Managing Practice Associations

An association is a logical grouping of practices that share a business interest, activity, or purpose. To comply with HIPAA requirements, NextGen® Enterprise EHR and NextGen® Enterprise PM offer the ability to create and use practice associations. New practices are automatically assigned to the DEFAULT association. If you do not want to share demographic and insurance information between practices, you can link the practice to a new association. After you assign the practice to another association, you cannot assign the practice back to the DEFAULT association. You can set up associations and assigned practices in System Administrator. For more information, go to NextGen Healthcare Success Community, and download the latest System Administrator Guide for NextGen® Enterprise.

If you have not enabled the secure lookup, you cannot view a person record created in one association in a different association.

If secure lookup is enabled, an authorized user working in a practice within one association can search for a demographic record in a different practice within another association. The search results display the record with icon or with an Enterprise Chart icon if the patient is enrolled in Enterprise Chart in another practice. When the user selects the record, it is shared across both practices. If one practice changes the person's demographics and insurance, it affects the other practice because the person number is the same for both practices. Patient charts remain separate and have different chart numbers.

If Enterprise Chart is configured for a patient in a practice in one association, a user in a practice in another association cannot view that record. To gain access to the record, the user in the other association practice has to do a secure lookup and convert the person to a patient with a chart in the user's practice. Then, all encounters across other practices in the same enterprise are viewable.