Enable Patient Delete

Overview

By default, patient records cannot be deleted from Welkin. This protects against accidental or unauthorized data loss. The Designer includes a setting to enable patient deletion for your environment – which should only be activated after careful consideration of your data retention requirements and compliance obligations.

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Enabling Patient Delete

1. In the Designer, navigate to Settings or Patient Settings.

2. Locate the Enable Patient Delete toggle.

3. Enable the toggle.

4. Create a draft and publish the change.

Once enabled, users with the appropriate permissions can delete patient records from the Care Portal.

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Permissions Required

Enabling the setting in the Designer does not automatically allow all users to delete patients. You must also:

1. Go to Security Policies in the Designer.

2. Grant the Patient Delete permission to the appropriate roles.

3. Publish the policy change.

Only users with both the role permission and security policy access will be able to delete patient records.

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Important Considerations

• This action is irreversible. Deleted patient records cannot be recovered from the Welkin UI. Ensure your organization has an appropriate backup or data retention process.

• Compliance review – before enabling patient delete, consult with your compliance team regarding HIPAA, state regulations, and your organization's data retention policies.

• Audit trail – all patient delete actions are recorded in the Data Audit log. See Data Audit.

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Disabling Patient Delete

To disable patient deletion again:

1. Navigate to Settings in the Designer.

2. Turn off the Enable Patient Delete toggle.

3. Publish the change.