Important Notes

• Please use this tool with care as it can potentially delete important data with no means of undoing the deletion.
• You require administration-level permission to delete aged data (you must be set as an Administrator under Configure > User Settings), or you need to belong to a Security Group to whom an Administrator has assigned permission specifically to use this tool.
• If you attempt to run this tool while another user is running it, EXACT will pop up a warning and block your usage.
• Backing up your database is strongly recommended because the Delete Aged Data procedure cannot be reversed. You will be asked if you have performed a backup of the database before being able to run the Delete Aged Data tool. EXACT does not check that this backup has been performed so it is entirely up to the practice to do this.
• When EXACT looks for indications of whether a patient is active, it looks for both past interactions with the practice and for future scheduled interactions (so for example a patient may have been off the practice radar for 10 years, but actually have an appointment scheduled for next month, and is therefore considered as active).
• When EXACT looks for indications of whether a patient is active, it differentiates between treatment charged and treatment completed because these don't necessarily occur simultaneously. A clinician may have completed treatment but only intends charging when some other condition is met - for example the patient has not been charged for anything in 10 years, but has three extractions completed in the last month, and therefore is considered active.
• It is possible to delete the data of patients with a Debit balance - EXACT automatically writes off the debit balance before deleting the patient data.
• It is not possible to delete the data of patients with a Credit balance. For such patients you will first need to make an equivalent adjustment in the patient file to bring the balance to zero, then refer back to the open Delete Aged Data tool screen.

  Credit balance management must be done while the Delete Aged Data screen is open, otherwise EXACT sees the adjustment as a very recent transaction and disqualifies the patient from the aged data list.

• Patients with no recorded Date of Birth (DOB) cannot normally be deleted as there is no means to confirm that they meet the minimum age requirements for deletion. However they can be deleted if they qualify for an Inactive Reason and you specify that reason in the Delete Aged Data parameters.
• During the procedure, although all patient-identifying features are removed, patient transactions are retained against anonymous names in EXACT for reporting purposes. For example, the Invoiced Work by Owning Dentist Report still needs to reference invoiced work, and the Appointment Analysis Report still needs to reference appointments, even if these were made by aged data patients.