Departments & Resources
How to organize your centre into departments and track physical resources.
Departments & Resources
Departments divide your centre into functional areas like Cardiology, Orthopedics, Lab, and Pharmacy. Resources are physical assets like rooms, equipment, and beds.
Prerequisites
You need at least one centre created. See: Setting Up Centres.
Creating Departments
Follow these steps to add a department to your centre:
- Select the centre where this department belongs.
- Enter a department name (e.g., "Cardiology", "General Medicine", "Radiology").
- Choose a unique department code within the centre (e.g., "CARDIO", "GEN-MED").
- Optionally set a parent department if you want to create a hierarchy.
Department Settings
Setting Name | What It Does | Default | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
Department Name | Display name of the department | (required) | "Cardiology", "General Medicine" |
Department Code | Short unique identifier within the centre | (required) | "CARDIO", "GEN-MED", "RAD" |
Parent Department | Nest under another department for hierarchy | None | Set "Interventional Cardiology" under "Cardiology" |
Description | Optional notes about this department | None | "Outpatient cardiology consultations" |
Department Hierarchy
Departments can be nested. For example, "Interventional Cardiology" can sit under "Cardiology" which sits under "Medicine". This is optional — flat departments work fine for most hospitals.
Assigning Staff to Departments
Each staff member can be assigned to one or more departments. One department is marked as their primary department. To assign staff:
- Select the staff member.
- Choose the department.
- Set whether it is their primary department.
Managing Resources
Resources are physical assets at your centre: consultation rooms, examination beds, ECG machines, X-ray equipment, wheelchairs, or anything else your hospital needs to track. Tracking resources in Hospital OS helps with two things: making sure the right equipment and rooms are available when appointments are scheduled, and knowing when equipment is out of service for maintenance.
To add a resource, choose the centre it belongs to, then provide the following:
Resource name is the display name — something descriptive like "Consultation Room 1", "ECG Machine (Ground Floor)", or "Bed A-12".
Resource code is a short unique identifier within the centre, such as "CR-01", "ECG-GF", or "BED-A12". Like other codes in Hospital OS, this cannot be changed after creation.
Resource type categorizes the resource. You define your own resource types in Tenant Configuration — common examples are Room, Bed, Equipment, Vehicle, and Instrument. Set up your types before adding resources so they appear in the dropdown.
Quantity is how many of this resource you have. If you have three identical ECG machines in the same location, set quantity to 3 rather than creating three separate entries.
Status tracks the current state. A resource starts as Active (available for use). Set it to Maintenance when it is temporarily unavailable — being serviced, repaired, or cleaned. Set it to Retired when it is permanently out of service and will not return. Maintenance resources can be brought back to Active; retired resources typically remain retired.
Location is a free-text description of where to find this resource in the building, such as "2nd Floor, Wing B, Room 205".
Notes is an optional free-text field for any additional information about the resource — serial number, vendor name, last maintenance date, operating instructions, or anything else your team wants to record.
Set up resource types first
What Happens Next?
Set your centre's operating hours and holidays. See: Working Hours & Holidays.
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