A Patient's First Visit, End to End

This is the big one. It follows a single first-time, walk-in outpatient through an entire visit and shows every desk their part: the front desk that registers her, the cashier who takes her fee, the nurse who records her vitals, the doctor who sees her, the laboratory that runs her tests, the pharmacy that dispenses her medicine, and the finance office that accounts for it all. Read your own role’s steps, or read the whole thing once to see how the pieces connect.

We will follow Amina Bello, who has never been to the hospital before, is paying for herself (no insurance), and wants to see a doctor.

The cast and the words you’ll need

The people (roles):

Front Desk — registers patients and issues queue tickets.
Cashier — collects payments at the counter.
Nurse — records vital signs at the triage station.
Doctor (clinician) — examines the patient, writes notes, orders tests and prescriptions.
Lab Scientist — receives samples, enters and verifies results.
Pharmacist — dispenses prescribed medicines.
Finance (Billing Clerk / Manager) — turns the visit’s charges into invoices and tracks what is owed.

The words:

UHID — Unique Health ID, the patient’s permanent hospital number (looks like VNA-…). It is created once, at registration, and used everywhere afterwards.
OPD — Outpatient Department: a patient who is seen and goes home the same day (not admitted to a ward).
Encounter — the system’s record of one visit. It opens at registration and closes when the doctor finishes.
Registration fee — a fixed, one-off charge some facilities require before a new patient can be seen. Your facility’s administrator decides whether it applies and how much it is.
eSign PIN — a 6-digit code each clinical staff member has. Typing it is a legal signature: it confirms you authorised this note, prescription, or result.
HMO / Self-pay — HMO (Health Maintenance Organisation) means an insurer pays; Self-pay means the patient pays out of pocket. Amina is self-pay.

Step 1 — Registration (Front Desk)

Who / when: the Front Desk clerk, the moment a new patient arrives and says they have never been here before.

Front Desk — open Register → New Registration. A short guided form opens, one page at a time.
Fill in the patient’s details across the steps: name, date of birth, sex; phone and address; then payer — choose “Self-pay” for Amina (if she had insurance you would pick HMO and enter her scheme and member number). Add a next of kin, any known allergies, and tick the consent boxes.
On the final review page, press “Assign UHID & Save”. Veona creates her permanent UHID and shows it: “Patient registered. VNA-… assigned.”
Press “Print Card & Token” to print her patient card. Write nothing down by hand — the UHID is now hers forever.

Step 2 — The registration fee, before anything else (Cashier)

Who / when: the Cashier, immediately after registration — if your facility charges a registration fee. If it does, Amina cannot be queued to a doctor or have a consultation started until it is paid. This is deliberate.

When registration saved, Veona automatically raised the registration charge and stamped Amina’s visit “Fee Due”. You will see that red tag against her name on the Register → OPD Board.
Cashier — open Register → Registration Fee. This screen lists every patient whose fee is still outstanding: “These patients are blocked from queuing & consultation until the mandatory registration fee is settled.”
Choose the tender (Cash, Card, Transfer or Mobile) at the top, then press “Collect Payment” on Amina’s row.
Her row disappears from the list. She is now activated — she can be put in a queue and seen by a clinician.

Step 3 — Take a ticket and wait (Front Desk, or self-service kiosk)

Who / when: the Front Desk issues a queue ticket, or the patient takes one herself at a kiosk, if your facility has one.

Front Desk — open the live board at Queue. Press “Issue token” on the station you want (for a new visit, send her to Vitals first). Search Amina by name or UHID, choose a priority (Routine), and confirm. A ticket number prints (for example V-021).
Or, kiosk — Amina taps Self Check-in, enters her details, and presses “Get My Waiting Tag”. Her ticket number appears on screen for her to keep.
Amina sits in the waiting area and watches the public display board — a TV screen showing which ticket is being called at each station. No names are shown, only ticket numbers, for privacy.

