Finding a Patient's Account

Audience: Billing, Revenue, and Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) — anyone using the Staff Experience

What this guide covers

Almost everything you do in the Staff Experience — taking a payment, changing a plan, issuing a refund, answering a billing question — starts the same way: finding the right account. Landing on the wrong account (or the wrong one of several look-alikes) is one of the easiest ways to enter a change against the wrong patient, so a few extra seconds spent searching carefully saves a much bigger cleanup later.

This guide covers:

• How to get to the Patient Search page and use the search form effectively
• How to read your search results, especially when there are multiple matches
• What you'll see once you open an account — the My Bills sidebar, the Guarantor Actions menu, and the Account Detail view
• One situation you may run into: creating/editing an account with no online login
• Tips, tricks, and common gotchas

Getting to Patient Search

There's a single entry point for finding an account: Patient Search, found under the Actions dropdown in the top navigation bar (alongside Transaction Search, Store, Virtual Terminal, and Reports).

Permission note: You need My Accounts or My Payment Plans access to see Patient Search at all — either one unlocks it (you don't need both), and Account Detail access to see full bill-level detail once you find it. If Patient Search is missing from your Actions menu entirely, your role doesn't have either permission — ask your administrator rather than assuming the account doesn't exist.

Why this matters: there's no separate "quick list" of your recent or assigned accounts to browse — every account, whether it's brand new or one you looked at five minutes ago, goes through the same search form. Get comfortable with the fields below; they're the only way in.

Using the search form

The search form has three groups of fields:

Basic Filters — the form's own instructions: "Please enter one or more values below, in any combination. At least one required."

• Account Number
• MRN — only shown if your institution uses medical record numbers
• First Name (allows partial match)
• Last Name (allows partial match)

Additional Filters — the form's own instructions: "Use additional filters to narrow your results."

• Day Of Birth
• Month of Birth
• Year of Birth
• Payment Plan Status
• City, State
• Zip Code

or Search by Email only — the form's own instructions: "Leave blank if other filters selected. Cannot be combined with other fields."

• Email Address — this one is exclusive. If you search by email, clear every other field first; the system won't combine an email search with name/account filters.

Tips & tricks

• Search by account number first if you have it. It's the fastest path and the only field guaranteed to return a single match — no disambiguation needed. Why it matters: every other field (especially name) can return several patients, and picking the wrong "John Smith" out of a list is the single easiest way to make a change on the wrong account.
• Use partial names on purpose. If a patient's name might be misspelled in the system (common with transcribed or phonetic intake), search a shorter fragment of the last name instead of the full spelling.
• Add Date of Birth as soon as you have two or more results. DOB is the fastest way to separate two same-name patients without having to open each one.
• If a search returns nothing, don't assume the account doesn't exist — try removing a narrowing filter first (city/zip and DOB are the most common overcorrections), then confirm spelling on the name fields.
• Results are capped at 50. If you suspect there are more matches than you're seeing, your search is too broad — add a filter rather than scrolling for more (there is no "next page").
• Search is scoped to your institution. If a patient was seen at a different location/entity than the one you're logged into, they may not appear — this is expected behavior, not a bug. If your organization has multiple related institutions, check whether cross-institution search applies before assuming the account is missing.

Reading your search results

Each row in your results shows:

• Institution (only shown if your organization has more than one)
• Guarantor account number, name, date of birth, and address
• Patient account number, name, and date of birth
• Online User — shows Yes if the patient has an active self-service portal login, No if they don't

Why the "Online User" column matters: if a patient says they "can't log in," this column tells you in one glance whether they have an account to log into at all, or whether you need to help them register instead of troubleshooting a password issue.

If your search matches exactly one account, you'll be taken straight into the account — no results list in between.

If your search matches more than one account, you'll see a results table so you can pick the correct one by clicking Select. This is the moment to double-check DOB and address before clicking through, especially for common names.

If your search returns nothing, you'll see: "Your search returned no results." If you searched by account number and have Virtual Terminal access, you'll also see a link offering to take you to Virtual Terminal instead — a hint that a no-match on account number is often a payment-lookup task, not a search-error.

Reading your search results

Each row in your results shows:

• Institution (only shown if your organization has more than one)
• Guarantor account number, name, date of birth, and address
• Patient account number, name, and date of birth
• Online User — shows Yes if the patient has an active self-service portal login, No if they don't

Why the "Online User" column matters: if a patient says they "can't log in," this column tells you in one glance whether they have an account to log into at all, or whether you need to help them register instead of troubleshooting a password issue.

If your search matches exactly one account, you'll be taken straight into the account — no results list in between.

If your search matches more than one account, you'll see a results table so you can pick the correct one by clicking Select. This is the moment to double-check DOB and address before clicking through, especially for common names.

If your search returns nothing, you'll see: "Your search returned no results." If you searched by account number and have Virtual Terminal access, you'll also see a link offering to take you to Virtual Terminal instead — a hint that a no-match on account number is often a payment-lookup task, not a search-error.

Opening an account: the sidebar and the Guarantor Actions menu

Once you're on an account, you'll see a left-hand sidebar — which items appear depends on your permissions:

Next to Help Center in the top navigation bar is a Guarantor Actions dropdown with additional tools (which ones you see depends on your permissions and the account's situation):

• Payment Plan History — a consolidated view of every plan and offer tied to this guarantor
• Edit Payment Method
• Add Reminder / View Reminders
• Change Statement Cycle
• Edit Account (or Create Account, if the patient has no account yet)
• Account Detail — opens in a new tab (see below)
• Estimate Account for Payment

Separately, the Actions dropdown (same one that holds Patient Search) is where you'll find Transaction Search, Store, Virtual Terminal, Reports, and — depending on your role — a long tail of admin/reporting tools.

Why this matters: most day-to-day lookups only need My Bills. Guarantor Actions is where the less-frequent, more consequential tools live — knowing it's there saves you from hunting around when a patient asks for something like a plan history or a statement resend.

My Bills: reading the bill list

Each row shows: Patient (avatar, "[Name] Visit to [Institution]", service date, and the patient account number as a clickable link), Total Billed, To Pay if the amount is an estimate), Eligible For (staff only), and an Action column with a View Bill Details link that opens the full bill breakdown in a modal.

Why it matters: the account number link and Account Detail (below) are two different depths of the same bill — the account number link opens a quick reference, while Account Detail is the deep, itemized view. Use the shallow one first; escalate to Account Detail when you actually need every field.

Account Detail

You can reach the same Account Detail view two ways: from Guarantor Actions → Account Detail (opens in a new tab), or by clicking a bill's patient account number link under My Bills (opens as an in-page popup).

 Either way, you'll see three sections:

Why it matters: this is the most granular financial view of a single bill — reach for it when a patient disputes a balance or a payment's posting status, rather than relying on the summary shown under My Bills.

Two situations you'll run into

A patient has no online login

If a patient has no portal account yet (the Online User column showed No), use Guarantor Actions → Create Account (it shows as Edit Account once one exists). 

The form asks for Email Address, Confirm Email Address, First Name, Last Name, Mobile Number, and notification preferences ("Send an email whenever there is activity on this account," "Send a text whenever there is activity on this account," "Send monthly paper statements"), then Save Account. From the same screen you can also Reset Password. 

Why it matters: you don't need to wait for a patient to self-register before you can add contact info, set notification preferences, or manage their account on their behalf.

Common gotchas

This guide reflects Staff Experience account search and account detail functionality. For changes you make once you're on an account (payment plans, refunds, fees), see the related guides in this Help Center series.