Provider Manual · Part IV

Practice setup — practice & people

Set up the organization and the people in it: practice info, physicians, staff and assistants, patient registration, and patient-portal branding.

5 sections~9 min read5 screenshots
IV
Part IV

Practice setup — practice & people

Set up the organization and the people in it: practice info, physicians, staff and assistants, patient registration, and patient-portal branding.

4.1Practice info

Set the practice record, locations, and accepted insurance

Practice Info is the organization's identity card. Org admins fill it in once; every downstream feature — claim submission, fax cover sheets, patient portal headers, online-booking landing pages — reads from this record. There is no per-physician override here; everything is at the organization level.

  1. Open Admin > Practice Info. The modal opens to the Overview tab under the Practice section.
  2. Check and correct the Organization Details. Click the pencil on the Organization Details card to edit the record in place: name, type (Hospital, Group practice, Solo practice, Clinic, Laboratory), street address, city, state, ZIP, phone, fax, and email. Click Save Organization when you're done, or Cancel to discard. These values flow into claims, fax cover sheets, and portal headers, so re-check them after a move or a rebrand. The organization timezone is shown on the same card but is deliberately not editable here — change it from Scheduling settings so appointment and reminder times are recalculated safely.
  3. Add Custom Info (optional). The Custom Info tab stores free-text fields shown to admins for reference — Inquiry Hero context, internal notes, third-party account numbers.
  4. Review Providers under the Records section. Lists every physician attached to the org. To add or edit them, use Physician Management — Practice Info is read-only here.
  5. Add practice Locations. Each physical address you see patients at. Locations also appear inside Scheduling > Locations when physicians assign themselves to a site.
  6. List Accepted Insurance. The plans your practice is in-network with. Used by online booking, intake, and the eligibility tools — patients see the list when picking a payer at booking.
Admin · Practice Info modal showing the Overview tab with Organization Details including name, type, address, phone, fax, email, and timezone
Organization Details is editable in place from the pencil. Use the left rail to switch between Overview, Custom Info, Providers, Locations, and Insurance.
Order of operations: Set Practice Info before Physician Management. Locations created here become selectable when you set each physician's weekly schedule.
4.2Physician management

Add physicians and keep their identifiers current

Physician Management is the source of truth for every clinician in the org. Each row carries the identifiers that downstream systems require: NPI for claims and SureScripts, DEA for controlled-substance prescribing, specialty for online booking filters, email for login. Deactivating a row hides the physician from scheduling and routing without deleting their history.

  1. Open Admin > Physician Management. A table opens with every physician in the org. Search by name, email, NPI, or specialty, and narrow the list with the status pills — All, Active, Inactive, On leave — each of which carries a live count.
  2. Use the Clinical visibility row for the second filter. Below the search bar, All / Visible / Hidden splits the roster by whether a physician is hidden from clinical contexts. Hidden rows also carry a Hidden badge.
  3. Click Add physician. Enter Name, Email (used for login), NPI, Specialty, and any DEA / state-license numbers. The Email becomes their sign-in identifier, so use the address you want associated with their EMR account.
  4. Use Edit to update credentials. NPI and DEA can change (relocation, renewal); always update here rather than in a downstream module. Edits propagate to claim submission, SureScripts, EPCS, and chart signatures.
  5. Use Deactivate when a physician leaves. Deactivation removes them from booking, routing, and the Schedule Manager picker, but their signed notes, prescriptions, and claims remain in the chart for audit purposes.
Hidden vs. deactivated: the edit form's Hide from clinical contexts checkbox is a lighter touch than deactivation. A hidden physician stays available for admin maintenance and historical records but drops out of scheduling, booking, messaging, and routing pickers. Use it for billing-only or supervising identities that must keep signing history without appearing as a bookable clinician; use Deactivate when someone leaves the practice entirely.
Physician Management modal with a search box, All/Active/Inactive/On leave status pills, a Clinical visibility filter row, and a table of physicians showing name, email, NPI, specialty, and status badges
One row per clinician. The status pills and the Clinical visibility row are the two filters you'll reach for most.
Before going live: Verify every physician has a valid NPI on file. Claims will reject in Office Ally if the NPI is missing or mistyped, and SureScripts will refuse to enroll the provider for e-prescribing.
4.3Staff & assistants

Invite medical assistants and front-desk staff

Staff & Assistants is the non-physician roster. Medical assistants, scribes, schedulers, and front-desk users live here. Each row carries credentials (MA, RN, scribe, etc.), an email for login, and a supervising physician link — assistants act on behalf of their supervisor for orders, in-basket routing, and chart access.

  1. Open Admin > Staff / Assistants. The Assistant Management modal opens with the full staff list. Toggle between All, Active, Inactive, and Suspended tabs to filter by status.
  2. Click + Add Staff. Walk through the staff wizard: name, email, credentials (free text — MA, RN, LPN, Scribe), access level, and the supervising physician they're paired with.
  3. Use Edit for ongoing changes. Re-link a supervisor when an MA changes pods, update credentials when they upgrade, change email if they migrate to a work address.
  4. Use Deactivate when a staff member leaves. They lose login access immediately; their prior in-basket actions and chart edits remain attributed to them.
Assistant Management modal listing staff with name, email, access level, credentials, supervising physician, status, and Edit/Deactivate actions
Each assistant is tied to a supervising physician. That link drives in-basket routing and chart-access scope.
Supervisor link matters: When a patient messages "Dr. Romero," replies and refills can route to Dr. Romero's MA pool first. Get this link right at onboarding so messages stop piling up in the wrong queue.
4.4Patient registration

Search, add, and edit patients from the admin console

Patient Registration is the org-wide patient directory. Use it to add patients that bypass online booking (walk-ins, phone bookings, migrated charts) or to fix demographics that came in wrong from the portal. The list shows every patient in the org, regardless of which physician they see.

