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Admitting a Patient
Joe Caffrey avatar
Written by Joe Caffrey
Updated over 2 weeks ago

Patients are admitted to beds by Admitting staff to facilitate accurate hospital census tracking, enable timely registration, ensure proper billing, and avoid delays in care. Admission occurs when a patient requires placement in a bed, such as during hospital check-ins, transfers, or emergency care. Patient admissions are often completed through the ADT system. You might not be able to admit a patient manually. Admitting a patient manually does not send a message to the ADT system to indicate that the patient is being admitted.

Patients are admitted using the list view or Patient/Placement Details form in the Capacity IQ® PreAdmit or the Patient Tracking Portal applications. Patients can also be admitted from the Capacity IQ® Transport console.

How Admitting a Patient Works

Functionality

  • Admitting Staff are able to admit patients to beds if they have the following permissions.

    • If you have the Maintain Patient/Placement Details permission with View rights, you may access and view the Patient/Placement Details form, but you may not make changes.

    • If you have the Maintain Patient/Placement Details permission with Edit rights, you may access the Patient/Placement Details form and make changes.

      • You must have individual permissions to make some specific changes. For example, the Edit Patient Name permission to change the patient name and the Edit Patient Associated Physicians permission to add or change physician information.

    • If you have the Create New PreAdmits permission, you may create a new preadmit record.

    • To admit a patient, you must have the Admit Patient to Inhouse Location permission.

  • When a patient is admitted to a bed in the hospital, the patient is registered in the hospital's Admit Discharge and Transfer (ADT) system.

  • If the ADT system is integrated with Capacity IQ®, then information about patient records can be transferred between the ADT system and Capacity IQ®.

  • If your organization does not use HL7 and it is not possible to transfer patient information automatically from your ADT system to the Capacity IQ® solution, then you might have been given permission to admit a patient and update the patient's information on the Capacity IQ® Transport console by a TeleTracking Technologies representative.

  • Outpatients cannot be admitted, discharged, or updated on the console.

  • TeleTracking Technologies strongly recommends using HL7 with your ADT system to transfer patient information to Capacity IQ®.

  • You should only manually admit a patient when it is not possible to use HL7 with your ADT system.

  • Admitting staff manages patient flow by viewing bed requests, using the information entered into the system to update patient records in the ADT system.

  • Admitting staff registers patients and feeds their records into Capacity IQ®, ensuring the hospital census is accurately updated in real-time when patients are admitted to beds.

  • Admitting staff can

    • use Instant Notify for non-urgent tasks, such as notifying Patient Placement about room maintenance, but it should not be used for emergencies.

    • block and unblock beds.

    • associate an admit type and admit source with the patient.

    • create or cancel patient transport and item transport requests

    • use the patient search functionality to locate records.

    • utilize Location IQ® functionality to:

      • tag patients

      • search for assets

      • navigate the floor plan

  • Only patients in the Outpatient or PreAdmit status may be admitted.

Admit a Patient

From the Patient/Placement Details form:

  1. Access the Patient/Placement Details form.

  2. In the Patient Action list on the left, select Admit Patient.

  3. In the Home Location box, do one of the following to specify the home location (bed) to which the patient should be admitted:

    1. Type the first few characters of the ADT ID, abbreviation, or name of the bed, and then select the appropriate bed from the list that appears.

      1. Note: For each campus, the administrator has selected a bed display type on the Capacity Management Administration page. Possible bed display types are ADT ID, abbreviation, and name. Type the appropriate bed identifier depending on the bed display type selected for the campus shown in the Campus box. For example, if ABC Women's Hospital appears in the Campus box and the administrator has selected Abbreviation as the bed display type for ABC Women's Hospital, then type the bed abbreviation. You may select only locations in units and clusters to which you have membership.

