Playbooks/HMIS/Playbooks/Outpatient registration

playbookhmisCARE 3.0+

Register a walk-in or scheduled outpatient at the hospital front desk. This playbook combines the register patient flow with HMIS-specific edge cases your registration team will hit in production.

Flows involved

Order	Flow	Purpose
1	Register a patient	New visitor with no existing record
2	Patient search & merge (coming soon)	Suspected duplicate before creating
3	Start OP encounter (coming soon)	Open today's visit after registration

Happy path

1. Reception searches by phone or national ID.
2. No match → Register new patient → complete demographics per facility questionnaire.
3. Print OPD slip / token if enabled.
4. Route patient to triage or consulting room encounter queue.

This matches the core register patient flow without additional configuration.

Edge cases

Suspected duplicate

Symptom: Duplicate warning after entering name, DOB, and phone.

Action:

1. Open the suggested match side-by-side.
2. If same person → use existing record; do not create a second patient.
3. If homonym → document override reason (when your facility requires it) and proceed.
4. If unsure → escalate to registration supervisor; HMIS audit log retains the decision.

Unknown identity (emergency)

Symptom: Patient cannot provide name or ID (trauma, unconscious).

Action:

1. Create a temporary record using your facility's unknown patient naming convention (e.g. Unknown Male ED-042).
2. Assign emergency MRN; photograph identifying marks when possible.
3. After identification, merge into a full demographic record (merge flow coming soon).

Requires emergency_registration permission on most HMIS deployments.

Phone-only intake

Symptom: Camp or rural OPD collects phone first; other fields arrive later.

Action:

1. Register with phone + minimal demographics allowed by questionnaire.
2. Flag record as incomplete demographics.
3. Front desk completes remaining fields before billing or discharge workflows.

National health ID (ABDM / ABHA)

Symptom: Patient presents ABHA address or QR.

Action:

1. Search by ABHA first.
2. If found → link existing Care patient to ABHA identifier.
3. If not found → create patient, then run ABDM link step post-registration (flow coming soon).

Roles

Role	Can
Registration clerk	Search, create, update demographics
Registration supervisor	Override duplicate warnings, merge records
Clinician	Read demographics; cannot delete identifiers

Related

Open Healthcare Network's flagship product: an open-source, FHIR-native electronic medical record (EMR) and healthcare operating system.

Hospital Management Information System — software covering registration, encounters, labs, pharmacy, billing and reporting.

Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission — India's national digital health ecosystem and interoperability rails.