If your office isn't connected to Stratus through your practice management system, you can still bring patients in — by uploading a spreadsheet. This article covers how the upload works, what columns you need, and the two mistakes that trip up most offices.
Who this is for
CSV Upload is available to accounts that don't have a practice management system connected. You'll find CSV Upload in the left-hand sidebar. If you don't see it, your account is already syncing from your practice management system and you don't need this — patients come over automatically.
The five steps
Upload — choose your file.
Preview — see your data as we read it, before anything is imported.
Mapping — match your column headers to the Stratus fields. More on this below.
Processing — we validate and import each row.
Results — a summary of what imported and what didn't.
Don't skip the mapping step
The mapping step is where you tell us which of your columns is which. Your spreadsheet almost certainly uses your own names for things — "Pt First", "DOB", "Ins Co" — and that's fine. We'll suggest matches automatically, and you correct anything we got wrong.
This is the step to slow down on. Even if you started from the template we provide, walk through the mapping step and confirm each field. Don't assume the columns line up on their own — take the extra 30 seconds and check. Getting mapping right here is the difference between a clean import and a results page full of failed rows.
Columns you need
Every row must have all of these:
Subscriber first name
Subscriber last name
Subscriber date of birth
Patient first name
Patient last name
Patient date of birth
Carrier name
Policy number (at least 5 characters)
If the patient is the subscriber, just repeat their details in both sets of columns.
Columns you can add if you have them
Payer ID
Group name
Group number
Priority (1 for primary, 2 for secondary, 3 for tertiary)
Appointment start time and end time
File requirements
The file must be a .csv file — not an Excel workbook. In Excel, use Save As and pick CSV.
Maximum file size: 10 MB
Maximum rows: 10,000
The Excel trap: policy numbers turning into 1.17194E+11
This is by far the most common reason uploads fail, and it's worth two minutes of prevention.
Excel treats a long string of digits as a number. So a policy number like 117194000000 gets silently rewritten as 1.17194E+11 when you save the file — and that's what we receive. The number is now wrong, and the verification will fail or come back with no match.
To prevent it, before you save:
Select the whole policy number column.
Right-click and choose Format Cells.
Choose Text, then click OK.
Re-enter or re-paste the policy numbers if they've already been converted — reformatting alone won't restore digits Excel already dropped.
Save as CSV.
Then open the saved CSV in a plain text editor (or just glance at the Preview step in Stratus) and confirm the policy numbers still look like policy numbers. The same trick is worth applying to group numbers.
What happens to bad rows
A bad row doesn't sink the whole file. Good rows still import; only the problem rows are set aside. On the Results step you'll get an error report listing every failed row along with the reason it failed — so you can fix just those rows and upload them again as a smaller file.
What the upload does and doesn't do
Uploading creates patients, insurance records and appointments in Stratus.
It does not submit verifications. That's still a separate step — once your patients are in, you submit them for verification the same way you normally would. If you upload a file and don't see breakdowns appear, this is usually why.
Adding just one or two patients
A spreadsheet is overkill for a single patient. For one-offs, go to the patients page and click Add Patient. That form captures everything in one place: patient details, subscriber details, primary insurance, secondary insurance if there is one, and an appointment.
Quick checklist before you upload
File saved as .csv, under 10 MB and 10,000 rows
Policy number column formatted as text, and the numbers still look right
All eight required columns present for every row
Mapping step reviewed field by field, not skipped
Preview screen looks like your data
Questions or a file that won't behave? Email [email protected] and attach the file — we'll tell you exactly what's wrong with it.