    2. Click the magnifying glass icon next to Home Location, and then select a bed.

    3. In the Search Text box, type a few letters of the location name.

      1. The search finds locations containing text that you type. For example, searching for out could find Outpatient Waiting Area and South Wing Office. You may include a % sign with the text that you type in the box. For example, you may type s% to find all location names that include the letter S.

      2. You cannot change the campus displayed in the Campus list. This is the campus selected in the Campus list on the Patient/Placement Details form.

      3. The Units/Clusters list displays all units and clusters to which you have membership within the campus selected on the Patient/Placement Details form.

    4. To select the check boxes for all units and clusters that appear in the Units/Clusters list so that the Location Results list will include locations from all of them, select the Check All check box.

    5. If you did not select the Check All check box, then in the Units/Clusters list, select the units or clusters that should be included in the search.

      1. If necessary, use the scroll bars to move the list.

    6. Click Click to Search to display a list of locations that match your search criteria.

    7. In the list of possible locations in the Location Results box, click a location.

    8. Click Select Location.

  4. Click Save.

From a List View

  1. Click in the Patient Placement Status (Pt Status) column, and then select Admit Patient to display the Patient Action dialog box with Admit Patient displayed in the Action section.

  2. In the Home Location box, do one of the following to specify the home location (bed) to which the patient should be admitted:

    1. Type the first few characters of the ADT ID, abbreviation, or name of the bed, and then select the appropriate bed from the list that appears.

      1. Note: For each campus, the administrator has selected a bed display type on the Capacity Management Administration page. Possible bed display types are ADT ID, abbreviation, and name. Type the appropriate bed identifier depending on the bed display type selected for the campus shown in the Campus box. For example, if ABC Women's Hospital appears in the Campus box and the administrator has selected Abbreviation as the bed display type for ABC Women's Hospital, then type the bed abbreviation. You may select only locations in units and clusters to which you have membership.

    2. Click the magnifying glass icon next to Home Location, and then select a bed.

    3. In the Search Text box, type a few letters of the location name.

      1. The search finds locations containing text that you type. For example, searching for out could find Outpatient Waiting Area and South Wing Office. You may include a % sign with the text that you type in the box. For example, you may type s% to find all location names that include the letter S.

      2. You cannot change the campus displayed in the Campus list. This is the campus selected in the Campus list on the Patient/Placement Details form.

      3. The Units/Clusters list displays all units and clusters to which you have membership within the campus selected on the Patient/Placement Details form.

    4. To select the check boxes for all units and clusters that appear in the Units/Clusters list so that the Location Results list will include locations from all of them, select the Check All check box.

    5. If you did not select the Check All check box, then in the Units/Clusters list, select the units or clusters that should be included in the search.

      1. Note: If necessary, use the scroll bars to move the list.

    6. Click Click to Search to display a list of locations that match your search criteria.

    7. In the list of possible locations in the Location Results box, click a location.

    8. Click Select Location.

  3. Click Save.

From the Capacity IQ® Transport Console

  1. On the Capacity IQ® Transport console, click the Add Patient icon or go to Capacity IQ® Transport > Patient Add or go to Care Support > Capacity IQ® Transport > Add Patient icon to display the Add Patient page.

  2. In the MRN box, type the patient's medical record number.

  3. In the Visit# box, type the patient's visit number.

  4. In the First Name, MI, and Last Name boxes, type the patient's first name, middle initial, and last name.

  5. In the Gender list, select whether the patient is Male or Female.

  6. In the Date of Birth box, select the patient's date of birth:

  • Click the calendar icon.

  • Click the arrows in the title bar until the appropriate month and year appear.

  • Click the date.

Note: Dates and times appear in the format configured on the Capacity Management Administration page. For example, dates might appear in dd/mm/yyyy format (07/05/2016 is May 7, 2016) and times might appear in twenty-four-hour format (16:00 is 4 PM). You may also type the date in the format specified on the Capacity Management Administration page (for example dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy).

  1. In the Isolation Type list, select the patient's isolation type, such as Airborne.

  2. Click Save.

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