What do I do When I Get A Warning from SMART that the Zip Code Doesn't Match the City/State/County?

The software will attempt to keep your patient data in line with standards that you can control without restricting a user’s ability to customize this data. With that said, for many states, it is important that the city and zip code is strictly followed. Therefore, if a user enters a city, state or county that does not match the software-configured relationship for these fields, they will see this error on the Patient Information Management screen (Name & Addr Tab):

To avoid seeing this error, choose Yes and the patient record will automatically update to the city, state and county associated with the zip code you’ve entered.

If you’ve done that, and you continue to get this Warning! pop up, there are two things to verify (warning: you must have Administrator privileges to perform these steps):

Ensure that the zip code you entered is configured in SMART

Click on the Gears icon for the Administration module. Choose Settings and then navigate to the Other tab. Here you will see a category called Zip Code. Enter the Zip Code in question and choose Edit/Retire/Delete to verify the configuration for this zip. You will get a window that shows you exactly what city, state and county that zip is associated with:

Administrative users in SMART can edit this. However, beware that doing so may negatively impact data exchange for state or other regulated integrations. See Massachusetts DPH: Why Can’t I Enter Any City I want for a Patient? for more information.

Ensure that the County is valid in Lookup Table Management

If you’ve validated that the Zip Code Information Management shows that the zip code in question is setup but continue to see the Warning! error noted above, it could be because you are trying to write in a County that isn’t set up properly in SMART. To verify this you’ll want to return to the Gears (Administration module) and select Lookup Table Management.

Choose the Counties table:

Confirm that the County listed for the zip code in question is configured in your lookup table. In the example above for Boston with a zip code of 02101, you can see that zip is set up for Suffolk county. However, since the Lookup Table for Counties doesn’t include Suffolk, the software will continue to warn the user that their entered Zip Code is a problem until this table is updated or the zip code is modified to one that the software is set up to handle.