician to continue to see all patients, consider adding one of these roles for that user. Keep in mind that enabling additional roles will also grant the user other permissions.  This setting is recommended when clinicians in a practice mostly work independently and rarely see each other’s patients.

Option 2: Show unassigned patients to Clinicians and Interns

This is the classic behavior of TherapyNotes. All existing practices created before June 2021 will continue to have this set as their default unless they choose to change this in their Security settings. When this setting is enabled, clinicians can search for all patients in the practice, schedule themselves with any patient, and see and edit the patient’s contact information from the patient Info tab. They can not, however, access other information such as the Documents or Billing tabs. Only assigned clinicians can open notes or other clinical records. This setting may be beneficial if you need clinicians to have emergency contact information for all patients or if it’s common to regularly schedule their appointments with existing patients.