Setting Up Your Clinic

To log in to OpenEMR, navigate to the location of its installation directory on the server. Make sure your browser is not blocking popup windows, JavaScript or cookies.

Type your assigned username and password and click Login, or hit Enter. A freshly installed OpenEMR requires you to log in as "admin" with a password of "pass".

A successful login brings you to the appointment calendar. We'll get back to that later; what we want to do first is configure some basic information for the site, so click the Administration link at the top of the screen.

Administration has several sections: Users and Groups, Forms Administration, Practice Administration, Calendar Categories, Database Reporting, Batch Communication, Language Management, and the Log Viewer. We are initially in the Users and Groups area, which also includes facility information.

Most sites will not use groups, and so will specify only the "Default" group. We will not concern ourselves with groups in this presentation.

There is a default facility that already exists, but obviously does not have correct information for your practice. Let's change that. Click the (Edit) link next to the line that says "Your Clinic Name Here". This takes you to the Edit Facility page.

Now, enter the correct name and other information for your primary location. Most of this is relevant for billing so you'll want it to be right. You'll probably want to check the boxes for Billing Location and Accepts Assignment. Click Update Info to save your changes, and then [Back] to return to the Users and Groups page.

You might have additional facilities where care is rendered, for example a hospital. You can add those by keying their information into the "New Facility Information" area of the Users and Groups page, and then clicking Add Facility. Again, this is needed for correct billing.

Scrolling down to the bottom of the Users and Groups page, you will see your list of users. If you have not yet added any users, then only "admin" will be shown.

You can add a new user by filling in the form to the right of the "New User" heading and then clicking Add User. Or you can modify an existing user by clicking the (Edit) link next to that user's name. On the next screen we are editing the user Betty Black:

Note especially the "authorized" flag. Authorized users are practitioners and will appear in the appointment calendar. They can also be associated with encounters for billing purposes, and are able to "authorize" encounter information entered by non-authorized users so that the encounter will be billable.

So make sure that your practitioners have their Authorized flag set, and that your other staff do not. Practitioners will also need their UPIN and Federal Tax ID entered for correct billing, and their Federal Drug ID entered for prescription writing.

When you're done with editing the user, click Save Changes and then Back.

Next we will set up some more practice-related information. Click the Practice link at the top of the page to get to the Practice Settings page:

Let's start with pharmacies. Click the Add a Pharmacy link:

Then fill in the form and click Update to save the information.

Now before we enter any insurance companies, let's skip to X12 partners. These are the clearinghouses or large payers to whom we will send electronic billing. Most practices will probably just use a single clearinghouse like ProxyMed or Zirmed.

Click "X12 Partners", and then click "Add New Partner" to get the following page:

The ID numbers that you enter here will need to be provided to you by the clearinghouse/partner. The Version number refers to the version of the X12 837p protocol specification used and should probably not be changed. Click Add to save the information that you enter.

Now let's look at insurance companies. Click the Insurance Companies link to get a list:

In this example two insurance companies have already been entered, but if you are just getting started you'll not see any.

You can add a new one by clicking "Add a Company", or edit an existing one by clicking its name. In the next form we have clicked Cigna to edit the information for that company:

In practice, many insurance companies have multiple insurance plans with a separate billing address for each plan. Consequently this list is somewhat misnamed and in fact ends up being a list of insurance plans with quite a few duplicate company names. Eventually OpenEMR will handle this more elegantly.

Now we must also deal with the fact that many insurance companies assign their own doctor-specific ID numbers, and these numbers must appear in your claims. Click on Insurance Numbers to get to this information:

Here you see a line for each provider, showing the default insurance numbers for that provider. Click on one of the provider names:

For the selected provider we now see a list of insurance companies for which the insurance numbers have already been entered.

Here we have also clicked "Add New..." which presents a form for adding this provider's numbers for another insurance company. You can fill in this information and click the Add button to save the information. Note that one of your selections in the drop-list of insurance companies is "Default"; you can use this one to fill in default numbers for insurance companies not otherwise entered.

Alternatively you can click on a name from the list to edit those numbers.

Now let's look at appointment calendar event categories. Click the Calendar
link at the top of the page:

This is where you can enter new categories of appointments. The default set will probably be adequate for you, so leave this alone for now but just be aware that it exists.

Finally, let's look at document categories. Click the Document link at the top of the page:

This is a heirarchy of the different types of documents that you can attach to a patient. The default set is shown. If you want to add more categories then you can click on the desired parent name and fill in the desired new (sub-category) name, and click Add Category to add it.

Next: Entering New Patient Information >>