The patient chart

Find a patient and open their chart

Every chart starts at the global Patient Search. Click the Chart button (document icon) in the top toolbar, or press F6 from anywhere in the app, and the same search modal opens. Staff accounts see the Chart button only when their profile includes at least one patient-chart permission; physicians always have it.

1. Start with your recent patients. Before you type anything, the modal lists Recent Patients — the charts you opened most recently (or No recent patients on a fresh account). Sort the list with the Name, Date of Birth, and Last Accessed buttons; each row shows the patient’s MRN and DOB plus when you last opened the chart (for example “2 days ago”).
2. Or just type. Results update automatically as you type — there is no separate search button. The box accepts four lookup styles, as its placeholder says: Search by name, email, MRN (5-10 digit #), or DOB (YYYY-MM-DD)…. If nothing matches, the empty-result message tells you which style it detected.
3. Click the patient. The chart opens as its own tab in the workspace tab bar, so several charts can stay open side by side. Opening the same patient again reuses the existing tab rather than creating a duplicate.

Read the chart: layout, tabs & in-chart search

The chart screen has two zones: the patient header strip across the top (covered in the next section) and the Chart Review card below it, with a row of section tabs. Encounters is the default tab.

Those eight are the row a default practice sees. Three more — Immunizations, Prenatal, and Brain Health — are conditional and slot in after Medications only where they apply, so don’t expect them on every chart. Each fails closed — if the setting is still loading, the tab stays hidden rather than flickering into view:

• Immunizations appears only if your practice has enabled it as an additional feature (see Practice setup).
• Prenatal needs obstetrics enabled and at least one pregnancy episode on this patient, so it shows up on the patients it applies to rather than on every chart.
• Brain Health appears when the neurology brain-health feature is enabled for the practice.

For staff accounts, each tab shows only when the staff profile holds the matching permission — a profile with no chart permissions sees No chart sections available instead.

1. Jump between tabs. Cmd+1–Cmd+9 (Ctrl+1–Ctrl+9 on Windows) go straight to a tab — hover any tab to see its shortcut hint. Only the first nine tabs you can actually see get a number, so on a chart carrying the optional tabs the last ones are click-only. Tabs load on first visit and then stay loaded, so switching back is instant. If the row overflows the window, chevron buttons appear to scroll it.
2. Search inside the chart. The magnifier at the right end of the tab row expands a Search… box (Ctrl+F focuses it). It full-text searches the patient’s Notes, Labs, and Imaging, groups the matches under headings, and clicking a result jumps to that item in the matching tab.
3. Pick a layout. The small monitor icon on the header toggles between the default horizontal bar (Switch to vertical layout) and a vertical left sidebar (Switch to horizontal layout) that lists Allergies, Problems, Other History, Immunizations (when enabled), Preferred Pharmacies, and Referral Communications as expandable sections. Referral Communications only appears when this patient came in through an inbound referral, and an active-pregnancy chip sits in the panel for obstetric practices.
4. Order without opening a note. Physicians can press F7 or Ctrl+O from the chart to open Create Orders directly — see Standalone orders.

The patient header: identity, vitals & safety at a glance

The header strip stays in view no matter which tab you’re on. It packs the patient’s identity, latest vitals, allergies, problems, and preferred pharmacies into one bar — each block is clickable and drops down its detail.

Maintain the problem list & allergies

Problems and allergies are managed straight from their header dropdowns, and both follow the same add–edit–delete pattern. Keeping them current matters beyond the chart: the allergy list feeds the medication safety checks (see Safety checks).

1. Open the dialog. Click Problems → Add New, or press Ctrl+Shift+P anywhere in the chart; for allergies it’s Allergies → Add New or Ctrl+Shift+A. To edit, just click an existing entry in the dropdown.
2. Name the entry. A problem requires an ICD-10 Code: type into Search ICD-10 codes… and press Enter (or the magnifier) to open the code search; the official description appears beneath the field once chosen. An allergy requires an Allergen Name via Search allergens… — pick a database match or keep your free-text entry.
3. Fill in the detail and save. Save with Add Problem or Add Allergy. When editing, the button reads Update Problem / Update Allergy and the code or allergen is read-only — only the details below can change.
4. Delete with confirmation. Open the entry and click Delete; an inline Confirm delete? prompt with Yes / No appears before anything is removed.

View & edit demographics, insurance, and patient billing

Click the patient’s name or avatar in the header to open the demographics modal. Its header repeats the identity with chips for MRN, DOB, Age, and Sex, and it opens on Demographics. The full row is seven tabs, in this order: Demographics, Insurance, Billing, Charges & Credits, Questionnaires, Prior Auth, and Outbound Comms. Three of them are permission-gated and simply aren’t there for a plain physician account: Billing and Charges & Credits for admins or billing staff who are allowed to see financial amounts, and Outbound Comms for admins or staff holding the outbound-communications permission — so without those permissions the row is the remaining four.

