AtlacareThese sound similar but mean very different things, and mixing them up is how clinics accidentally break their retention obligations. Here's the distinction.
Archiving (making inactive)
Archiving keeps the record — it just moves it out of the way. When a patient's care ends, you make them inactive: they leave your active list and stop counting towards your plan limit, but everything (appointments, notes, invoices, files) is retained and can be reactivated. See discharging a patient.
This is what you want almost every time. Health records must be kept for years after the last treatment, so "tidying up" a finished patient means archiving, not deleting.
Deleting (erasure)
Deleting removes personal data — and it's tightly constrained. You'd only erase a record in response to a valid right-to-erasure request, and even then only where retention law allows; financial and clinical records often must be kept for their retention period regardless of a deletion request. Erasure anonymises the record rather than destroying the structure needed for financial history. See handling a right-to-erasure request.
Quick guide
| You want to… | Do this |
|---|---|
| Tidy a finished patient off your list | Archive (make inactive) |
| Stop someone counting to your plan limit | Archive |
| Respond to a patient asking to be forgotten | Erasure — and check retention first |
| Free up space by removing old patients | Don't — retention rules apply; archive instead |
Rule of thumb: archive by default, erase only on a valid request. Atlacare surfaces records that have passed their retention window under Settings → GDPR so you review them rather than deleting on a hunch.