Hospital software FAQs | MedBharat

Question 1

What is MedBharat?

Accepted Answer

MedBharat is hospital and clinic software. One hospital workspace covers registration, appointments, the OPD queue, prescriptions (Visit Pad), lab orders and results, IPD admissions and doctor visits, billing, staff, masters, audit and a patient portal. Each hospital is a separate tenant. Your patient charts, bills and staff stay inside your workspace and are not mixed with another hospital on the same platform.

Question 2

Who is MedBharat for?

Accepted Answer

Hospitals, nursing homes, polyclinics, diagnostic centres and solo owner-doctors who want OPD, lab, IPD, billing and patient access in one system instead of spreadsheets plus three other tools. If you only need a paper prescription pad and cash notebook, MedBharat is more than you need. If you already run multi-doctor OPD, beds or an in-house lab, it is built for that day to day work.

Question 3

Can I register a hospital, polyclinic or diagnostic centre?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Hospital signup asks for facility type: hospital, polyclinic or diagnostic centre. That is a label for your facility, not a different product line. The same modules and roles are available; you turn on what your team uses.

Question 4

Is there a demo I can click without signing up?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Open Demo from the top navigation (it opens in a new tab). You can sign in with the published demo accounts for admin, doctor and front desk and walk through sample patients, appointments, billing and more. Demo data lives only in that browser tab session. Closing the tab or logging out resets it. Demo does not call the live hospital API and is not your real hospital account.

Question 5

How do I create a hospital account?

Accepted Answer

Go to Sign up, choose Hospital, and complete the wizard: hospital profile, owner admin details, then email OTP (or continue with Google when that path is offered). After create, you sign in on the sign-in page. Signup places you on the active public free hospital plan. There is no payment step at signup. You can change plan or add modules later from Subscription inside the admin workspace.

Question 6

How do patients sign up?

Accepted Answer

Patients use Sign up and choose Patient, or open /signup/patient. They verify email with OTP or use Google, then sign in. Phone verification for WhatsApp and chart linking happens later from the patient portal. A patient account is not tied to one hospital at signup. After login, the patient links to hospital charts (usually with a verified phone) and then can book, view Rx, bills and reports for those links.

Question 7

How do I add doctors and front desk staff?

Accepted Answer

The hospital admin opens Staff, adds a person, and chooses role (doctor, front desk, lab, IPD and so on). Invite onboarding emails a set-password link. You can also set a temporary password that forces a change on first login. Seat limits come from your plan. When total staff seats are full, Add staff stays disabled until you free a seat (deactivate someone) or upgrade. Owner admin counts toward staff capacity rules on the plan.

Question 8

What should we set up on day one?

Accepted Answer

Confirm hospital name and contact details under Settings. Add services with fees in Masters so booking and billing quote the same prices. Add at least one doctor (or use the owner admin as the provider). Set OPD schedule windows so slots appear. Then run one real loop: register or walk in a patient, mark Arrived, open Visit Pad, finalise a prescription, and collect a bill. Add lab tests and wards when those desks are ready. Do not wait for a perfect master list before the first OPD half day.

Question 9

What devices and browsers work?

Accepted Answer

MedBharat is a web app. Use a current Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari on desktop or laptop for staff work. Tablets work for many screens. Very small phones are usable for the patient portal; dense admin tables are designed for larger screens. There is no separate native iOS or Android staff app today. The site can install as a progressive web app on supported browsers for quicker launch.

Question 10

What roles exist?

Accepted Answer

Staff and platform roles map to their own home screens: superadmin (platform), admin (hospital), doctor, front desk, lab, IPD and patient. After login you land on that role home. You do not pick a random menu across all roles. Admin is the hospital union role: one login can switch Admin, Doctor and Front desk views in the header while permissions still control writes. Dedicated /lab and /ipd route trees are not shipped yet; lab and IPD work today through admin, doctor and front desk pages with the right permissions.

Question 11

Can the hospital admin work like a doctor or front desk?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Admin layout has an Admin | Doctor | Front desk switcher that filters the sidebar. Appointment Visit Pad, queue, billing and IPD actions that admin is allowed to perform stay available under those views. Permissions still apply. If a plan locks a page, the lock dialog appears the same way it does for other staff.

Question 12

Can admin log in as a staff member?

