Patient Flow Operations
The three front-of-house Healthcare screens that move a patient from booked appointment through triage to a physical bed — Appointments, Triage & Queue, and Room Allocation.
Overview
Patient Flow Operations is the clinical intake pipeline of the Healthcare add-on. A patient's journey through the hospital starts here: booked or walked in on Appointments, checked in and acuity-scored on Triage & Queue, then matched to a physical bed on Room Allocation. Each screen writes real records that the next screen reads — nothing in this group is simulated.
Appointments
→
Triage & Queue
→
Room Allocation
Walk-in or ambulance patients can skip straight from Appointments to Room Allocation via Direct Room Route, bypassing triage entirely for emergency/VIP cases — the diagram above is the common path, not the only one.
Quick Start
- Open Healthcare → Appointments and click New Appointment. Search for the patient (or create one inline if Quick Create Master Data is enabled in Settings), pick a department and doctor, and set a date/time.
- When the patient arrives, use the Terminal Patient Check-In console on the right side of Appointments — search by Patient ID or National ID, confirm insurance/eligibility, and click Check-In & Push to Triage.
- Switch to Triage & Queue. The patient now appears in the live queue, sorted by ESI acuity and wait time. Click the row to open the Vitals Intake & Acuity Scoring drawer, enter blood pressure/HR/SpO2/temperature/respiration, and save — an ESI 1–5 level is calculated automatically.
- From the same drawer, either Assign Ward/Bed (routes to Room Allocation) or Order Immediate Diagnostic (routes to Test Orders, see Diagnostics & Lab).
- Open Room Allocation. The patient appears in the Incoming Placement Queue on the right; click them, pick a bed that matches their requirements (e.g. an oxygen point for a low-SpO2 patient), and confirm.
For emergency/ambulance walk-ins
Skip Appointments entirely and use the + Walk-In Intake button directly on Triage & Queue — it creates a minimal checked-in appointment record behind the scenes and drops the patient straight into the queue.
1. Appointments
Purpose: Book, reschedule, and manage the patient appointment calendar, and run a rapid terminal-style check-in console for arriving patients.
Key features
- Table / Calendar toggle — switch between a high-density sortable table and a day-grouped calendar card view of the same schedule.
- Terminal Patient Check-In — a dedicated side console that looks up a scheduled patient by Patient ID (
PAT-2026-XXXX) or National ID and shows their insurance/eligibility status instantly. - Searchable comboboxes — Patient, Department, and Doctor fields all use the shared searchable combobox; Patient supports inline quick-create when the tenant enables it in Settings → Preferences.
- Visit type & priority — Routine, Emergency, or Follow-up, which pre-fills the triage priority once the patient is checked in.
Integration triggers
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Check-In & Push to Triage | Flips the appointment to checked_in and creates a TriageQueueEntry that Triage & Queue reads immediately. |
| Direct Room Route | For emergency/VIP visits — reserves an emergency bay directly on Room Allocation, bypassing triage. |
2. Triage & Queue
Purpose: A live emergency/outpatient queue ordered strictly by acuity, with a vitals intake console that calculates an Emergency Severity Index (ESI) score and routes the patient onward.
Key features
- ESI acuity sort — the queue orders by ESI level (1 = Immediate/Resuscitation to 5 = Non-Urgent) first, then by wait-elapsed time within the same level; color-coded quick-filter chips let a nurse jump straight to a severity band with one click.
- Live wait counter — a running
MM:SSclock per patient, and monospace vital-sign telemetry chips (BP, HR, SpO2, temperature, respiration rate) once vitals are captured. - Isolation warning badges —
#InfectiousRisk,#FallRisk,#Pediatrictags surfaced on the queue row and settable from the vitals drawer. - + Walk-In Intake — a direct-acceptance flow for ambulance or walk-in emergencies with no prior Appointments record; creates a minimal checked-in appointment and immediately queues the patient.
- Search & pagination — filter by patient name, protocol ID, or National ID; the table paginates at 15 rows on wide screens / 10 on laptop screens, per the platform's standard.
Integration triggers
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Assign Ward/Bed | Creates a RoomAssignment carrying the ESI level over as a priority hint — read by the Room Allocation Incoming Placement Queue. |
| Order Immediate Diagnostic | Opens a DiagnosticOrder, ingested 1:1 into a full TestOrderRecord on Test Orders (see Diagnostics & Lab). |
3. Room Allocation
Purpose: A visual ward/bed occupancy matrix grouped by department (ICU, General Ward, ER Bays, Surgical Recovery, …), with an incoming placement queue and downstream discharge/transfer actions.
Key features
- Bed status cards — monospace Bed ID (e.g.
ICU-B04), occupant name/ID, attending physician, live admit-duration counter, and a status badge (Available, Occupied, Sanitizing/Cleaning, Reserved, Discharge Pending). - Incoming Placement Queue — consumes both triage-cleared patients (from Triage & Queue's Assign Ward/Bed) and direct-routed emergency patients (from Appointments' Direct Room Route) in one unified list.
- Feature-matched assignment — the assign modal filters candidate beds by the patient's requirements (e.g. an oxygen point for low SpO2, an isolation room for infectious-risk patients) against each bed's actual features.
Integration triggers
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Initiate Discharge | Marks the bed discharge_pending and generates a live discharge checklist dossier — the still-in-development Discharge Tracking screen will manage it end to end. |
| Transfer Ward | Relocates the patient to a different department's bed, releases the old bed to Sanitizing, and logs a ward-transfer audit trail entry. |
End-to-end data flow
| Source screen | Action | Target screen / record |
|---|---|---|
| Appointments | Check-In & Push to Triage | New TriageQueueEntry → Triage & Queue |
| Appointments | Direct Room Route | New RoomAssignment → Room Allocation |
| Triage & Queue | Assign Ward/Bed | RoomAssignment with ESI priority → Room Allocation |
| Triage & Queue | Order Immediate Diagnostic | DiagnosticOrder → Test Orders (Diagnostics & Lab) |
| Room Allocation | Initiate Discharge | Discharge checklist dossier → Discharge Tracking (in development) |
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I check a patient into Triage without an appointment?
Yes. Use + Walk-In Intake on the Triage & Queue screen — it creates a minimal, already-checked-in appointment record behind the scenes so downstream references stay consistent, then adds the patient straight to the queue.
How is the ESI level calculated?
Triage & Queue auto-estimates a 1–5 Emergency Severity Index from the captured vitals (heart rate, SpO2, temperature, respiration rate) using standard clinical thresholds — e.g. SpO2 below 90% or a heart rate outside safe bounds pushes the level toward 1 (Immediate). The result is a starting point for the triage nurse, shown live in the drawer as vitals are entered.
What happens if no bed matches a patient's requirements?
The Room Allocation assign modal only lists beds that satisfy the patient's flagged requirements (oxygen point, isolation room, etc.). If none qualify, the picker shows an empty list with a note — the patient stays in the Incoming Placement Queue until a suitable bed frees up or is transferred into service.
Does Direct Room Route skip vitals and acuity scoring entirely?
Yes, by design — it exists for emergency and VIP cases where every minute counts. The patient is reserved a bed immediately from Appointments and never enters the Triage & Queue list, so no ESI level or vitals are recorded through that path.