Add services and Investigations - hmislk/hmis GitHub Wiki

Add Services and Investigations (Inward)

Overview

The Add Services and Investigations page is where ward/billing staff charge an admitted patient's BHT for services, investigations, and other inward charges — lab tests, scans, doctor charges, ambulance charges, and similar. Selecting an item adds its configured fee(s) to a running cart; clicking Settle turns the cart into a real bill against the patient's BHT.

Path: Inward → Services and Items → Add Services and Investigations

When to Use

  • A doctor or ward orders a lab test, scan, or other investigation for an admitted patient
  • A service (ambulance, dressing, oxygen, doctor charges, etc.) needs to be billed to the patient's BHT
  • You are fulfilling a service/investigation line from the Service/Item Requests queue — in that case the item is already pre-loaded when you arrive on this page

How to Use

1. Search and select the patient (BHT)

Patient search screen

  • Optionally narrow the search by Institution
  • Type the patient's name, BHT number, or PHN in Patient Search and pick the matching entry
  • Click Continue

If you were already working on a patient earlier in your session and just want to add more items, you can navigate straight back into their cart — the page remembers the last selected patient for your session.

2. Add a service or investigation

Add service/investigation screen

  • Use the department shortcut buttons (OPD, Laboratory, Radiology, Scanning, Theatre, etc.) to filter the item list to a specific department, or search directly in the Investigation or Service box. Items are grouped under these buttons by the department that owns the service, not the department it is mapped to — a service owned by Main Pharmacy appears under Main Pharmacy even when it is mapped to Inward
  • If a service is missing from the list, check with your administrator that it is mapped to your department (see Manage Department Item Mappings) — some departments only list mapped items

Department buttons with the grouping hint beneath them

The hint under the department buttons explains how items are grouped.

  • Select the item. If the item requires a Quantity, enter it (whole numbers only)
  • If the item supports billing Priority (e.g. Normal/Urgent), select it
  • Add any free-text Details/Comment and adjust the Date if needed
  • Click Add — the item moves into the Bill Items list below, and its computed fee(s) appear under the Fees tab

Pressing Enter anywhere on this screen does the same thing as clicking Add, so you can select an item, type the quantity, and press Enter without reaching for the mouse. (The one exception is the Details/Comment box, where Enter starts a new line as usual.)

Service added to the bill by pressing Enter

Pressing Enter after selecting a service adds it straight to Added Items — the page stays where it is. (Patient and referring-doctor panels hidden in this screenshot.)

You can add several items before settling; each appears as its own row. Adding the exact same item twice is blocked — remove and re-add it (adjusting quantity) instead.

3. Review Bill Items and Fees

The Added Items panel has three tabs:

  • Bill Items — one row per item added: department, category, priority, rate, quantity, gross/net value, discount, service charge, VAT
  • Tests — investigations that will also route to the lab/sample workflow
  • Fees — the individual fee components behind each bill item (item name, unit rate, quantity, discount, service charge/margin, VAT, and the staff/speciality the fee is payable to, if any). If you have the right privilege, the Total Gross value here can be edited directly to override a fee for this bill.

Fees tab showing the Item Name column

Each fee row shows the service/item name next to its serial number, so billing staff can tell which service a fee row belongs to before editing rates.

Bill Details on the right shows running totals: Gross Total, Discount, Service Charge, Net Total, VAT, and Net Total + VAT.

Note on fee amounts: the fee shown for an item can depend on hospital configuration — some hospitals bill every ward the same standard fee for an item, while others bill a different fee depending on the site/location. If a fee looks different from what you expected, this is usually intentional configuration rather than an error; ask your administrator to confirm the pricing setup for your department.

4. Settle the bill

  • Click Settle, then confirm the prompt
  • The cart items become a real bill charged to the patient's BHT
  • A new, empty cart is ready immediately for the next set of items (or click New Bill to reset explicitly)

5. Print the receipt

Print preview screen

After settling, the page switches to print preview, showing the bill(s) created and a Print button. Choose a Paper Format if your department supports more than one, then print. You can also print investigation labels or route to sample management from here, depending on how your department is set up.

Other Actions on This Page

  • New Bill — clears the current cart/patient and starts fresh
  • Go To Add Outside — jumps to the Outside Charges page for the same patient
  • Search Patients / Patient Profile / Inpatient Dashboard — quick navigation to related patient screens (requires the InwardSearch privilege)
  • Nursing WorkBench — returns to the ward's Nursing WorkBench
  • Reload — refreshes the item list (useful after an admin changes item/fee configuration)
  • In the bill list on the print-preview screen: Manage Bill reopens a settled bill for reprint/cancellation, and To Sample Management routes lab-type items to sample tracking (when that workflow is enabled for your department)

Understanding Messages

  • "Can't select same item ..." — the item is already in your current cart; remove it first if you need to change its quantity
  • "Quantity is missing." / "Quantity cannot be negative." / "Quantity cannot be a decimal." — fix the quantity field for a quantity-required item
  • "This item has no fee configured and cannot be added." — no fee is set up for this item in your current context (neither a site-specific fee nor a base fee); ask your administrator to configure a fee before it can be billed
  • "Please set Category to Item" — the item's master data is incomplete; ask your administrator to fix it under item management
  • "Cannot settle: this admission has no current room. Assign a room first." — this admission's type normally requires a room and none is assigned; ask a supervisor to assign a room under Room administration before settling
  • "Cannot settle: the patient's current room has no room facility charge configured." — the assigned room is missing its facility-charge configuration; ask your administrator to fix the room's facility charge before settling

Best Practices

  • Confirm the correct patient/BHT before adding items — double-check the BHT number and name shown once a patient is selected
  • Review the Fees tab before settling if you have visibility into service charges, especially for high-value items
  • Use the department shortcut buttons to keep the item list short and reduce the chance of picking the wrong item
  • Settle promptly once all items for this visit are added — pending cart items are not yet billed and aren't visible to anyone else until settled

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