Import births

Import births brings records in from another system. Your spreadsheet does not need to match a template — upload it with whatever columns it has, tell us which column holds which field, and import. Valid rows are imported; rows with problems are listed so you can fix and re-upload them.

Every imported birth is a real record for your practice: it appears on the Births screen as a birth you can open and edit, and it is linked into the registry the same way a birth you enter by hand is. Imported births come in as Planned / Draft — the review state. They are on your Births list from the moment they import, but they stay out of registry rates, benchmarking, exports and state filing until you open each one and complete it. Reviewing and completing an imported birth is what turns it into a filed, counted record.

Import lives on the Birth Registry head as its Imports tab. Choose Import births from the Birth Registry hover card in the sidebar, or use the Import births button on the Births log or the + quick-actions menu — all three open the same wizard. It is a write surface: it shows only for members who can manage records — Admins and Providers. A Viewer does not see it, and a Scribe is denied at the door.

Only have one birth to add? Enter a record by hand, at the top of the Imports tab, opens the registry’s Add Birth page so a single record doesn’t need a spreadsheet.

The wizard, step by step

A progress strip at the top of the page tracks where you are: Upload → Map → Providers → Review → Done. The strip always shows all five, but the Providers and Review screens appear only when your file needs them — otherwise the wizard moves straight past them.

On the Map, Providers and Review steps, Start over discards the uploaded file and takes you back to Upload — no births are imported until you finish the last step.

1 · Upload

• Download CSV template — optional. If you’d rather re-shape your export to our column names, this gives you the empty template the importer accepts.
• Choose your CSV file (.csv, up to 5 MB) and select Continue to mapping.

2 · Map

On Map your columns, match each birth-record field to a column from your file. This includes the mother’s name — the columns that identify the patient the birth belongs to — alongside the birth fields; the name goes onto the patient roster and is never sent to the de-identified registry spine. Leave a field blank (— Not in file —) if your file doesn’t have it.

The birth date & time (marked with a *) must be mapped before you can import — until you map it, import refuses with “Map the column that holds each birth date & time before importing.” Each row also needs a place of birth: map the actual or intended place so we know where the birth belongs. A row whose place can’t be resolved is reported as needing attention rather than imported (the registry lane treats place as optional, but a birth on your roster is placed).

There is also an optional Attendant / provider name column — pick the column that names who attended each birth so imported records keep per-attendant attribution. Select Continue.

3 · Providers

If your provider column holds names we haven’t seen before, Attribute your providers appears. For each provider name from your file, pick one of:

• A provider in your practice — any member, or a login-less provider added from Team → Providers. Any member can be attributed as an attendant except a write-only Scribe, who is never offered.
• Create “name” as a midwife or Create “name” as a physician — adds that person as a provider of your practice, named as they appear in your file, with no login required. You can invite them to sign in later from the Team page.
• Reactivate “name” (inactive) — offered when the name matches a provider you previously marked inactive, so their births attribute to the provider you already have instead of a duplicate.
• — Unattributed — if it doesn’t map to a provider.

Creating or reactivating a provider is an Admin action, so only Admins see those options; a Provider can map names to existing providers only. Each provider you create or reactivate uses a seat: if the batch would take you past your plan’s limit, nothing is created and you see “Your plan allows N provider seat(s) and they are all in use. Upgrade your plan to add more providers.” — change those choices, or free a seat, and select Continue again.

We remember these choices for your next upload. Select Continue.

4 · Review

If any values in a constrained field don’t match the options we record, Translate your values appears: match each one to an option, or — Ignore (leave blank) — to leave that field blank. These choices are remembered too. Then select Import records — this is the one irreversible action in the flow.

If every value already matches, there is nothing to review: Continue on the previous step imports your records straight away, so that is the irreversible step instead.

5 · Done

The import runs and shows a summary: “:imported imported · :failed need attention”. Beneath it:

• “Possible duplicate births on line(s): …” — those rows imported, but each matches a birth your practice already has (for example, one brought in by an earlier upload). Check those births on your Births screen so the same birth isn’t counted twice.
• If a row’s mother name couldn’t be resolved cleanly, that line is listed — the birth still imports, but the record uses a placeholder name until you set it on the roster.
• Columns that mapped to no birth-record field are named. They aren’t lost: where a row had a value in one, it is kept read-only on that birth — open the birth to see it under Archived from import.

Rows with problems — a missing date & time, no usable place of birth, or a value we couldn’t read — are listed in a Line / Problems table so you can correct and re-upload them.

Past imports

Below the upload form, Past imports lists your practice’s recent uploads (newest first) with File, Status, Rows (ok / failed), By and When. For a run with failures, Results downloads a CSV of just the rows that need fixing — so days later you can pull the report without re-running the upload. Members who manage records can also Delete a run from the history; this removes only the record of the import, never the births it created.

Not a BirthTracks customer?

If you are a partner EHR, an integrator, or a registry-only tenant feeding births in programmatically rather than through this app, see Importing records (Registry API) for the server-to-server lane.

Next steps

• Exports — accreditation, benchmarking and research extracts.
• Printing & list downloads — the CSV / Excel / PDF / Print toolbar on every roster.