Inpatient Outside Charges

Introduction

Outside charges are services obtained for an admitted patient from an external provider — a CT scan done at another imaging centre, an external laboratory test, an ambulance hired from an outside company — that the hospital pays for and recovers from the patient. They are added to the BHT so that they appear on the interim and final bill alongside the hospital's own charges.

Unlike a normal service bill, an outside charge always records which outside institution the service came from, and its amount is the amount agreed with that institution rather than an internal service price.

This page covers the finance side: how outside charges are classified, how they reach the interim and final bill, and how a settled one is found, cancelled or returned. For the data-entry workflow — searching the BHT, choosing the institution, adding items, settling and printing — see Add Outside Charges, which is the single source of truth for that screen.

Where Outside Charges Are Added

All outside charges are entered on the Add Outside Charges screen. Reachable from:

• Main Menu → Inward → Services & Items → Add Outside Charges — the normal route; starts with a blank patient search
• Inpatient Dashboard (Admission Profile) → Services panel → Add Outside Charges — opens with the current admission already selected
• Nursing WorkBench → Service panel → Add Outside Charges — same, from the ward
• Add Services and Investigations → Go To Add Outside — switches to this screen for the patient already selected there
• Surgery Workbench — for a surgery's admission

Adding charges requires the InwardServicesAndItemsAddOutSideCharges privilege. Once nursing discharge has been confirmed for the admission, further charges are refused unless the user also holds InwardAddChargesAfterNursingDischarge.

The step-by-step procedure, the item-eligibility rules and the fee breakdown are documented on Add Outside Charges. The bill is created by the Settle button on that screen (there is no Save button).

How an Outside Charge Is Classified

Attribute	Value
Bill type	InwardOutSideBill — not InwardBill
Atomic bill type	INWARD_OUTSIDE_CHARGES_BILL (cancellation: INWARD_OUTSIDE_CHARGES_BILL_CANCELLATION)
Charge category	The InwardChargeType configured on the item
Outside institution	Recorded on the bill and on each fee line

The separate bill type matters: outside charges are counted and reported through their own queries, so a report that looks only at inward service bills will not show them.

The charge type is not chosen while billing. It comes from the item's Inward Category in the item master. An item with no Inward Category configured cannot be billed here at all — the screen refuses with "This item has no Inward Category configured… otherwise this charge will not appear in Inward Charge Type reports." If an outside charge lands under the wrong heading on the bill, correct the item, not the bill; see Admin — Inpatient Charge Type Labels.

All charges on one bill must come from the same outside institution. The institution is locked once the first charge is added; start a New Bill to bill a different institution.

The amount is the amount charged. It is pre-filled from the item's Outside Fee for the logged department's site and can be adjusted, but it is not derived from the internal service price list — so verify it against the outside provider's invoice before settling.

How Outside Charges Reach the Interim and Final Bill

When an interim or final bill is produced, outside charges are summed separately from ordinary service charges — a distinct query over the outside-charge bill type — and then grouped by the same InwardChargeType categories, so on the printed bill they appear as line items under their respective charge headings rather than in a section of their own. The interim bill lists each one by the item's name, not just by the charge category.

Unchecked outside-charge bills block final settlement. If any outside-charge bill for the admission has not been marked as checked, the final bill refuses with "Some Inward Out Side Bills Are Not Checked". Check them off before settling the admission.

See Inpatient Interim Bills and Inpatient Final Bill.

Finding, Cancelling or Returning a Settled Outside Charge

Finding the bill

Outside-charge bills do not appear in the Inward → Search → Service Bill screen — that search covers ordinary inward service bills only. Use the Inpatient Dashboard for the admission instead:

• All Inward Service Bills — lists outside-charge bills alongside service bills, each marked with its type and status; View opens the bill
• Service Summary and Pharmacy & Services Summary — item-level views that also include outside charges

See Inpatient Admission Profile (Dashboard).

Cancelling and returning

View opens the same Service Reprint screen used for inward service bills, which offers To Cancel (whole bill, requires a reason on the following screen) and Return (partial reversal of individual lines).

The cancellation guards are the same as for service bills — a checked, already-cancelled, already-returned or lab-processed bill cannot be cancelled, nor can any bill on a discharged or payment-finalised admission. See Inpatient Service Bills § Finding, Cancelling or Returning for the full list and the cancellation-request option, and Inpatient — Bill Cancellations and Refunds (Overview) for what cancellation does to the records.

When to Use Outside Charges

• External radiology (CT, MRI, ultrasound performed at another facility)
• External laboratory tests not available in-house
• Ambulance or transport hired from an outside company
• Equipment, prostheses or consumables sourced externally for this patient

For services the hospital performs itself, use Add Services and Investigations instead — those are priced from the internal fee configuration.

Technical Reference

Item	Detail
Page	inward/inward_bill_outside_charge.xhtml
Controller	InwardAdditionalChargeController
Bill view / reprint / cancel entry	inward/inward_reprint_bill_service.xhtml (via the Inpatient Dashboard bill list)
Cancellation page	inward/inward_cancel_bill_service.xhtml
Refund (return) page	inward/inward_bill_service_refund.xhtml
BillType	InwardOutSideBill
BillTypeAtomic	INWARD_OUTSIDE_CHARGES_BILL, INWARD_OUTSIDE_CHARGES_BILL_CANCELLATION
Charge model	InwardChargeType enum, taken from the item

Related Pages

• Add Outside Charges — the end-user workflow for this screen
• Item Fees for Sites — where the Outside Fee that pre-fills the amount is configured
• Inpatient Service Bills — the equivalent for services the hospital performs itself
• Admin — Inpatient Charge Type Labels — charge categories and their printed labels
• Inpatient Interim Bills · Inpatient Final Bill — where these charges surface
• Inpatient — Bill Cancellations and Refunds (Overview)