Add services and Investigations
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
- 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
- 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.
- 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
- 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
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.
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 (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.
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.
- 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)
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.
- 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
InwardSearchprivilege) - 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)
- "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
- 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
- Inward Service/Item Requests — pre-loads this page when fulfilling an external request
- Admin — Add Services Fee Configuration — how administrators configure fee scoping for this page
- Inpatient Module — module index