Operating theatres are the most expensive rooms in a hospital. Wellness treats the surgical pathway as one case, with the money attached.
29 Jul 2026 · 5 min read · Wellness team
Surgery touches more of a hospital than any other service: clinic, admission, anaesthesia, theatre, recovery, ward, pharmacy, stores and billing. In most systems these are separate screens stitched together by paper. The Wellness surgery module treats them as stages of one case.
Booking
A surgeon raises a surgery request from the clinic encounter: procedure, side, urgency, expected duration and anaesthesia type. Theatre coordinators see the request on a schedule organised by theatre and room, and allocate a slot. Conflicts over theatre, surgeon or equipment show at booking time rather than on the day.
The day of surgery
Pre-operative checks such as consent, fasting and investigations are recorded on the case. Theatre staff record the actual start and end times, the team present, the anaesthesia given, and the implants and consumables used. Consumables draw from theatre stock in the same movement, so stores are never reconciled after the fact.
Charging the theatre
Theatre time is priced from the recorded times, not the booked ones. Surgeon and anaesthetist fees, theatre-time charges, implants and consumables each attach to the case and flow to the patient's invoice. The encounter is flagged as operative, so the ward and billing rules that depend on that fact apply downstream without anyone re-entering it.
| Charge | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Theatre time | Recorded start and end times, priced by the theatre tariff |
| Surgeon and anaesthetist fees | Procedure and team recorded on the case |
| Implants and consumables | Items issued from theatre stock during the case |
| Ward and recovery | Bed-days and nursing charges on the operative encounter |
Built against the running system
The surgery module was built the way every Wellness module is: by tracing the behaviour of the system it replaces, reproducing it, and verifying each path against real cases. That includes the details that decide whether the numbers match at month end, such as how theatre time is priced and how a completed case marks the encounter for billing.
One case, from the request in clinic to the line on the invoice.