What arrives at the practice from outside
Lab results, histology reports, radiology findings, hospital discharge letters, letters from co-treating colleagues, certificates, cost estimates from labs and medical supply stores: almost all of it reaches the practice as PDF, and almost none of it carries a name that fits your own filing. Skipping the detour of opening every single file wins back exactly those minutes at the front desk that are missing between two patients. The filename should therefore carry the three details people search by later: patient, date, report type.
Which date belongs in the name
A lab result knows at least three dates: sample collection, report creation and arrival at the practice. For the course of treatment the examination date is the decisive one, not the day the PDF came in. Filery reads the date out of the document, so the sort order follows the medical timeline. With common surnames an extra distinguishing element is worth adding to the pattern, for example the patient number from your practice system rather than the date of birth, which does not belong in every shared folder.
The quarterly billing rhythm
Billing with the statutory health insurance association runs quarterly, fee notices and balancing payments arrive later, private invoicing runs in parallel. These documents do not belong in the patient files but in practice administration, and they are searched for by quarter, not by day. A pattern with 2024-Q1 in first position makes the billing folders sortable immediately and keeps them separate from clinical findings. The same logic carries contracts, service agreements for medical devices and supplier invoices.
Retention: ten years and longer
Under section 630f of the German Civil Code the patient record must be kept for ten years after the treatment ends, unless a longer period applies. For radiological records the Radiation Protection Act sets its own periods, considerably longer than ten years for treatments involving ionising radiation. Over such spans the practice team changes several times. A filename that only the assistant working back then understood is worthless by that point. Descriptive names are the simplest form of documentation and need no additional system.
Medical confidentiality: how the analysis works
The PDF is opened and read on the practice computer, and its text content is sent encrypted for AI analysis. Only the detected details flow back, the renaming itself takes place on the device again, and the documents are not kept in storage. Patient data is covered by professional confidentiality under section 203 of the Criminal Code, so engaging a service provider has to be assessed beforehand and settled contractually. Some practices therefore start with documents that carry no patient reference. If you want to determine the analysis route yourself, use the Custom plan with your own API keys.
How it runs at the front desk
The scanner drops the day's mail into a folder, Filery runs over it once, the team confirms the suggestions and then imports the files into the practice system as usual. Faxes and older findings without a text layer need the optional OCR. Every rename appears in the app's history, so it stays traceable what a file was called before. You define the naming pattern once and then leave it alone, otherwise two generations of filenames end up sitting side by side.
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