Step 4 — Vital signs (Nurse)

Who / when: the Nurse at the vitals/triage station, when Amina’s ticket is called.

Nurse — open Queue → Vitals Station. The “Waiting For Vitals” list shows everyone sent here. Call Amina and press “Record Vitals” on her row.
Enter her temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen (SpO₂) and breathing rate. Veona scores them automatically.
Choose the clinical service to send her to (the right clinic or doctor) and press “Record & Send To Doctor”.
Amina’s vitals are saved to her chart, and her ticket moves into the doctor’s queue. She returns to the waiting area to wait for the doctor.

Step 5 — The doctor calls her in (Doctor)

Who / when: the Doctor, working through their personal queue.

Doctor — open Queue → My Queue. It lists the patients waiting for you, longest-waiting and highest-priority first.
Press “Ready For Next Patient”. Veona assigns you the next patient (Amina), shows her in the “Now With You” panel, and the public board calls her ticket.
Press “Open Chart” beside her name to open her record and begin.

Step 6 — The consultation: notes, by hand and by voice (Doctor)

Who / when: the Doctor, with the patient in the room. You can write notes yourself, let the AI Scribe draft them from the conversation, or both. The Scribe never files anything on its own — you always review and sign.

Doctor — to type notes yourself, open Chart → Notes. Choose a template or free text, write your SOAP note, and press “Sign Note” (you enter your eSign PIN). Only signed notes enter the permanent record.
Doctor — to use the AI Scribe, open Chart → Scribe. Press “Start Session”, then “Start Recording”, and simply talk to the patient as normal. A small live indicator stays visible even if you move to other screens.
When the conversation is done, press “Stop & Transcribe”. Veona transcribes the audio and drafts a structured note (chief complaint, history, examination, assessment, plan) — usually in under a minute.
Read and edit the draft. It is yours to correct. When you are satisfied, enter your eSign PIN and press “Sign Into Chart”. The note is now signed and filed, exactly as if you had typed it. (Prefer to discard it? Press “Discard & End” — nothing is filed.)

Step 7 — Orders: tests and prescriptions (Doctor)

Who / when: the Doctor, during or at the end of the consultation. This is where the visit branches out to the lab and the pharmacy.

Doctor — open Chart → New Order. Pick the order type at the top: Laboratory, Imaging, Medication or Procedure.
For a lab test — choose Laboratory, search the catalogue (for example “FBC” or “U&E”), set the priority and specimen, add any clinical detail, and press “Sign & Send”. The order goes straight to the laboratory’s worklist.
For a prescription Amina will collect at the pharmacy — choose Medication and search the drug formulary. Enter the dose, route and schedule, then the Quantity To Dispense (for example 15), the Duration (for example “5 days”), and your eSign PIN. Press “Sign & Send”. Because Amina is an outpatient, the prescription is signed and sent straight to the pharmacy’s dispensing queue.
If the medicine clashes with an allergy or another drug, Veona warns you before you sign; a serious clash is a hard stop that requires you to acknowledge and override with your eSign PIN.
When the visit is over, open Chart → (the encounter) and press “Complete” to close it. Closing the visit does not hold up the orders — they were routed the moment you signed them.

Step 8 — The laboratory (Lab Scientist)

Who / when: the Lab Scientist (and whoever draws the sample — often a nurse or phlebotomist). Results can arrive two ways: typed in by hand, or sent automatically by an analyser through Veona Connect. Both are covered.

8a. Receive the sample

Draw the sample, then open Labs → Accession Sample. Look Amina up, choose the specimen type and container, and pick the department and (if used) the analyser the sample will run on.
Press to accession — Veona prints a barcode label for the tube. The sample is now tracked end to end.

8b. Results, the manual way (typed in)

Lab Scientist — open Labs → Results & Worklist. The left side is a pipeline: Ordered → In progress → Awaiting review → Released. Click Amina’s sample under Ordered.
Type each result into the grid. Veona shows the reference range and automatically flags anything Low, High or Critical.
Press “Save Draft” to keep working, or move straight to releasing it (next).