Accepted Answer

Yes, from Staff detail, for doctor and front desk (roles that have a full UI surface). That starts an impersonation session with a clear banner and audit trail. Exit returns you to admin. Lab and IPD staff login-as is disabled until those role surfaces exist, so an impersonation session cannot strand you on a missing page.

Question 13

Can I limit what front desk can do?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Admin can adjust staff permissions, including optional Masters section access for front desk (services, medicines, lab tests, wards, departments). Billing discount ceilings for front desk are configured by admin policy. Doctors without owner flag do not get Billing or Masters in the sidebar. Owner doctors keep those extras when the hospital is set up that way.

Question 14

How do appointments and tokens work?

Accepted Answer

Front desk or admin books against a doctor (or admin acting as provider) and a date. The system assigns a token number once at create time as one per-day sequence shared across doctors, so two patients on the same date never share a token and the count starts again at 1 each new day. Slots respect the doctor schedule and leave. Occupancy uses the full visit interval, not only the start clock time, so overlapping durations cannot double book the same window.

Question 15

How does online patient booking work?

Accepted Answer

Linked patients book from the patient portal. New online bookings arrive as Pending. Pending holds the slot so nobody else takes it. Front desk or doctor reviews the request list, confirms to Booked, or declines to Cancelled. Same day online booking blocks past slots and slots that start within about thirty minutes, so the clinic has time to prepare. Confirmation can notify the patient in app and on WhatsApp when policy and consent allow.

Question 16

How do walk-ins work?

Accepted Answer

Front desk and doctors can create a walk-in for the next free slot. Doctors often use Add patient (existing or new) which creates a walk-in in Arrived status so Visit Pad can open straight away. New patients can be registered with WhatsApp phone OTP, or staff can choose register without OTP when that is allowed. Phone verified status is stored on the chart accordingly.

Question 17

What is the queue board?

Accepted Answer

The queue shows today statuses such as Booked, Arrived, On-going, Reviewed, Cancelled and No-show with the usual colour cues. Staff update status as the patient moves through OPD. Live updates refresh lists when appointments change. Admin and front desk use the queue for floor control. Doctors see their appointment list and open Visit Pad from Arrived, On-going or Booked as your workflow prefers.

Question 18

What is Visit Pad?

Accepted Answer

Visit Pad is the doctor consult screen for one visit: complaint, findings, diagnosis, medicines, advice, optional drawings and attachments. You save drafts while the consult is open, then finalise when the prescription is ready to print or share. Final and amended prescriptions appear on Consults and Prescriptions lists. Drafts stay off those lists so an unfinished note is not treated as a discharge Rx.

Question 19

Do templates and medicine masters exist?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Templates can be hospital shared or private to a doctor. Medicine masters support search by names your team actually uses. Using a template speeds common visits without locking the doctor out of edits. Masters for services, departments, lab tests and wards are maintained under Masters (admin, or front desk when granted). Service fees on Masters drive quoted prices on booking and pending invoice lines.

Question 20

Can we send the prescription to the patient on WhatsApp?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Finalising can push a PDF when WhatsApp is configured and the hospital notification policy allows it. Staff can also resend from the visit or prescription screens. Sends go to the patient phone on the chart and are audited with a masked number. A failed WhatsApp send does not undo the finalised prescription. You can still print or download the PDF.

Question 21

What is on the patient chart?

Accepted Answer

Patient detail (admin, doctor, front desk) is a 360 view: overview, appointments, prescriptions, billing, lab, admissions, files and timeline. Rows on patient lists open that chart. Files aggregate Rx attachments, final Rx PDFs, published lab attachments and invoice PDFs in one tab so staff are not hunting across modules.

Question 22

How does the lab workflow run?

Accepted Answer

Orders move through statuses such as ordered, sample collected, in progress, result entered, verified, published or cancelled. Lab staff enter values, verify, then publish. Reference ranges mark low, high or normal. Critical low or high flags win over ordinary flags. Publish makes the report visible on the patient chart and, for linked portal accounts, can create an inbox notification. Critical publish can also trigger WhatsApp when consent and policy allow.

Question 23

Who can enter and publish lab results?

Accepted Answer

Result entry, verify and publish are meant for lab roles with the matching permissions. Doctors and front desk can follow order status and read published results on the chart. Admin permissions follow the hospital union set; publish stays tied to lab publish permission where that split is enforced.

