Professional contacts

Settings → Professional contacts (under Clinical catalogue) lists the external people and organisations the practice deals with. Each contact has a kind (lab, referrer, specialist, GP or other), a display name, the practice it belongs to, a registration reference, email, phone, address and a note.

No contacts are installed by default — they are the practice's own labs and colleagues. Lab cases can only name a contact of kind lab; referrals name any other kind, or a practitioner of this practice. Archive a contact you no longer work with; the cases and referrals that name it stay readable.

GPs

A patient's GP is a contact of kind GP, chosen on the patient's Care contacts. One GP practice is entered once and shared by every patient registered with it.

• The front desk can add a GP from the patient's record with New GP…, without managing this list: the GP is added here and made the patient's GP in one step.
• A GP that patients are registered with stays a GP: changing its kind is refused until no patient names it.
• Archiving a GP keeps it on the patients already registered with it. It is no longer offered to anyone new.
• A CSV import can map each GP name in the file to a GP here, or add it.

Connected labs

In the UK and the US, a lab contact can stand for a connected lab — one that takes orders online. To link a lab you already have here, go to Settings → Connected labs, find the lab and choose this contact in Link to an existing contact before you click Ask to connect: its earlier lab cases stay under the same contact. Its status — Asked, Connected, Declined or Disconnected — shows on Connected labs, and the contact keeps the name you gave it.

A lab that connects with the practice from its side — when you accept its invitation, for example — is added here as a lab contact under the lab's own name, which you can change.