Patient Guardian

You can assign a Patient Guardian to minors or incapacitated patients and require the guardian's signature on designated documents. In this article, we'll cover how to add a Guardian Contact to the patient chart and how to require the Guardian's signature on Consents/Evaluations. 

Add Guardian Contact

Let's review how to create a Guardian Contact and invite that contact to the Kipu Portal.

1. Open the patient chart and click Edit Patient. 
2. Scroll to the Contacts section and click Add Patient Contact.
3. At minimum, add the Guardian Name, Phone number, and select Guardian from the Relationship drop-down.
4. You can add additional Guardian contacts, as needed. 
5. If your organization uses the Kipu Portal, you can invite the patient Guardian(s) to the portal where they can review treatment details and sign documents. Ensure the Guardian has an Email address added to their contact record.
6. Refresh the page. Under the contact details, click the Invite to Portal button.
7. Review the email address and click Yes to invite the Guardian to the portal.
8. The Guardian will be able to create their account following these instructions.  

Set up Forms to Require Guardian Signature

Super Admins or users with the Manage Templates or Manage Templates - Consents and Evaluations features can modify templates to require a Guardian's signature.

Consents

1. Open the Templates tab.
2. On the Consent forms tab, locate the form where you want to enable guardian signature.
3. Click the Edit icon.
4. Check the Guardian signature required box and click Update to save changes.
5. Repeat this process for all Consents where you'd like to collect the Guardian's signature.

Evaluations

1. Open the Templates tab.
2. On the Evaluations tab, locate the form where you want to enable guardian signature.
3. Click the Edit icon.
4. Under the Required Signatures External section, check the Guardian box and click Update to save changes.
5. Repeat this process for all Evaluations where you'd like to collect the Guardian's signature.

Collecting Guardian Signature(s)

When the form is added to a patient chart tab, there is a label on the form indicating the Guardian's signature is required.

If patient has no Guardian or the Guardian has been deleted after you added the form, the Guardian label is greyed out:

When the form requires Guardian's signature:

1. From the open form, click the Sign & Submit button.
2. From the Select a Signer drop-down, pick a guardian (or one of the guardians).
3. Have the Guardian sign the form, then click Submit.
4. Alternatively, the form can be sent to the Patient Portal, if the guardian has an active account and the form has been made available to share to the portal.
5. The Guardian can add their signature from the portal directly.  

If the patient has more than one guardian, all guardians need to sign. If you do not have one of the dedicated guardians available for the signature, you can (temporarily) change contact's type to some other value to continue signing the form without this particular person.