  1. Open Admin > Patient Registration. This is not a modal — it opens as its own workspace tab titled Patient Registration (“Manage patient records and portal access”), with a searchable, paginated list of every patient. Search by name, email, or MRN.
  2. Filter by portal status. The All Portal Status dropdown offers No Invitation, Pending (invited but not signed in), and Active. Row badges read No invite, Pending, or Active to match.
  3. Filter by patient status. A second dropdown, All Patient Status, filters on the clinical relationship instead: Active, Inactive, Prospective, Discharged, Transferred out, or Deceased. The two filters combine, which is how you find (say) active patients who never accepted a portal invite.
  4. Click Add Patient. Enter First/Last name, DOB, sex, email, phone, and address. Email and phone are required to send a portal invite — leave them blank for chart-only patients (paper charts, ghost records for migration).
  5. Send or resend a portal invite from the row. The badge in the Portal column is a button while portal access is still No invite or Pending — hovering it swaps the label to Send invite or Resend invite. Once the patient's portal access is Active the badge is plain text; there is no revoke action here.
  6. Edit demographics. Click Edit on any row to fix name spelling, sex, contact info, or address.
Patient Registration workspace tab with search, an All Portal Status filter, an All Patient Status filter, and a list of patients showing name, DOB, email, phone, MRN, a clickable portal badge, and an Edit action
The directory shows every patient in the org. Use the portal-status filter to chase down invites that never converted, and click the portal badge itself to resend one.
For data migration: Bulk-import patients before go-live rather than entering them through this modal one at a time. Contact support@heroemr.com for a CSV template.
4.5Patient portal branding

Brand the patient portal without a code deploy

Patient Portal Configuration controls both what your patients can do in the portal and how it looks to them — feature toggles first, then color palette, logo, typography, and a live preview. The defaults work out of the box; customize when you want the portal to match your practice's identity or your landing site.

  1. Open Admin > Patient Portal Configuration. The modal opens to the Features tab. Five tabs run down a left rail: Features, Color Scheme, Logo, Typography, and Live Preview.
  2. Decide what the portal offers. The Features tab carries eight toggles, all on unless you turn them off: Secure Messaging (portal Messages tab and new-message alerts; staff replies over SMS or email keep working), Online Scheduling (book, reschedule, cancel, waitlist — viewing appointments, check-in, and telehealth join stay available), Online Bill Pay (balances, statements, saved cards, pay links; staff-collected payments are unaffected), Insurance Self-Service (patients adding their own cards; staff entry and the kiosk are unaffected), Health Records (notes, labs, imaging, shared media), Letters & Forms (patient-initiated requests; questionnaires and required paperwork are unaffected), Refill Requests (the refill button, not the medication list), and Document Uploads. Turning one off hides that surface from patients — it does not delete anything.
  3. Set the Orientation intake questions. Still on Features, three toggles control what new patients are asked during portal orientation: Past Surgical History, Social History (not asked on proxy accounts), and Family History. Newly created organizations start with all three on; confirm the setting before go-live rather than assuming it.
  4. Pick a Theme Source. On Color Scheme, three options: Current default theme (Hero defaults), Landing site theme (pulls colors already chosen for your physician landing site so portal and marketing match), or Custom colors (set each design token by hand).
  5. Tune the Palette. Each color chip maps to a specific portal design token: Brand button, Brand hover, Brand soft panel, On-brand text, Page background, Cards, etc. The right-hand Preview updates live.
  6. Watch the Accessibility card. Hero scores seven text/background pairs for WCAG contrast as you edit and prints each ratio — green when it passes, red when it doesn't. If any pair falls below AA you get “Some color pairs are below WCAG AA and cannot be saved” and the Save button stays greyed out until you fix it. A disabled Save almost always means a failing contrast pair, not a bug.
  7. Upload a Logo. Switch to the Logo tab, click Choose, and pick a PNG, WebP, or JPEG no larger than 2 MB — a transparent PNG or WebP looks best. SVG is not accepted and is rejected with “Unsupported logo type.” The logo appears in the portal header and on confirmation emails.
  8. Pick Typography. The Typography tab swaps the portal font family. Defaults match the EMR.
  9. Check the Live Preview. Renders an actual portal card with the active palette, so you can sanity-check the whole theme before committing.
  10. Click Save. Active patient sessions keep the old theme until they next reload; new sessions and emails pick up the change immediately.
Patient Portal Configuration modal open on the Features tab, with a left rail of Features, Color Scheme, Logo, Typography and Live Preview, an All changes saved badge, the blue callout Turning a feature off hides it everywhere, and the first feature cards — Secure Messaging, Online Scheduling, Online Bill Pay and Insurance Self-Service — each Enabled and listing its impacted surfaces
The modal lands on Features: eight section toggles, each naming the surfaces it takes away, under the callout that turning one off hides it everywhere. Theme Source, the palette, and the live preview live one tab down, on Color Scheme.

Need help? Email support@heroemr.com.