8c. Results, the automatic way (from the machine)

When an analyser is connected through Veona Connect, it sends the result itself. Veona matches it to the right sample by barcode and fills the grid in automatically — the scientist sees the source analyser named against the result.
If a result arrives that Veona cannot match to a known sample, it lands in the “Unmatched Results” panel at the bottom of the same screen. Press “Reconcile” and pick the correct sample to link it.
The scientist reviews the machine values exactly as they would typed ones, then releases them (next).

8d. Verify, sign and release

Lab Scientist — when the values are right, press “Verify & Sign Out” and enter your eSign PIN. The result becomes Released.
If your facility uses two-person review, the first scientist presses “Submit For Review” instead, and a second, different scientist releases it — the system will not let the same person do both (segregation of duties).
A critical value (life-threatening) is flagged automatically and an alert is raised for read-back on Labs → Critical.

Step 9 — The pharmacy (Pharmacist)

Who / when: the Pharmacist, when Amina arrives at the dispensing counter.

Pharmacist — open Rx → Dispensing Queue. In the search box type Amina’s UHID (or her name). Her signed prescription is waiting in the “To dispense” lane.
Click her prescription, then press “Dispense” to open it. The top of the screen confirms it is signed by the doctor — an unsigned prescription cannot be dispensed.
For each medicine, pick the batch to dispense from. Veona offers the batch that expires first (FEFO — First Expired, First Out) and shows what is in stock.
Choose the counselling given and any substitution, then press “Confirm Dispense”. Stock is deducted automatically.
Print the label, hand Amina her medicine, and counsel her.

Step 10 — Results reach Amina, and the doctor reviews them (Patient, then Doctor)

Who / when: Amina (on her phone) and the Doctor (when results are ready), often a little later or at a follow-up.

Amina — if she has a portal login, she opens My results and sees her released lab results, with values, reference ranges and any flags, and can download a PDF. “Only results your clinician has released to you appear here.” Drafts are never shown.
Doctor — when notified, open Amina’s chart and the Results view to read the released results and the dispensed medicines.
Doctor — record a fresh note or start a new encounter for the review, and take the next step: another prescription, a referral to a specialist, or discharge.

Step 11 — Billing, at every step, and the finance view (Cashier, Finance)

Who / when: charges are raised automatically as the visit unfolds; the Cashier collects money and the Finance office accounts for it.

Throughout Amina’s visit, Veona quietly raised a priced charge at each billable event — registration, the consultation, each lab test as it was released, any imaging, and the dispensed medicines — every one priced from the facility’s tariff, never typed by hand, and tagged to Amina’s payer (Self-pay, here).

Cashier — to take a payment, open Bill → Cashier, look Amina up, select her open invoice, enter the amount and method, and confirm. A receipt PDF is produced.
Finance — to bill an HMO patient instead, open Bill → Receivables and raise the invoice as a claim; submit it to the payer from Bill → Claims, and post the payer’s payment on Bill → Remittance.
Finance — to see the whole picture, open Bill → Receivables for Accounts Receivable (what is owed, aged 0–30 / 31–60 / 60+ days, by payer), and Pulse → Revenue & Finance for revenue, collections, and collection-rate trends by department and payer.

What you’ve just seen

One patient, one UHID, and a single thread that ran through eight desks: registered → fee paid → queued → vitals → seen → tested → dispensed → billed, with results flowing back to the doctor and to the patient automatically, and every clinical action signed and audited. Nobody carried paper, nobody re-typed a name, and the finance office can account for every step.

This is the pattern the rest of the How To series builds on. Next up: deeper, single-desk guides — running the pharmacy day on Veona Rx, the laboratory bench, Veona Connect device setup, Veona Bill for the finance team, Veona Stock, and Veona HR.