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A Recipe is a saved way to find a group of patients. You choose the details that matter, such as age, sex, visit history, results, prescriptions, reminders, or appointments. PracticeMate then checks your Practice Data and shows which patients match. Recipes are useful when your practice wants to answer questions like:
  • Which active patients are due for a review?
  • Which patients match a recall or quality improvement cohort?
  • Which patients have had several visits recently?
  • Which patients have a result, prescription, condition, reminder, or appointment pattern worth reviewing?
Recipes are designed to support practice workflows. They do not make clinical decisions by themselves. Always review the results in the context of the patient’s record and your practice’s usual process.

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How Recipes are built

Most Recipes have two parts. Patient filters describe the patient group you are starting with. For example:
  • Status is Active
  • Extraction Opt-Out is False
  • Age (Years) is greater than or equal to 50
  • Sex is Male
Ingredients describe related records each patient must have, must not have, or must have a certain number of. For example:
  • has any Prescriptions where Product Name contains statin
  • has no Appointments where Appointment Date is after today
  • has a count of at least 3 Visits where Visit Date is greater than or equal to 2 years ago

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Default filters

New Recipes start with two filters already in place:
  • Status is Active
  • Extraction Opt-Out is False
These defaults are there so your first Recipe starts with active patients who have not opted out of extraction. Keep them unless you have a clear reason to broaden the search.

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Version history

Each time you save a Recipe, PracticeMate keeps that saved version. This makes it easier to review what changed and return to an earlier version if a Recipe no longer looks right. Open Recipes, select the … menu beside a Recipe, then choose Version history. The Recipes page with the row action menu open and Version history available. From there, you can:
  • browse earlier saved versions
  • see which version is current
  • preview an older Recipe before changing anything
  • restore an older version when your practice wants to go back to it
Older versions remain available for 365 days.
When a Recipe is already used in a Broadcast or Automation, PracticeMate keeps that saved workflow connected to the version it was set up with. This helps prevent later edits from quietly changing work your team has already prepared.

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A reliable way to build

1

Say the patient group in plain English

For example: “Active male patients aged 50 or older.”
2

Turn each part into one filter

“Male” becomes Sex is Male. “50 or older” becomes Age (Years) is greater than or equal to 50.
3

Test before saving

Use Test to check whether the number of matching patients looks right before you save or use the Recipe elsewhere.
4

Name it clearly

A good name makes the Recipe easier to find later. Use names like “Active male patients aged 50+” rather than “Test recipe”.
5

Save when the Recipe is ready

Saving creates a new version, so your practice has a point to return to if the Recipe changes later.
If the result is much larger or smaller than expected, check one filter at a time. The issue is usually a missing value, the wrong operator, or an AND/OR connector that does not match the intended meaning.

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Next

Start with Create your first Recipe, then move on to Find frequent visitors when you are ready to add visit history.