Building a Records Structure That Works for Your Whole Team

The Records screen in ChiroTouch gives every member of your practice access to a patient's complete electronic file cabinet. From the Patient Management screen, a single click on the Records button opens a workspace where you can add new files or folders, open, print, or e-mail documents, and copy, rename, or delete items as needed. For a practice that handles referral letters, insurance correspondence, imaging reports, and consent forms on a daily basis, having all of those documents in one searchable location eliminates the back-and-forth of pulling physical files or hunting through shared drives. The screen also lets you change your file-viewing preferences so each team member can see the information in the format that suits their workflow.

One of the most impactful steps an office manager can take is setting up a consistent default folder structure before new patients are created. From the Records screen, click Records Setup and then the Default Folder button. This opens an Explorer window pointing to the ChiroTouch server's \CTData\PatFiles\FOLDERS directory. Create as many sub-folders as your workflow requires—treat them as the skeleton every new patient record will inherit. Keep in mind that folder names should use only letters, numerals, and spaces; special characters such as "$" are not supported. Once you close the window, every patient record created from that point forward will carry the same folder layout, which means your front desk, billing, and clinical staff all start from the same organizational baseline. Existing patient records are not retroactively affected, so plan the structure carefully before you commit.

Day-to-day management in the Records screen is built around speed. You can drag and drop imported files into the appropriate sub-folder, left-click any image to open a preview panel on the left side of the screen, and use the Refresh or Back buttons in the lower-right corner to reload the current view or step up one level in the folder hierarchy. A feature that is easy to overlook but genuinely useful is the "Use Other Patient's Records" checkbox. When a family member shares insurance documents or a referring physician's notes need to be attached to a second patient's chart, you can select the source patient from the drop-down and view their records within the current patient's context. This avoids duplicate file uploads and keeps the information accessible where the clinician is working.

For ChiroTouch support staff and IT coordinators, the Records screen is also a good starting point when a practice reports a missing document or a folder that appears empty. Because the default structure is stored in a fixed server directory, you can verify whether the folders were created correctly, confirm that file imports landed in the right sub-folder, and check that no unsupported characters crept into a folder name and broke the display path. Pairing that check with a quick review of the practice's file-viewing preferences and any shared-record links between patients usually resolves the most common "I can't find the file" tickets. Keeping the Records environment tidy is not just an administrative nicety; it is the difference between a team that spends seconds retrieving a document and one that spends minutes searching for it during a busy clinic day.

Sources and further reading