The patient portal — where a patient signs in to see their appointments, invoices, forms and treatment plan — is available to patients aged 16 and over. This is deliberate, and it's why you may see portal access unavailable for a younger patient. The portal is included on paid plans.
Why 16?
A portal login gives one person direct, private access to a patient's record. For a child, deciding who should hold that access — the young person, a parent, both, or neither — is a safeguarding and data-protection judgement, not something the software should assume. Rather than guess, Atlacare limits a patient's own portal login to patients who are 16 or over. Younger patients are reached through a parent or guardian instead (see below).
If a patient has no date of birth on record, they're asked to confirm it the first time they open the portal. Anyone who enters a date under 16 is turned away and told to ask the clinic to add a parent or guardian. The screen names the patient, so a parent opening a child's email enters the child's date of birth, not their own.
What about patients under 16?
You look after them as you do now, through the family:
- They can still be booked in the normal way. The public booking page has no age limit, so a parent can book online, and you can add the appointment yourself.
- Reminders and confirmations still go to the contact email or phone number on the record — typically the parent's.
- Forms, invoices and letters can be shared the way you'd share them with any family: in person, by email, or however your clinic prefers.
Giving a parent or guardian portal access
A parent, guardian or carer can be added as a representative, so they can use the portal on the child's behalf.
- Open the patient's profile and click Show more at the bottom of the right-hand column.
- In the Portal access — representatives card, click Add.
- Enter their name and email, choose the relationship and the legal authority (for example, parental responsibility), and note any evidence you checked.
- Click Add representative.
They then sign in on the portal sign-in page with that email address and get a sign-in link. Atlacare doesn't email them when you add them, so let them know.
A representative sees appointments, reminders, forms and invoices. They don't see clinical notes or the patient's message thread unless a clinician chooses Grant clinical and records why it's appropriate. You can Revoke access at any time.
Some rules apply automatically:
- When the child turns 11, any clinical access granted earlier is reduced to admin-only, so clinical access for an 11 to 15-year-old needs a fresh decision.
- When the child turns 16, representative access ends and the young person can have their own login.
- If the patient has a safeguarding flag, representatives can't be added and existing ones can't sign in until the flag is reviewed.
In short
- Portal logins are for patients aged 16 and over.
- Under-16s are managed through the family, and a parent or guardian can be added as a representative.
- Adding a date of birth to the record is still best: a recorded date under 16 stops portal access being switched on at all.