Dentrix Family File Overview: Your Patient “Home Base”
In this post, we’re walking through a high-level overview of the Family File in Dentrix — what it is, where key information lives, and how it ties into the rest of the patient’s chart.
Think of the Family File as the home base for each patient. Most of what you do in Dentrix pulls information from here: demographics, insurance, continuing care, patient notes, referrals, and family relationships. When this screen is clean and accurate, everything else in your software works better.
We’re not going super deep into every single field in this post (a lot of these deserve their own tutorial), but this will give you a solid “map” of where everything is and how it works together.
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Okay, let’s get into Dentrix.
The Family File: Big Picture
When you open the Family File, this is the core chart record for the patient (and their family unit if they’re linked to others). From here, you can access:
- Patient demographics
- Health history
- Employer and insurance information
- Continuing care
Patient notes (personal notes) - Referral information
Family member relationships
Almost everything in Dentrix is either stored here or pulling from here, so it’s worth getting comfortable with this screen.
Patient Demographics (Top Section)
At the top of the Family File is all of your patient demographic information:
- Name
- Address
- Phone number
- Basic contact details
To update anything, just double-click in that section. This opens an edit window where you can:
- Change their address
- Update a phone number
- Edit other demographic details
On the side of that window, you’ll also see the options for:
- Provider 1 – typically the primary dentist
- Provider 2 – often the primary hygienist
Setting those correctly is really helpful for reporting, especially when you’re pulling reports based on provider production, active patients per provider, or hygiene recall.
Once you’ve made your changes, just click OK to save.
Health History
The Health History area is another section you can access by double-clicking.
This deserves its own deep-dive (which I’ll cover in a future video/post), but for now, just know:
- You can quickly access and review the patient’s health history from here
- It’s one of the main locations where you’ll be updating medical conditions, medications, etc.
You don’t need to click three different places to find it — the Family File is one of your main access points.
Employer & Insurance Information
Right below the employer area is where things start to connect to insurance.
Employer
The patient’s employer can be entered here, and this often ties into insurance plans, especially when benefits are employer-based.
Insurance
In the Insurance section, you’ll see tabs for:
- Dental Insurance
- Medical Insurance (if your office bills medical)
Inside those, you can store:
- Primary insurance
- Secondary insurance
Again, this is another “big” topic — how to correctly enter, verify, and manage insurance could easily be its own training. For now, just remember:
➡️ All of the patient’s insurance setup starts here in the Family File.
Continuing Care
Continuing Care is another major area that impacts day-to-day scheduling and recall.
From the Family File, you can:
- See which continuing care types the patient is attached to (prophy, perio, exam, etc.)
- Manage settings like intervals and due dates
Continuing Care is a deep topic, especially if your practice has a mix of prophy and perio or multiple continuing care types. I’ll go into this in much more detail in a future tutorial, but for now, just know:
➡️ The patient’s continuing care builds from here, and this is one of the main places it’s controlled.
Patient Notes (Personal Notes)
This is one of my favorite parts of the Family File, and it’s one I get asked about all the time.
The Patient Notes section is where you should store personal, non-clinical information about the patient, like:
- “Going to California this summer”
- “Has three kids, ages 5, 8, and 10”
- “Works night shift – prefers late morning appointments”
What I see all the time when I temp in offices is this kind of personal info shoved into clinical notes. Things like:
“Patient is taking a trip to Florida next month”
“Child just started kindergarten”
Here’s why that’s a problem:
- It’s hard to find later.
You have to read through long clinical notes to find one small personal detail. - Clinical notes are a legal document.
If records are ever pulled for legal reasons, all of that goes with your clinical documentation. Even if it’s something harmless or nice, it just doesn’t belong there.
Instead, put all of that in Patient Notes in the Family File:
- You can date each note
- Add a short description like:
“06/2025 – Vacay in California this summer” - Click OK, and now it’s always visible right there in the Family File
You don’t even have to open the note editor to see it — you can glance at the box when you open the Family File and quickly remind yourself what’s going on in their life.
It makes building rapport so much easier without cluttering your clinical records.
Referrals
The Referral section tracks:
- Where the patient was referred from
- Who they were referred to
You can:
- Edit referral details
- Log new referrals as they go out
- Track how patients are coming into (and going out of) the practice
This becomes especially useful for marketing and tracking referral sources — how many patients came from a specific doctor, patient, or campaign.
Family Members Section
At the bottom of the Family File, you’ll see the Family Members area.
In my test patient example, there’s only one person in the “family,” but typically this is where you’ll see:
- Spouses
- Parents
- Children
All linked together for:
- Insurance (like who’s the subscriber)
- Billing (who’s the guarantor)
This section is crucial when:
- Two patients get married
- A couple divorces
- Adult children move off their parents’ account
- You’re setting who is responsible for the account
Keeping this clean helps avoid all kinds of insurance and billing headaches.
What’s Coming Next: Managing Family Files
Because family dynamics change all the time (marriage, divorce, kids aging out, etc.), the Family File needs to be updated as life happens.
In my next video and walkthrough, I’ll be covering:
- How to add new patients
- How to merge two family files
- How to separate family files
- How to remove or move someone from a family file when their situation changes
These are all real-life scenarios we see constantly in practice, and Dentrix gives you tools to handle them — you just need to know where to click and in what order.
Wrapping Up
That’s your high-level overview of the Dentrix Family File.
We covered:
- Where to find and edit demographics
- How to access health history
- Where employer and insurance live
- The role of continuing care
- Why Patient Notes are the best place for personal details
- How referrals and family members are tracked
From here, we’ll start going deeper into each section in future content so you can fine-tune how your office uses Dentrix day to day.
If you want step-by-step tutorials and deeper dives:
- Subscribe to the YouTube channel so you’ll be notified when the next video on managing family files goes live.
See you in the next tutorial.