Mark Patients as Deceased or Inactive in Patient Profile

You can now mark patients as deceased or inactive directly in Otto to stop automated messages and service reminders from being sent to clients.

 ⚠️Important: Changes made in Otto do NOT automatically update your PIMS system. 

⚠️ Care Plans: If a deceased patient had an active Care Plan, the plan will not automatically cancel. Contact Otto support to have the membership manually deactivated.

How to Mark a Patient

Step 1: Find the Patient

1. Open the side panel in Otto
2. Search for the patient you need

3. If you need to see inactive or deceased patients in your search, check the "Show Inactive" box

   

Step 2: Update Patient Status

1. Click on the patient to open their profile
    

   

2. Look for the patient profile tab in the side panel
3. You'll see two new checkboxes:
   • Inactive - Check this to stop all automated messages
   • Deceased - Check this to mark the patient as deceased and stop all automated messages.

What Happens When You Mark a Patient...

Inactive Patients

• What it does: Stops all automations and service reminders
• How to identify: Shows a 🚫 badge on the patient icon
• Can be reversed: Yes, just uncheck the box (unless it came from your PIMS)

Deceased Patients

• What it does: Sets today's date as the deceased date and stops all automations and service reminders
• How to identify: Shows a 🚫 badge and a special patient icon
• Can be reversed: Yes, just uncheck the box (unless it came from your PIMS)
• Date editing: You can change the deceased date if needed

Note: The 🚫 badges and special icons currently only appear in the side panel, not in conversation lists or conversation details.

💡Once a patient is marked deceased or inactive, they will no longer appear in side panel search results or in the client's pet list. However, they will still appear in any conversations they were previously linked to — those records are preserved for historical reference

Important Things to Remember

Pet Portal Visibility

Patients marked as deceased or inactive will not show in the Pet Portal unless clients select "Show Inactive" or "Show Inactive Patients."

PIMS Integration

• From PIMS to Otto: If you mark a patient as deceased/inactive in your PIMS, it will sync to Otto once per day
• When synced from PIMS: The checkboxes in Otto become disabled and show a tooltip explaining that the status came from PIMS
• To reverse PIMS synced status: You must update the patient in your PIMS first, then wait for it to sync back to Otto. Once synced, you can uncheck the checkbox.

Best Practice Workflow

⚠️ Timing matters: If an automation is already queued to send before the deceased/inactive status has synced into Otto, it will still be sent. For urgent situations (such as unexpected euthanasia), mark the patient as deceased in Otto immediately — this is the fastest way to stop future automations. Then update the PIMS as soon as possible to keep both systems in sync.

1. Mark the patient as deceased/inactive in Otto Otto (stops messages immediately)
2. Update the same patient in your PIMS as soon as possible
3. This ensures both systems stay in sync