Starting a visit
Move a checked-in patient into a treatment room and begin the consultation.
Overview
Once the patient is ready, the dentist starts the visit. That marks the appointment as IN_PROGRESS, opens the consultation form, and sets the wait timer to "in-treatment" rather than "waiting".
Prerequisites
- Clinical role (Owner, Admin, Dentist, Hygienist, Therapist)
- The patient is checked in and assigned to you (or to a dentist whose queue you're picking from)
Steps
Open the queue. Top nav → Queue.
Find the patient on your column. Cards in your column ordered by call time.
Click "Start visit". This moves the patient out of the queue into the treatment room. The card disappears from the queue and shows up in your Active Visits widget at the top.
The consultation form opens. It's pre-filled with the appointment metadata (patient, type, room) and shows the patient's medical alerts in red banners.
Record vital signs (recommended). Click the Vitals card in the consultation form to capture blood pressure, pulse, temperature, oxygen saturation. See Recording vital signs.
Conduct the visit. Use the dental chart, treatment plan, and notes panels in the consultation form. Each saves automatically (autosave indicator at the top).
Mark the visit complete when done. Click Complete visit in the bottom-right of the consultation form. A summary modal shows what was recorded; you can amend before locking. Confirm.
Patient is released to billing. The appointment status flips to COMPLETED with a completion timestamp. A billing job on the front desk queue gets the patient ready for payment.
Expected outcome
- The appointment status moves
CHECKED_IN→IN_PROGRESS→COMPLETED - The patient leaves the waiting queue
- Active Visits widget shows the in-progress visit until you complete it
- Visit data (notes, charts, treatments) persists; the consultation can be locked or amended within the consultation reference
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| "Start visit" button missing | Patient not in CHECKED_IN state | Check them in first |
| Multiple active visits | You started a visit without completing the previous | Complete or pause the prior one — only one active visit per dentist at a time |
| Consultation form won't load | Network error | Retry from the queue; once started, the visit is preserved server-side |
| Lost connection mid-visit | Websocket dropped | Refresh; saved fields persist; redo recent edits if needed |
| Mark complete fails | A required field missing on the consultation form | Look for highlighted fields |