Dan Nandan is the CEO of Staffingly, Inc. With 25+ years in IT consulting and a decade leading healthcare BPO operations across India, Latin America, and Pakistan, his team now serves 800+ U.S. healthcare providers across medical, dental, pharmacy, and post-acute care verticals.
2026 Compliance Verified: HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HITRUST-aligned workflows.
Featured in Computerworld →
State of Illinois. Registered Professional Nurse
Bincy Shiiju Kuriakose is a U.S.-licensed Registered Nurse (MSN, RN), NCLEX-RN certified, with expertise in hospital nursing, telehealth, and nursing education. She reviews every publication for medical accuracy, YMYL compliance, and evidence-based clinical context.
What Does Adding Contacts in eClinicalWorks Mean?
Adding contacts in eClinicalWorks means creating and validating the directory entries the EHR relies on to route claims, prescriptions, lab orders, and referrals correctly. There are five distinct contact types: patient contacts, referring providers, pharmacies, labs, and facilities, each with its own location in the system, required fields, and downstream effect when entered wrong.
What Are Contacts in eClinicalWorks and Why Do They Matter?
Contacts in eClinicalWorks include five categories: emergency contacts and authorized representatives on patient profiles, referring providers in the practice directory, pharmacies for e-prescribing, labs for order routing and result retrieval, and facilities for scheduling, referrals, and documentation. Each category feeds into different parts of the revenue cycle and clinical workflow.
Inaccurate contact data is a silent revenue killer that does not trigger obvious alerts. MGMA reports that 15-20% of claim denials trace back to demographic or eligibility errors, and incorrect referring provider information is one of the most common demographic errors. Health Affairs research found that up to 50% of referrals never convert to completed visits because the referring provider information in the system was wrong, leading to lost follow-up and incomplete care coordination.
For pharmacies specifically, Surescripts reported over 2.7 billion e-prescriptions routed in 2023, each depending on accurate pharmacy data in the sending EHR. A single wrong NCPDP ID or an outdated address sends the prescription to a closed location or one the patient does not use. The patient calls the practice frustrated, staff spends 15-20 minutes troubleshooting, and the workflow breaks down.
Lab contacts carry similar risk. If the HL7 interface status is not confirmed when a lab is added, orders may transmit but results never return electronically. Staff resort to calling the lab, printing results, and manually entering data, adding hours of unnecessary work each week.
Save 40-70% with dedicated EHR specialists
Book a 15-minute call. We will map your current eCW contact and EHR workflow, denial rates, and staff hours against what a dedicated team typically delivers in the first 30 days.
Types of Contacts in eCW
Patient Contacts
Emergency contacts, guardians, guarantors, and HIPAA-authorized contacts all live on the patient profile under the Contacts tab. These entries determine who the practice can share information with and who to reach in emergencies. Key fields include relationship type, full name, phone number, and the HIPAA authorization checkbox. The HIPAA checkbox is critical. Without it checked, staff sharing clinical information with a listed contact could create a compliance violation. For pediatric patients, enter the guardian as both the emergency contact and the guarantor to prevent billing confusion.
Referring Providers
Referring providers sit in the eCW provider directory and are the most operationally important contact type for revenue cycle. Every referral-based encounter requires an accurate referring provider entry for claims submission on CMS-1500 Box 17, referral authorization tracking, and care coordination documentation. Key fields include NPI (validated against the NPPES registry), full name with credentials, specialty, practice address, phone, fax, and taxonomy code. An incorrect NPI here does not just cause a claim rejection. It can trigger payer audits if the mismatch is systematic.
Pharmacies
Pharmacy contacts live in the eCW address book and drive e-prescribing functionality. When searching for pharmacies, pay attention to the icons next to each entry. The "E" icon means the pharmacy is e-prescribe capable and can receive electronic orders. The "C" icon means the pharmacy is authorized to receive controlled substance prescriptions electronically via EPCS. Key fields include pharmacy name, NCPDP ID, address, phone, and e-prescribe capability status. Selecting a pharmacy without the "E" icon means the prescription will not transmit electronically and must be called in or faxed.
Labs
Lab contacts enable electronic order routing and result retrieval. eCW supports both HL7 uni-directional interfaces (orders go out but results come back manually) and bi-directional interfaces (orders go out and results return electronically). Key fields include lab name, lab code, address, phone, fax, and HL7 interface status. Before adding a new lab, confirm with your eCW administrator whether the interface is active and what result format the lab supports.
Facilities
Facility contacts cover hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, imaging centers, and other care sites. These entries are used in scheduling, referral documentation, and clinical notes. Key fields include facility name, NPI (required for claims involving the facility), address, phone, fax, and facility type classification. Incorrect facility NPI can cause claim denials when the claim requires a service facility identifier.
