Setting Up Centres

Setting Up Centres

A centre is a physical hospital location. If your hospital has one branch, you have one centre. If you have three branches across the city, you have three centres. Each centre can have its own departments, staff, services, working hours, and pricing.

Prerequisites

You need an admin account with Hospital OS access. This is typically the first step in setting up your hospital.

Creating a New Centre

Setting up a centre is the very first step in Hospital OS. Think of it as registering a physical location in the system. If your hospital has one building, you create one centre. If you have three branches across the city, you create three centres. Everything else — departments, staff, services, appointments — hangs off a centre.

When you create a centre, you provide a few essential pieces of information. The centre name is the display name your staff and patients will see. Choose something recognizable like "City Hospital — Main Branch" or "City Hospital — MG Road."

The centre code is a short, unique identifier that the system uses internally. It appears on bill numbers, booking references, and reports. For example, if your centre code is "MAIN", a bill number might look like MAIN-2026-00042. Choose something short and meaningful ("MAIN", "EAST", "LAB-1"). This code cannot be changed after creation, so pick carefully.

The address is stored as a structured record with separate fields for each part: street address line 1, an optional line 2, city, state, PIN code, and country. You can also add latitude and longitude coordinates, which are optional but useful if your hospital ever adds map-based features for patients to find your locations. Enter each part in its own field rather than typing the full address in one line.

The timezone determines how all appointment times at this centre are displayed and calculated. For most Indian hospitals, this is India Standard Time. If your organization has international branches, set the timezone for each location. When a staff member in one timezone books an appointment at a centre in another timezone, the system converts times automatically.

The active status controls whether this centre is operational. When you deactivate a centre (for example, during renovations), it stops appearing for new bookings. Existing appointments and historical records remain intact.

Multi-Centre Management

Each centre operates independently with its own staff, departments, services, and pricing. You manage all centres from one admin account. Key points:

• A doctor can work at multiple centres, each with a separate schedule and fee.
• Services can have different prices at different centres.
• Each centre has its own working hours and holiday calendar.

Editing and Managing Centres

After creation, you can update the centre name, address, timezone, and active status at any time. Deactivating a centre hides it from new bookings but preserves all existing data.

You can also manage holidays from the centre settings. If you added a holiday by mistake or plans changed, you can remove a holiday to restore normal working hours for that date. Removing a holiday does not affect appointments that were already cancelled because of it, but it does make the date available for new bookings going forward.

What Happens Next?

Now add departments and resources to your centre. See: Departments & Resources.