Question 24

How do admissions and beds work?

Accepted Answer

Front desk or admin admits a patient to a ward and bed. Beds move through available, reserved, occupied, cleaning and blocked. Admit does not require an attending doctor up front; you can add attending and co-doctors later. Discharge is done from the admission screen. Outstanding invoice balance does not block discharge by itself. Unbilled charge lines above zero do block discharge unless an admin waiver is used. The bed goes to cleaning on final discharge.

Question 25

How do doctor bedside visits work?

Accepted Answer

Front desk or admin schedules a visit for a doctor already on the admission team, with date, time and optional reason. The assigned doctor sees upcoming visits under IPD and can complete the visit and write Rx linked to that visit and admission. Reschedule and cancel are desk actions. Lists refresh over realtime when visits change so the ward board and doctor list stay aligned.

Question 26

How does billing work?

Accepted Answer

Staff create invoices from pending items (for example appointment service snapshots) or manual lines. Statuses include Pending, Partial, Paid, Overdue and Refunded. Admin and front desk can collect payment (including split methods). Admin can refund. Unpaid bills can be deleted with a reason after confirm; paid amounts need refund first. List screens show period totals for billed, paid, overdue and due. Discount columns appear for admin; front desk follows discount ceiling rules set for that role.

Question 27

Can we send bills on WhatsApp?

Accepted Answer

Yes. From billing screens staff can send the invoice PDF over WhatsApp when the channel is configured. Like Rx, policy and patient phone rules apply, and the attempt is audited.

Question 28

Where do service prices come from?

Accepted Answer

Admin Masters → Services is the price source: fee, tax flags and billing category. Booking stores a snapshot of fee and tax on the appointment so later invoices match what was quoted even if the master changes later. Doctors do not set consultation fees on their own settings for hospital pricing. Admin controls fees through services and staff profiles where needed.

Question 29

What can patients do in the portal?

Accepted Answer

After signup and linking, patients can book and cancel appointments, view final prescriptions, medical history (including published lab with critical markers and IPD summary fields), bills, e-consult requests, notifications and settings (profile, consents, prefs). They can upload and share reports with expiry and PIN style protection, and download their own documents. Staff can also push a stored document to the patient WhatsApp from the reports tools when allowed.

Question 30

How does a patient link to a hospital chart?

Accepted Answer

Linking ties the portal account to a patient row in a hospital, usually with phone verification so the chart matches the right person. Booking can also ensure a link when rules allow. Patients can unlink later from link settings. Until a verified link exists, the portal will not show that hospital clinical data. Staff charts are never opened through the patient login.

Question 31

How do e-consults work?

Accepted Answer

Patients request an online consult with date and time. Doctors accept and start the LiveKit call when ready. Patients join with a token only after the consult is in progress, so they are not dropped into an empty room. Referral based patient join for doctor-to-doctor referral rooms is still limited by design in places; day to day patient e-consults use the patient e-consult screens.

Question 32

Does MedBharat support ABDM and ABHA?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The product includes ABHA find/create style flows on the patient chart, facility connect settings for Health Facility Registry style IDs, and M1 to M3 oriented link, consent and record exchange paths against the national gateway patterns we integrate with. ABDM is not a replacement for your HMIS. You still run OPD, IPD, lab and billing inside MedBharat. Live certification and production credentials depend on NHA sandbox and facility onboarding steps your hospital completes. Check Admin → Settings → ABDM for health and facility connect status.

Question 33

What does WhatsApp do in MedBharat?

Accepted Answer

When Meta Cloud API credentials are set, MedBharat can send appointment confirmations, Rx PDFs, invoice PDFs, lab published or critical alerts, IPD updates and similar events. Copy follows the patient preferred language where catalogues exist. Each event can be gated by hospital notification policy. Patient registration OTP over WhatsApp is treated as must deliver for staff registration flows. Failed sends are audited and do not roll back the clinical action.

Question 34

Can we sign in with Google?

Accepted Answer

Yes when Google OAuth is enabled for the deployment. Existing users get a session. New Google users finish hospital or patient signup with the Google token so email OTP can be skipped on that path.

