Contact catalogs

Four catalogs record organisations and people outside the practice:

Attorney · Employer · Referring Physician · Diagnostic Imaging Center

They work the same way and share almost the same fields, so they are covered together here. Each one's differences are called out below.

The shared fields

Field	What it is
ID	Internal key. Up to 10 characters, permanent once saved, and not printed on anything
Status	Active or Inactive. Inactive keeps the history but makes the record unselectable
Name	The organisation — see the per-catalog table below for what it's called
Contact	The person you deal with there
Phone, Fax	Two numbers. Extra ones go in Notes
Address, City, State, ZIP	Mailing address. State is a list, not free text
Notes	Internal reference — never printed, seen only by practice staff

Use ZIP+4 wherever you can

Medicare and several other programs expect the nine-digit form. It costs nothing to enter it now and avoids claim friction later.

What each one is for

Catalog	Name field	Used by
Attorney	Firm — the law firm's name	Patient records, Account Types, marketing letters
Employer	Employer — the company name	Patient Occupation tab, Account Types, marketing letters
Referring Physician	Title, First, Middle, Last, Suffix	CMS-1500 boxes 17, 17a, 17b; imaging and exam reports
Diagnostic Imaging Center	Firm — the facility's name	Imaging and exam reports

Employer means the company

Not the patient's supervisor or boss. The Contact field is where a person's name goes — and for an employer that may be a department rather than an individual.

Referring Physician — the differences

This catalog carries claim consequences the others don't.

Instead of a single name field it has Title, First, Middle, Last and Suffix, all of which should be completed. Full Name is assembled from them automatically — you don't type it.

An inactive referring physician silently vanishes from claims

For referring provider details to appear in CMS-1500 boxes 17, 17a and 17b, the record's Status must be Active. Set it to Inactive and those boxes go blank — with no error and no warning. If a carrier starts rejecting claims for a missing referring provider, check the status here first.

Despite the name, this catalog covers more than doctors who refer patients to you. Use it for any outside provider involved in the patient's care: whoever referred them in, anyone who has treated them, whoever prescribed treatment or diagnostic tests, and anyone you refer out to.

You may need to add your own providers here

Some carriers require the prescribing doctor in boxes 17/17a/17b even when the prescribing and treating doctor are the same person. Where that applies, the doctors and therapists in your own practice need entries in this catalog too.

Diagnostic Imaging Center — the differences

Originally for imaging facilities, now used for any diagnostic facility you work with — laboratories, nerve conduction studies, other practices that performed examinations.

Feeds the Diagnostic Imaging Report and the sensory, muscle and extremity exam screens.

Attorney — the differences

Firm is the law practice's name. Contact is usually the attorney, though it may be a secretary or office manager.

Notes entered here appear on the patient's Representing Attorney tab, read-only, and do not print.

Keeping the addresses clean

All four catalogs feed bulk letter production — marketing to attorneys, employers, other doctors and imaging centres. The quality of that mailing is exactly the quality of the addresses stored here.