Making a note or profile item private

You can mark a note or an item in the patient’s profile as private. Notes and items that you mark as private are omitted from searches and reminders run by users with insufficient privileges.

You cannot mark reminders in the REM field or free form text in the PERS field as private.

After you make a note or item private, you may want to also add a special note that will always be visible at the bottom and is not filed chronologically (Data > New Special Note) to record the consent directives or why the note was marked as private (such as “Patient requested to keep the information confidential”).

Tip: You can set all your notes to be private by default. For more information, see Defining a user's accessibility settings.

Steps

1. Click in the note or profile item and choose Patient > Modify <note/profile item> Privacy.

Note: To make multiple notes private, you must click and choose the menu command in each separately; even if you select multiple notes (marked with the green bar), the menu command will apply only to the note that you last clicked.

2. Select the Make Note Private checkbox. If your user account is configured to set all your notes private by default, this checkbox is already selected.
3. To grant access to specific users, under Also Grant Access to These Users use the + to locate and add users. If your user account is configured to share your notes with specific users or roles, the users/roles are displayed in the list. For more information, see Defining a user's accessibility settings.
4. To deny access to users who would have access because of their user role, under Deny Access to These Users, use the + to locate and add users.
Note: If you make a note private where another user started the note and you completed it, the original user can still see the note because that person is an author on the note. If your portion of the note should be visible only to you, create a separate note.

Profile items that you made private are shown with a red exclamation mark in front of them; when another user sees this profile, the items are replaced with the red exclamation and the word PRIVATE.

When you see a note that another user made private, it appears with the text Private - Double click on the note to view in an emergency”. Notes that you made private appear with only the text Private.

If a note that contains an allergy to a medication is marked as private by another user, both the ALLR profile field entry and the corresponding note are marked as Private. If you try to prescribe this medication, you’ll get an interaction warning. If you choose to continue with the prescription anyway, a note is recorded in the chart, indicating that you prescribed with warnings.

Privacy is respected in stamps. For example, if an item is private, when you use the patProfile stamp, the item will still not be shown. Also, reminders are hidden if the criteria match a private item.

To remove your privacy settings from a note or profile item, click it and choose Patient > Modify <note/item> Privacy. Clear the Make Note Private checkbox, and then click OK.