Open and manage patient encounters

Open an outpatient, inpatient or emergency encounter in NduMed, move it through its statuses, and use the encounter screen for vitals, notes, diagnoses and orders.

An encounter is one visit or episode of care: an outpatient consultation (OPD), an inpatient stay (IPD) or an emergency visit (ER). Everything clinical in NduMed, including vitals, notes, diagnoses, prescriptions and lab orders, belongs to an encounter.

Doctors and nurses open and manage encounters. Administrators can view them.

Find open encounters

Select Clinical in the menu. The Open Encounters list can be filtered by clinic, type and status.

Open an encounter

1. Fill in the Open Encounter form

   • Patient ID: NduMed’s internal patient number (not the MRN).
   • Type: OPD (default), IPD or ER.
   • Clinician: the doctor or nurse responsible.
   • Clinic: required for walk-ins. If you link an appointment, the clinic comes from the appointment.
   • Appointment ID (optional): link the patient’s appointment, if they booked one. An appointment can be linked to only one open encounter.
   • Chief complaint: the reason for the visit.
2. Select Open

   The encounter screen opens.

Opening an OPD or ER encounter automatically adds a consultation charge (price list code CONSULT-GP) to the patient’s bill. IPD encounters do not add a consultation charge; inpatients are charged per bed day. Inpatient encounters are usually created for you when a patient is admitted. See Admissions.

Encounter statuses

Status	Meaning	How it changes
Open	Created, patient not yet seen	Start moves it to In progress
In progress	Consultation under way	Close when finished
Closed	Finished; read-only	Cannot be reopened

You can Close from Open or In progress. Once closed, vitals, notes, diagnoses and prescriptions can no longer be changed, and new lab orders cannot be placed.

The encounter screen

The encounter screen has four panels that update in place:

• Vital signs: see Vitals, notes and diagnoses.
• Clinical notes: drafts, signing and amendments.
• Diagnoses: ICD-10 and ICD-11 coded diagnoses.
• Prescriptions: see Prescriptions.

Links at the top, depending on your role and your hospital’s modules:

• Admit: admit the patient to a ward bed.
• Order labs: see Lab orders and results.
• Lab results: the patient’s verified results.
• Visit summary: a printable summary of the encounter.

Visit history

The Visits tab on the patient record lists all of a patient’s encounters.

Encounters brought over from your hospital’s previous system carry an Imported badge and are read-only.