Question 35

Is multi-factor authentication available?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Users can enable email OTP, WhatsApp phone OTP and/or authenticator app (TOTP) from account settings, and optionally during setup after password changes. Login then asks for a second step when any method is on. Phone MFA needs a verified phone. Email MFA needs a verified email. Disabling TOTP clears the stored secret.

Question 36

Does it work when the internet drops?

Accepted Answer

For doctor and admin, selected flows keep working offline: add patient and walk-in, consult status updates, prescriptions (including finalise locally) and basic billing creates or payments. Those writes queue in the browser and replay when the network returns. Other modules stay online only. An offline banner shows pending sync. Sign out warns if queued work remains. Phone lookup during sync helps attach work to an existing patient instead of creating a duplicate.

Question 37

Can we import Excel or export reports?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Admin and doctor Data hubs support staged file import (CSV or Excel) with category detect and commit, plus export of datasets to CSV, Excel or PDF for a chosen period. Front desk does not get the Data hub. Import quality depends on your columns matching what the job expects. We do not promise a fixed forty eight hour migration SLA for every legacy HIS. Typical clinic sheets can land the same day when columns are clean.

Question 38

Is our hospital data ours?

Accepted Answer

Yes. You operate inside your tenant. Export tools and operational screens let you take lists and documents you need for accounts or continuity. MedBharat does not sell patient data and does not use your clinical records to train models.

Question 39

How is patient data protected?

Accepted Answer

Tenant isolation is enforced in the database layer. Clinical PHI collections are guarded so platform operators only touch them under controlled impersonation with audit. Role permissions limit who can read or write each module. Uploaded patient documents can be encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM when the deployment encryption key is set. Shared report links support expiry, PIN or OTP style gates, rate limits and watermarked disclosure views.

Question 40

Is there an audit log?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Hospital admin audit focuses on impersonation, staff lifecycle, billing create or payment or refund or delete, and subscription changes, with plain language details. Platform superadmin audit covers platform level events. Old rows expire on a retention schedule.

Question 41

What is the password policy?

Accepted Answer

New and changed passwords must be strong: length bounds plus upper, lower, digit and special character rules. Sign-in itself does not re-validate password shape on every login. Change password rejects reusing the current password.

Question 42

What does MedBharat cost?

Accepted Answer

Hospital signup starts on the public free hospital plan. You can move to Pro or Plus, or keep a free base and buy only the extra modules you need as add-ons. Live prices and module lists are on the Pricing page. This FAQ does not invent rupee figures that can go stale. Subscription and locked pages are visible inside Admin → Subscription. Locked features show a lock on the nav and an upgrade path instead of a silent failure.

Question 43

How do staff seats work?

Accepted Answer

Plans define how many staff you can activate. Hitting the cap blocks adding more staff until you deactivate someone or upgrade. Check seat usage on Staff and Subscription before a hiring week.

Question 44

What happens if the subscription is suspended?

Accepted Answer

API access for normal work returns a payment required style error, and role layouts send you to the subscription checkout for that role so you can renew or fix billing. Do not delete the hospital to solve a payment issue; fix subscription first.

Question 45

Which languages are supported?

Accepted Answer

The staff and marketing UI can switch locale (for example English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil and Gujarati where catalogues exist). English is the fallback when a string is missing. Patient WhatsApp and some outbound messages follow the language stored on the patient chart. Capture preferred language at registration so messages match what the patient reads.

Question 46

How do we get support?

Accepted Answer

Hospital admins can open Contact support in the admin app to raise tickets. Platform operators work those tickets from the superadmin support inbox. You can also use the public Contact page on the marketing site. For product behaviour questions, this FAQ and the Blog guides cover the common OPD, IPD, lab, billing and ABDM topics.

Question 47

Is pharmacy management available?

Accepted Answer

Full pharmacy retail management is listed as coming soon on the marketing Pharmacy page. Hospitals today still run medicines masters for prescribing, inventory style clinic supply lists under admin inventory, and billing for dispensed or charged items as your process allows. When pharmacy ships as a full module, the site and release notes will say so. We do not pretend the coming soon page is a live dispensing system.

About MedBharat

Getting started

Roles and access

OPD, appointments and queue

Prescriptions and clinical work

Lab

IPD

Billing

Patient portal

ABDM, WhatsApp and login

Offline mode and data import or export

Security and privacy

Pricing and plans

Languages, support and pharmacy