Concept explainer
Visits and encounters
Explains the difference between a visit and an encounter and how the two structure a patient's contact with the hospital over time.
A visit and an encounter describe the same episode of care from two sides. A visit is what a patient lives through at the hospital. An encounter is how the platform holds that visit as one record over time.
Two words, one episode
Staff arrive with the word visit. The platform records that visit as an encounter. Both point at one contact between a patient and the hospital.
The visit and its record
A visit is a single contact between a patient and the hospital. A walk-in to a clinic is a visit. A stay on a ward is a visit. An emergency arrival is a visit.
An encounter is the platform word for that visit, and the record opened for it. Gate opens the encounter the moment a visit starts, and holds it through to discharge.
The ward says visit or admission. The platform says encounter. The core concepts page sets this vocabulary out in full.
What hangs from an encounter
Diagnoses, orders and charges attach to the encounter, rather than straight to the patient. Each contact stays self-contained, so one visit reads cleanly apart from the next.
Conditions recorded during this contact.
Requests placed within this contact.
Billable items the contact raises.
Forms and files captured during the contact.
The encounter carries the attribution
Every entry made during a visit names the encounter it belongs to, the person who made it, and the moment they made it. On a shared ward screen, each member of staff signs in as themselves, so the record stays truthful about who acted.
The record spans encounters
A patient holds many encounters over the years. The patient record spans them all. It belongs to the patient and has no owning site, so a clinician treating the patient reads the same history at any site that runs Pensieve. Atlas holds that record, and the section on the record across sites follows it between sites.
The shared encounter
One open encounter serves everyone who touches the visit. Each role reads it through their own work.
Common confusions
Is an encounter the same as an admission?
An admission is one kind of encounter. A walk-in to the outpatient desk is another. Encounter is the general word the platform uses for any single contact.
Do diagnoses attach to the patient or the encounter?
Diagnoses, orders and charges attach to the encounter. The patient record then carries the encounters, so the whole history stays in one place.
Does one visit ever hold two encounters?
One contact opens one encounter. A later contact opens a fresh encounter against the same record.
Read the visit lifecycle to follow an encounter from arrival to discharge.