What Gets Bundled and What Stays in the Source Database

Practices that operate more than one database—whether that means separate ChiroTouch installations at different offices, a corporate group with distinct license IDs, or a referring facility that needs to share a patient's file—can use the Patient File Transfer button on the Front Desk's Patient Information screen. The feature gathers a single patient's data into a bundled folder on the server machine, which the receiving office then imports into its own ChiroTouch database. Because the process is one patient per export action, office managers should plan transfers around the specific individuals who actually need to move rather than attempting a bulk migration through this tool.

When you click Export and confirm your selections, ChiroTouch pulls together the patient's front-desk demographic information, any patient notes and treatment notes you have entered, and the full set of patient records such as videos, photos, X-rays, and uploaded documents. The resulting folder is named after your practice's License ID, and the export dialog displays a username and password pair that the receiving office will need during the import step. That credential exchange is the linchpin of the whole workflow: without it, the destination team cannot authenticate the bundle against their own database.

Equally important is understanding what the transfer does not carry over. Chart notes, diagnosis codes, charges, ledger entries, insurance information, and appointment history all remain in the source database. If your receiving practice expects to see billing history or a complete treatment timeline, those items will not appear after the import. For a referring chiropractor handing off a patient to a colleague in another city, that gap is often acceptable because the receiving office will re-establish its own insurance and billing records. But for an office consolidating two ChiroTouch databases into one, the missing ledger and appointment data means a separate reconciliation step—pulling reports from the old system and re-entering or importing them through whatever billing workflow the merged practice uses.

Before either side begins, ChiroTouch technical support must configure both installations so the Patient File Transfer button is visible and so the local destination folder (typically under the ChiroTouch program directory's Database subfolder) exists and is writable. The receiving office must mirror that setup exactly; if the path or permissions differ, the import will not find the patient directory. As a practical checklist for office managers: confirm the button appears on both sides, verify the folder path with your IT contact, run a test export of a non-critical patient, save the export report in PDF or Excel format for your records, and only then proceed with the real transfer. Keeping a paper trail of the License ID, the credential pair, and the timestamp of each transfer protects both practices if a question about data integrity arises weeks later.

Sources and further reading