Sections & Fields: control which patient fields are required or hidden

Last updated: 2 September 2026

What it does

Configuration → Patients → Sections & Fields lets you decide, for your practice, which patient fields appear on your forms and which are required. Every field has four checkboxes:

  • Admin and Admin Req — what your own team sees on the Add patient and Edit patient forms, and whether they must fill it in.
  • Patient and Patient Req — the same for people registering or booking online, and for the patient portal.

So you can ask your team for a field without demanding it of a patient.

This covers built-in fields (mobile, email, address, date of birth, and more) and any custom fields you have created.

How to use it

  1. Go to Configuration → Patients → Sections & Fields.
  2. For each field, tick the boxes for whichever of Admin, Admin Req, Patient and Patient Req apply. Custom fields and section grouping live on the Custom Fields and Sections tabs.
  3. Save. Your changes apply immediately to the relevant forms.

Notes

  • A field set to required must be completed — it can no longer be skipped.
  • A field set to hidden won't appear on that audience's forms.
  • A hidden field is never treated as required.
  • Core identity fields (first name, last name, date of birth) are always shown and required.

Asking patients for their NHS GP practice

Three fields let a patient tell you which surgery they are registered with when they register or book: GP practice, Registered GP name and Registered GP email.

Make them visible to the Patients audience here and they appear on your public registration link and on the details step of online booking, including when someone books on another person's behalf. Each of the three is controlled separately, so you can ask for the surgery alone without asking for a named GP.

GP practice is a search rather than a free-text box. The patient types the surgery's name or town and picks it from the official NHS list, so the practice name, address and ODS code are recorded correctly and the surgery is saved against the patient as their registered practice. That is what a letter or document sent to their GP later uses, so it is worth asking for even when the named GP is not needed.

As with any field here, you can also make each one required, in which case the patient cannot finish registering without it. Requiring the GP email is worth thinking about — many patients will not know it.