> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.clinikehr.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Set up your hospital
> How a hospital workspace differs from a single practice, and the order to build it in — care areas, units, wards, theatres, staff, then go live.
export const Path = ({steps = []}) =>
{steps.map((s, i) =>
{i > 0 ?
›
: null}
{s}
)}
;
export const Availability = ({editions = ['all'], plans, roles, note}) => {
const list = editions.includes('all') ? ['clinic', 'pharmacy', 'lims'] : editions;
return
Available in
{list.map(e =>
{EDITION_LABELS[e] || e}
)}
{plans ? Plan : null}
{plans ? {plans} : null}
{roles ? Who : null}
{roles ? {roles} : null}
{note ? {note} : null}
;
};
A hospital workspace is organised by service line rather than by task. The sidebar is grouped — **Front Desk**, **Outpatient**, **Inpatient**, **Theatre**, **Diagnostics**, **Pharmacy**, **Revenue**, **Insurance**, **Records**, **Executive** — and the people you serve are called **Patients** on every screen.
Which of those groups exist is your decision, not ours. Each one is switched on by a **care area**, so a hospital with no operating theatre never sees a **Theatre** group, and a hospital that sends its bloods out never sees **Laboratory**. This page is the order to build it in; each stage links to the page that covers it properly.
## The setup sequence
Work down this table. Each stage assumes the one above it is done — you cannot put a patient in a bed that does not exist, and you cannot give a nurse the ward if the ward has no care area.
| # | Stage | Takes about | Done when |
| - | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| 1 | [Choose your care areas](/hospital/get-started/care-areas) | 10 min | The sidebar shows every group you run, and none you do not |
| 2 | [Build departments and sub-units](/hospital/get-started/departments) | An hour | Every unit a patient can be routed to exists, with its consultation rate |
| 3 | [Create wards, sub-wards and beds](/hospital/get-started/wards-and-beds) | An hour | Every bed on the floor exists on the bed grid |
| 4 | [Set up theatres](/hospital/get-started/theatre-setup) | 20 min | Each theatre exists and the safety checklist rule is set |
| 5 | [Invite your team](/hospital/get-started/invite-team) | 5 min per person | Everyone has an account, a department and a role |
| 6 | Services and billing | Half a day | Consultation rates, bookable services, currency and payers are set |
| 7 | Go live | One quiet afternoon | One patient has been walked end to end |
Stages 1 to 4 are structure and can be done by one person in a day. Stage 5 is the one that takes calendar time, because it waits on people accepting invitations.
## Why care areas come first
Navigation follows the care areas. Turn one on and its whole group appears; turn it off and the group goes, along with every entry inside it.
| Care area | Turns on |
| --------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Front desk** | The check-in board, appointments, patient registration and contacts |
| **In-patient care** | Ward admissions, bed management, the nursing station and discharges |
| **Surgical theatre** | The theatre list, safety checklists and operation notes — **off by default** |
| **Diagnostics** | Laboratory and radiology ordering, stations and reports |
| **In-house pharmacy** | Dispensing, the pharmacy station and the counter |
| **Insurance** | Claims, pre-authorisation and the insurance dashboard |
| **Inventory** | Stock, purchase orders and consumables |
| **Records** | The records desk queues, documents and patient records |
Switching an area off later is safe — it hides navigation rather than deleting anything, and existing records stay reachable by direct link. Even so, decide before you invite staff: people learn where things are in their first week, and moving the furniture afterwards costs more than getting it right once.
Triage, consultation and clinical notes have no switch. They are always present on Enterprise, because every hospital sees patients.
## Stage 6 — services, billing and payers
Four settings decide what anything costs and who pays for it:
* **Consultation rates** per sub-unit, set while you build [departments](/hospital/get-started/departments).
* **Appointment services** for anything bookable — see [Services](/clinic/revenue/services).
* **Currency**, before you price anything, so receipts and reports read correctly from day one — see [Currency](/platform/settings/currency).
* **Payers and coverage**, if the **Insurance** care area is on — see [Insurance](/hospital/insurance/overview).
## Stage 7 — walk one patient end to end
Before you announce the switch, take one test patient the whole way: register at the front desk, triage into a department, consult, order a lab test, dispense a drug, raise the bill. Every hand-off that does not work is a missing care area, a missing sub-unit or a missing permission — cheap to fix on a quiet afternoon, expensive at 9am on a Monday.
You are ready when a staff member from each unit signs in and sees their own queues, and nobody sees a group they have no business in.
## Build it
Every switch on the Facility card, what it turns on, and what happens when you turn one off.
The units a patient is routed to and billed under, and the consultation rate each one charges.
Build the floor plan a bed grid is drawn from, down to the individual bed space.
Add each theatre and decide whether an incomplete checklist phase stops a case.
Send invitations, set each person's department and role, and scope what their role can open.
What someone may do on a page they can already open — signing, discharging, dispensing.
## Then run it
The live check-in board, registration and the day's appointments.
Record vitals and route a patient into the right department's consultation queue.
Admissions, bed management, the drug round, nursing notes and discharge.
Ordering, the bench worklist, entering results and issuing the report.