Portal Access Updates for Deceased and Reactivated Patients Copied

What’s changing

When a patient is marked as deceased from the Demographics tab in iKnowMed, associated portal access is automatically updated.

As part of this process:

• The patient’s portal account is locked, preventing further access to the portal.
• Any caregiver relationships associated with the patient are automatically set to inactive.
• Caregivers will no longer be able to view information for the deceased patient within the portal.
• If a caregiver is associated with multiple patients, access is removed only for the deceased patient. Information for all other active patients remains available.

In addition, portal access is now automatically restored if a patient is mistakenly marked as deceased and that status is later corrected in iKnowMed.

When the deceased status is removed:

• The patient’s portal account is automatically unlocked.
• Portal access is restored across all practices associated with the patient.
• Patients can once again sign in to the portal and communicate with their care teams as expected.
• Previously inactivated caregiver relationships are restored, allowing caregivers to resume access to the patient’s health information.
• All Support Tools functionality becomes available again for the patient account, including actions such as sending portal messages, updating email addresses, and performing other supported account management activities.
• Caregivers associated with multiple patients continue to maintain access to their other patient relationships without interruption.

No manual intervention is required to re-establish portal access once the patient’s status has been corrected.

Why this matters

This enhancement helps ensure that portal access remains aligned with patient status while reducing administrative effort for practices. Access is automatically restricted when a patient is marked as deceased, supporting privacy and data governance requirements. At the same time, practices have confidence that if a patient is inadvertently marked as deceased, correcting the record in iKnowMed will automatically restore portal access, caregiver access, and Support Tools functionality across all associated practices, helping maintain continuity of care and communication.