Practitioner Register Doctor - hmislk/hmis GitHub Wiki
Practitioner — Register a Doctor
This article describes how to register, edit, and delete a doctor who is not a channelling consultant. Use this screen for doctors who work in OPD, inward, lab, or any non-channelling area. If the doctor will run channelling sessions, register them as a consultant instead (Practitioner — Register a Consultant). A doctor record is a Doctor row in the database, which inherits all the fields of a Staff record but is shown on a focused screen.
Navigation
Top menu → Administration → Manage Staff → Doctors (Excluding Consultants).
Path: /admin/staff/doctors_excluding_consultants.xhtml.
Privilege required: AdminStaff (the gate on Manage Staff). Without this, the sidebar button is hidden.
Layout of the screen
The screen is two columns. The left column lists every doctor in the system that is not a consultant; the right column shows the details of whichever doctor is currently selected, or a blank form if you have clicked Add.
The toolbar above the list has four buttons:
| Button | Effect |
|---|---|
| Add (green) | Clears the right-side form so you can create a new doctor. Does not commit anything until you click Save. |
| Delete (red) | Soft-deletes (retires) the doctor currently selected in the list. A browser confirmation dialog appears first. The record disappears from this list but is not physically removed. See Practitioner — Deactivate and Bulk Delete. |
| Excel (green) | Downloads the current list of doctors as an .xlsx file with the columns Name, Phone, Fax, Mobile, Address, Code, Speciality, Registration, Qualification, Referring Charge. |
| Reload (blue) | Re-reads the list from the database without saving anything. Use this after another user has added a doctor and you want to see it. |
Under the toolbar there is a single-select listbox with a filter at the top. Type any part of the doctor's name to filter the list.
Adding a new doctor
- Click Add. The right-side form clears.
- Fill the fields described in the table below. The only strictly required fields enforced by the system at save time are Name and Speciality. The rest are strongly recommended for completeness.
- Click Save. The doctor appears in the listbox on the left. The form is cleared so you can add the next doctor.
If you click Save without a name, you will see "Please enter a doctor name". If you click Save without a speciality, you will see "Please Select Speciality for Doctor".
Field reference
| Field | What to enter | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Name | The doctor's display name as it should appear on screens and bills (e.g., A. B. Perera). |
Required. Stored on the linked Person record. |
| Title | Pick from the title list (Dr., Prof., Mr., Ms., etc.). |
The title is shown together with the name as "Name with Title" on most screens. The "Please select a title" placeholder is not a valid choice. |
| Phone | Landline / hospital phone for the doctor. | Optional. Free text. |
| Fax | Fax number if used. | Optional. |
| Mobile | Mobile / cellular number. | Optional but recommended; used for SMS notifications. |
| Address | Home or correspondence address. | Optional. Free text. |
| Code | Short internal code (e.g., DSP01). |
Optional. If left blank the system fills it with the first five characters of the name on first save. If the code is purely numeric it is also captured as the integer "consultant serial number". |
| Speciality | Pick from the All Specialities catalog (Cardiology, ENT, etc.). | Required. This catalog is different from Doctor Specialities, which is used by channelling. See Admin — Specialities Catalog. |
| Registration | The doctor's regulatory registration ID (e.g., SLMC number). | Optional but recommended. Free text. There is no validation, expiry, or revalidation reminder; this is reference data only. |
| Qualification | Full qualification line as it should appear on bills and reports (e.g., MBBS, MD (Medicine), MRCP (UK)). |
Optional. Free text, stored as a large text block. |
| Institution | Which institution the doctor primarily belongs to. | Optional. Used by reports and by some inward / channel screens. Selecting an institution narrows the Department dropdown to that institution's departments. |
| Department | Department within the selected institution. | Optional. Depends on the Institution above. |
If you need to set additional employment fields (date joined, EPF number, payroll details, etc.), open the same record under Staff List afterwards. That screen exposes the full Staff form (Practitioner — Register Other Staff).
Editing an existing doctor
- Click the doctor's name in the left listbox. The right-side form populates with the current values.
- Change any field.
- Click Save. The success growl shows "Updated Successfully". The list refreshes.
Editing a name or speciality propagates automatically; existing bills, sessions, and reports continue to reference the same underlying record. There is no need to "publish" or "refresh" changes elsewhere.
Deleting (retiring) a doctor
- Select the doctor in the listbox.
- Click Delete.
- Confirm the browser dialog.
The record is soft-deleted — retired = true is set, the deleting user and the timestamp are captured, and the record disappears from active lists. Historical bills and sessions remain intact and continue to display the doctor's name. There is no built-in undelete button: if you delete the wrong record, contact a system administrator, who can unset the retired flag directly in the database.
If you need to remove a batch of doctors at once, use Setup → Bulk Delete Staff (Practitioner — Deactivate and Bulk Delete).
Exporting the doctor list
The Excel button on the toolbar exports every doctor currently in the listbox (after any filter you have applied) to doctor_data.xlsx. The export uses these columns in order:
- Name (with title)
- Phone
- Fax
- Mobile
- Address
- Code
- Speciality
- Registration
- Qualification
- Referring Charge
This is the simplest way to share the doctor roster with an external party (insurance, billing, audit) or to feed it into a spreadsheet for analysis.
Promoting a doctor to a consultant
A Doctor record cannot be silently promoted into a Consultant record through the UI — the two are separate database rows even though they share the same person. The supported workflow is:
- Retire the doctor record from this screen (Delete).
- Re-create the person under Consultant (Practitioner — Register a Consultant).
- Move any future bookings or sessions to the new consultant record.
If you need to keep historical OPD bills attached to the old Doctor record but use the new Consultant record going forward, leave the old record retired; it will still resolve on historical reports.
What this screen does not do
- It does not assign clinical privileges. Privileges are attached to the user login that signs in as this doctor, not to the doctor's record. See Admin — Practitioner Privileges and Access.
- It does not link the doctor to a channelling institution; that is done from Setup → Add Channelling Consultants to Institutions (Practitioner — Link to Institution for Channelling).
- It does not create a system user login. Use Administration → Manage Users, then Connect staff to user to bind the new login to this doctor record.
- It does not validate or store an expiry for the Registration field; that field is free text.