1. Review the demographics cards. The read view is organized into Identity, Contact, Address, Emergency Contact, Parent / Guardian, and Guarantor cards; anything missing shows a hint like No address on file.
2. Edit what’s changed. Click Edit to switch to the Edit demographics form — names, date of birth, sex (Unset/Female/Male/Other), gender identity, marital status, preferred language, email and phones, address, and emergency contact. Finish with Save (it briefly shows Saving…) or Cancel.
3. Manage coverage on the Insurance tab. Add policies with + Primary and + Secondary. Each policy card shows its coverage status (Active coverage / Inactive coverage), payer details, and a row of actions. Three of them are the eligibility tools, and they show only for users allowed to see financial amounts: View benefits detail expands the eligibility benefits table, Run eligibility performs a free electronic check (Eligibility check complete. on success), and Run COB check looks for other coverage. Alongside them sit the lifecycle actions — Make primary on a secondary policy, Invalidate for a policy entered in error, Expire for coverage that has ended, and Reactivate on a policy that is no longer active. Once eligibility data exists, a coverage-estimate summary — deductible remaining and per-visit-type estimates — appears at the top of the tab. Until a policy is added you’ll see No insurance policies on file.
4. Set how this patient is billed. Lower on the Insurance tab, the Bypass insurance (treat as cash pay) checkbox makes visit collection use the cash fee schedule instead of the eligibility copay, and the Billing type selector defaults to Automatic with a Custom type creator. Both are money controls, so they appear only to accounts that can see financial amounts. The separate Billing tab — the per-patient billing surface for preferences and charges — is for admins and billing staff and is documented in Patient billing.

Review past encounters, notes & upcoming visits

The Encounters tab — the chart’s default — is the visit history: every encounter in a sortable table, a side-by-side preview, and an optional panel of upcoming visits. The Notes tab is the note-centric view of the same record.

1. Scan the history. Columns are Date, Type, Provider, Specialty, and Chief Complaint; unsigned encounters carry a status badge next to the type, and dates render in your organization’s time zone. Long histories load 50 encounters at a time as you scroll, with a Showing N encounters banner and All encounters loaded marking the end of the record.
2. Sort and filter. The Sort chips (Date / Type / Provider / Specialty) toggle ascending and descending. The chips follow your columns: every sortable column you have switched on gets a chip, so adding or hiding columns changes what you can sort by. The Filter chips narrow to All, By Me, or My Specialty. The last two are grayed out for staff accounts without a physician record — that’s expected.
3. Choose your columns. The Customize columns button — the small columns icon at the right-hand end of the Sort / Filter row — opens a column manager. Beyond the five that show by default you can add Summary, Status, Visit Reason, Last Updated, and Signed, plus Billing, Claim, and Balance — those last three are money columns and are simply absent for users who can’t see financial amounts. Your choice is saved to your own account, so the table looks the same on every chart you open.
4. Preview a visit. Single-click a row to open a split-pane preview — note content, orders, and charges — and collapse it with Hide Preview / Show Preview. Double-click to open the same preview as a near-full-screen dialog instead.
5. Watch upcoming visits. The Future Visits toggle (on by default) shows an Upcoming visits panel above the history with a count: each booked appointment’s date and time, visit type with an Upcoming badge, provider, location or Virtual Visit, and any visit notes. Cancelled, completed, no-show, held, and already-started visits are filtered out automatically; with nothing booked it reads No upcoming visits scheduled.
6. Read notes on the Notes tab. The sortable note list opens any note in a preview pane. Signed notes are never edited in place — add an addendum instead. When an addendum changes the plan, Hero EMR reconciles the matching unscheduled follow-up request automatically (see Sign & close the visit).

Vitals: read the strip, record during a visit, review the trend

The header’s vitals readout shows the most recent Wt: and Ht: with a recency suffix — “(today)”, “(yesterday)”, “(3d ago)”, or a date — or No vitals recorded when there’s nothing yet. Clicking it opens a small action menu for everything vitals-related.

1. Open the action menu. Click the Wt: / Ht: readout. The three standing actions are Open height and weight trends, Pull latest vitals into note, and Add encounter vitals. Obstetric practices get a fourth, OB, during a visit — it opens prenatal observations for the encounter, or offers Start pregnancy episode… when there isn’t one yet.
2. Review the trend. Open height and weight trends opens the Growth & vitals trends modal. Three tiles across the top give you Latest weight, Latest height, and Most recent at a glance; below them, Weight and Height tabs chart every recorded value point by point, each with a Date / Value / Source table under the chart. Children get a third tab, Growth, plotting the measurements against CDC growth percentiles — it appears for patients under 20 and opens selected by default under 18.
3. Record vitals during a visit. Add encounter vitals opens a dialog subtitled Save measurements for the patient on this encounter. It records Measured at (required), Weight and Height with unit selectors, Head circumference with its own cm/in selector, Blood pressure (Systolic/Diastolic), Heart rate, Temperature with its unit, Oxygen saturation, Respiratory rate, Pain (0-10), and Notes. Finish with Save vitals.
4. Stamp vitals into the note. Pull latest vitals into note inserts the most recent measurements into the encounter note you have open, so the documented vitals match the chart.