Telehealth & e-consult

BridgeERP HMS supports two remote-care models: live telehealth video visits between a clinician and a patient, and asynchronous e-consults where a generalist asks a specialist a clinical question and gets a documented answer within an SLA. Both produce proper clinical records — consent, a note, prescriptions, referrals and billing — just like an in-person encounter.

Where to find it

• HMS Core → Clinical → Schedule Video Visit — create and run telehealth sessions (model hms.tele.session).
• HMS Core → Clinical → Waiting Room — the live virtual waiting room (model hms.tele.waiting.entry); HMS Core → Clinical → Configuration → Waiting Rooms defines the rooms.
• HMS Core → Configuration → Operations → Teleconsult Tokens — the secure join tokens issued to patients.
• HMS Core → Clinical → eConsult — with Requests, Responses, Billing and Metrics.

Before you start

• Video platform. Configure at least one platform — Jitsi Meet, Zoom, Daily.co, Native WebRTC or Google Meet — and mark it active so sessions can pick it up.
• Waiting room. Define a waiting room so patients can be admitted before the call starts.
• Facility & staff. A session needs a facility and a clinician; the patient is identified from their record.
• Consent. Telehealth consent (and recording consent, if you record) should be obtained and is captured against the session.

Step-by-step: run a video visit

1. From Schedule Video Visit, create a session for the patient and clinician, choose the video platform, and set the facility. The session starts in Scheduled.
2. The patient receives a secure join link/token. When they arrive, press Admit to Waiting Room — the session moves to Patient In Waiting Room.
3. Optionally have the patient run a bandwidth test so you know the connection can carry video before you start.
4. Press Start Call to move to In Progress and open the join URL. Capture consent (and recording consent if recording). You can Pause Call if you need to step away.
5. Document the encounter in the tele consultation note; issue prescriptions and make a referral if needed — these link to the session. In-call events (e.g. quality drops) are logged automatically.
6. If the patient deteriorates or the call fails, raise an escalation to redirect them to in-person or emergency care.
7. Press End Call — the session moves to Ended. If the patient never joined, use Mark No Show; if the technology failed, Mark Technical Failure. Record the billing method and charge.

Telehealth session states

Session field reference

Video platforms & billing methods

A session is bound to one video platform and one payment method. The supported choices are:

e-Consult: asynchronous specialist advice

An e-consult lets a generalist get specialist input without booking the patient a specialist appointment. The requester submits a question; a specialist reviews and answers within an SLA driven by urgency.

1. From eConsult → Requests, create a request: choose the specialty, write the question and clinical context (history, current meds, recent results), attach files, and set urgency — Routine (72h), Urgent (24h) or STAT (4h).
2. Press Submit. The request moves to Submitted; if no specialist is named it is auto-routed to the least-loaded specialist, and an SLA due time is computed.
3. The specialist presses Take (state In Review), then posts a response with a recommendation. The request becomes Answered and the turnaround time is recorded.
4. Billing is raised against the e-consult and tracked to paid; Metrics report volumes, turnaround and SLA breaches.

e-Consult states

e-Consult urgency & SLA

The urgency you set on an e-consult request drives the SLA clock the specialist is measured against. Choose it honestly — it determines how quickly the question must be answered.

Reports & metrics

Telehealth captures call metrics (duration, wait time, network quality) for service monitoring. e-Consult Metrics track answered counts, average turnaround and SLA breach counts — the numbers a clinical lead needs to keep remote advice timely.

The virtual waiting room

The waiting room is the holding area between a patient joining and the clinician starting the call. Patients admitted to a room appear as waiting entries (HMS Core → Clinical → Waiting Room), so a clinician running back-to-back video visits can see who has arrived and in what order, and pull the next patient through when ready. Rooms are defined under HMS Core → Clinical → Configuration → Waiting Rooms — for example one per clinic or per clinician. Secure join links are issued as Teleconsult Tokens (HMS Core → Configuration → Operations → Teleconsult Tokens), so a patient reaches the right session without needing a login, and the token is the audit record of how they joined.

Roles & access

Running a video visit — admitting, starting, documenting and ending the call — and answering an e-consult are clinician activities. Platform configuration, waiting-room setup and e-consult billing and SLA settings are administrative tasks for the practice manager. Patients interact only through their secure join token and the waiting room; they never see the clinical back office.

Tips & troubleshooting

Related

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• Outpatient & Clinical overview