Step-by-Step: Adding Each Contact Type
Patient Contacts
Open the patient record, click the Contacts tab in the patient demographics section, and click Add. Select the relationship type from the dropdown (spouse, parent, guardian, emergency contact, guarantor). Enter the contact's full name and phone number. If the contact is also a patient in your practice, use the "Another Patient" option to link directly to their record, preventing duplicate data entry. For any contact authorized to receive clinical information, check the HIPAA authorization checkbox. Click Save. Verify the entry appears in the Contacts list with the correct relationship type.
Referring Provider
Handle to Admin > Address Book. Click New/Add and select Provider as the contact type. Enter the provider's full name with credentials (MD, DO, NP, PA). Enter their NPI, and before saving, validate the NPI at npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov to confirm it is active and matches the correct individual. Enter the practice address, phone, fax, and taxonomy code. The taxonomy code determines how the provider appears in specialty-specific searches. Click Save. After saving, verify the entry by searching the address book and confirming all fields populated correctly.
Pharmacy Contacts
From the patient record or the prescribing module, open the pharmacy search. Search by pharmacy name, phone number, or address. Review search results and look for the "E" (e-prescribe capable) and "C" (controlled substance) icons. Select the correct pharmacy and click OK. If the needed pharmacy does not appear in search results, it may not be registered with Surescripts or may have a different business name in the database. Contact your eCW administrator to add the pharmacy manually or verify the NCPDP ID.
Lab Contacts
Handle to Admin > Address Book or Lab Setup (depending on your eCW version). Click Add and enter the lab name, lab code, address, phone, and fax. The critical step is confirming HL7 interface status. An active bi-directional interface means orders and results flow electronically. If the interface is not confirmed, orders may appear to send but results will not return. Save the entry and send a test order to verify connectivity before routing live patient orders.
Facility Contacts
Handle to Admin > Address Book, click Add, and select Facility as the contact type. Enter the facility name, NPI (validate at npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov), address, phone, fax, and facility type (hospital, ASC, imaging center). Save the entry. For facilities used in claims, verify that the NPI matches the facility's CMS enrollment exactly. A mismatch between the eCW facility entry and the payer's facility records causes service facility rejections on institutional claims.
Common Mistakes and Troubleshooting eClinicalWorks Contacts
Duplicate entries. After system upgrades, data imports, or migrations, the same contact may appear multiple times with slight variations. Two entries for the same referring provider with different addresses cause confusion about which one to use and can result in claims going to the wrong payer address. Fix: assign one directory owner responsible for all contact additions and edits. Run quarterly audits to identify and merge duplicates.
No NPI validation. Adding a referring provider without validating the NPI against the NPPES registry is one of the most common causes of claim denials tied to contact data. A transposed digit, an inactive NPI, or an NPI belonging to a different provider all trigger Box 17 rejections. Fix: validate every NPI at npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov before saving the contact entry. Make this a mandatory step in your SOP.
Selecting pharmacy without “E” icon. When staff selects a pharmacy that does not have e-prescribe capability, the prescription cannot transmit electronically. The patient arrives at the pharmacy and the prescription is not there. Fix: train all prescribing staff and medical assistants to always check for the “E” icon in pharmacy search results. For controlled substances, also confirm the “C” icon for EPCS capability.
Missing HIPAA checkbox. When a patient contact is added without the HIPAA authorization checkbox, staff who later share information with that contact risk a HIPAA violation. Fix: make the HIPAA checkbox review part of your standard patient intake workflow. During registration, explicitly ask the patient who is authorized to receive health information and check the box accordingly.
Outdated lab/facility info. Labs change HL7 interface configurations. Facilities close, relocate, or change NPIs. When contact data becomes stale, orders fail to transmit, results get lost, and referrals route to the wrong location. Fix: update directory entries immediately when an electronic order fails or results do not return. Add a quarterly audit step specifically for lab and facility entries.
Best Practices for eCW Contact Management
- Designate a directory owner. One person in the practice is responsible for adding, editing, and deactivating all contact entries. This prevents inconsistent data from multiple staff members making changes without coordination. When multiple people can add contacts without a gatekeeper, duplicates accumulate, naming conventions vary, and outdated entries persist because nobody is sure who added them or whether they are still in use. The directory owner reviews every addition request, verifies the data before saving, and maintains a change log that documents when entries were added, modified, or deactivated.
- Validate before adding. Check the NPI on NPPES (npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov) for every provider and facility. Confirm pharmacy e-prescribe capability by checking for the “E” and “C” icons. Verify lab interface status with your eCW administrator before adding new labs. Validation takes 30-60 seconds per entry and prevents claim denials that take 30-60 minutes to resolve. For referring providers specifically, confirm that the NPI is active, belongs to the correct individual, and that the taxonomy code matches their specialty designation.
- Run quarterly audits. Review the entire contact directory every quarter. Deactivate entries that have not been used in 12 or more months, merge duplicates, and update labs and facilities whose NPIs or interface configurations have changed.
State-Specific Considerations (FL, TX, OH)
Florida. Florida has 11 Medicaid managed care organizations, each maintaining its own provider directory. Referring provider NPIs in your eCW system must match the provider directories for every MCO your patients are enrolled in. AHCA (the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration) can deny claims when the referring provider directory data does not match what the MCO has on file. For practices with high Medicaid volume, audit referring provider entries against each MCO’s directory quarterly.
Texas. Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country at 16.6%, which means a significant portion of patients transition between coverage types frequently. TMHP (Texas Medicaid and Healthcare Partnership) requires that the referring provider NPI on PA requests matches their enrollment records exactly. Stricter provider directory accuracy requirements enacted in 2024-2025 mean that incorrect eCW entries can delay or deny Medicaid PA requests. For Texas practices, verify NPI and enrollment status for every referring provider used in Medicaid submissions.
Ohio. Ohio’s Medicaid expansion added over 700,000 residents across multiple MCOs including CareSource, Molina, Paramount, and Buckeye Health Plan. Each MCO has its own provider directory requirements. Additionally, CliniSync, Ohio’s health information exchange, uses provider and facility contact data for statewide data sharing. Outdated eCW contact data does not just affect your practice. It affects referral routing and care coordination across the state HIE network. Keep facility and provider entries current to support both billing and interoperability.
How Staffingly Helps With eCW Contact Setup and Maintenance
Staffingly’s eCW-trained virtual assistants handle the full contact management workflow so your administrative staff can focus on patient-facing tasks. The team adds and validates referring providers with NPPES-confirmed NPIs, sets up pharmacy contacts with verified e-prescribe capability, configures lab contacts with confirmed HL7 interface status through dedicated lab coordination support, and adds facility entries with validated NPIs.
Beyond initial setup, Staffingly runs quarterly contact directory audits to identify duplicates, deactivate stale entries, and update records that have changed. The team cross-references your eCW provider directory against payer rosters to catch network status changes before they cause claim denials. For patient contacts, VMAs handle data entry during registration workflows, including HIPAA authorization checkbox verification. Staffingly also creates practice-specific SOPs for contact management tailored to your eCW configuration and payer mix.
$399/week (volume discounts to $299/week) (save up to 70%). 800+ providers served. 99.2% clean claim rate. SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and HITRUST compliant. Go-live in 48-72 hours.
FAQ
Q: How do I add an emergency contact in eCW? Open the patient’s record, click Contacts tab, click Add, select relationship, enter name and phone, Save. Use “Another Patient” if the contact is also a patient.
Q: Where is the address book for referring providers? Admin > Address Book (or File > Address Book). Click New/Add, select Provider, fill in name, NPI, specialty, address. Always validate NPI on NPPES.
Q: How do I know if a pharmacy can receive e-prescriptions? Look for the “E” icon in search results (e-prescribe capable). “C” icon means controlled substances. Select pharmacies with both whenever possible.
Q: Can I import contacts in bulk? Yes. eCW supports contact import through the Admin module. Contact your administrator for format and steps.
Q: What if I add a referring provider with the wrong NPI? The claim will likely be denied or pended. Incorrect NPI is a top rejection reason on CMS-1500 Box 17. Validate at npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov.
Q: How often should I audit my contact directory? Quarterly minimum. Deactivate entries unused for 12+ months. Check for duplicates after every system upgrade.
Q: Does Staffingly help with eCW contacts? Yes. Trained virtual assistants handle adding, validating, and auditing all contact types. $399/week (volume discounts to $299/week). 48-72 hour go-live.
Q: Is contact data considered EHI under the Cures Act? Yes. Under the 21st Century Cures Act (fully enforced September 2025), provider directories in EHRs are Electronic Health Information. Blocking access can result in ONC penalties.
Ready to Cut Prior Authorization and Eligibility Headaches?
Staffingly helps practices like yours get paid faster with a 99.2% clean-claim rate, 65-70% cost savings, and 48-72 hour go-live. SOC 2 Type II, HITRUST, and ISO 27001 certified. HIPAA compliant. MGMA Corporate Member.
- Start a 15-Day Risk-Free Pilot and see results before you commit.
- Call us: (800) 489-5877
