Configure triage for your facility — user guide
Triage is not a feature you switch on. There is no triage screen in this platform, and there is no triage table in its database. Triage is something you assemble, out of four things you already know how to configure: a concept, a form, a pathway stage, and a queue.
That is deliberate. Every emergency department scores acuity differently — five levels, three levels, colours, a local scale a matron has used for twenty years — and every one of them is correct for the place that uses it. A hardcoded triage screen would serve exactly one of them.
Who this is for: facility administrators and clinical leads setting up an outpatient clinic or an emergency floor.
What you need first: permission to manage concepts, forms, workflows and queues, and a session scoped to the facility you are configuring.
The four ingredients
| # | What you create | Where | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A triage-score concept | Concept dictionary | Names the question you are asking. |
| 2 | A triage form with a field bound to that concept | Form builder | The screen the nurse fills. |
| 3 | A triage stage in a pathway, with that form required | Workflow builder | Makes triage unskippable. |
| 4 | A queue on that stage (and on the ones after it) | Queues & boards | Puts the patient on a board. |
Then bind the pathway to a visit type, and every patient checking in for that kind of visit walks it — whether they booked or walked in.
1. Create the triage-score concept
Screen: Terminology → Concepts.
Create a concept for the score itself — for example "Emergency severity index" — with a numeric datatype if you record a number, or a coded datatype with one answer concept per level if you record named levels (Immediate, Very urgent, Urgent, Standard, Non-urgent).
Use a coded concept when the levels have names your staff say out loud, and a numeric one when they say a number. Both are equally supported; the difference is only what the picker shows the nurse.
:::tip Why a concept and not a dropdown Because the score has to mean the same thing everywhere it lands: on the observation, in a report, in an export to a ministry, and in a research query five years from now. A dropdown on one form means something only on that form. :::
2. Build the triage form
Screen: Forms → Builder.
Create a form with:
- Category: Observation — this is what makes its answers become clinical observations rather than rows in a form-specific table.
- Encounter type: Vitals (or whichever encounter type your facility files triage under). An observation form must declare one; the assessment becomes an encounter of that type inside the patient's visit.
- One field bound to your triage-score concept, plus whatever else your triage nurse records — vitals, presenting complaint, a note. Any field you bind to a concept becomes an observation; the rest is captured as ordinary form data.
Publish it. An unpublished form cannot be filled, and the workflow builder will refuse to bind one to a stage.
3. Build the pathway and make triage required
Screen: Workflows → Builder.
Create a workflow definition with the stages your floor actually runs. A minimal outpatient one:
| Stage | Initial? | Terminal? | Queue |
|---|---|---|---|
TRIAGE | yes | no | Triage waiting |
CONSULT | no | no | Consulting room waiting |
DONE | no | yes | (none) |
Add transitions TRIAGE → CONSULT and CONSULT → DONE.
Now the step that makes triage triage: open the TRIAGE stage and bind your triage form to it,
with "minimum submissions" set to 1.
That single setting is the whole obligation. From then on, anybody trying to move a patient out of triage without the assessment gets a refusal that names the form they have not filled. Nothing in the code knows this stage is "triage" — it knows a form is required to leave it.
Publish a version of the definition. A published pathway is immutable, because patients already walking it must not have the ground move under them; to change it, create a new draft and publish that.
:::warning Bind the form before you publish Stage-form bindings can only be added while the definition is a draft. :::
4. Point a visit type at the pathway
Screen: Workflows → Visit type mappings.
Map the visit type (for example Outpatient) to your published definition. From now on:
- a booked patient who is marked Arrived at reception, and
- a walk-in whose visit is started from the patient dashboard
both open a visit of that type, both start this pathway, and both appear on the triage queue. You did not configure the walk-in path separately — check-in is the visit, not the booking.
Running it
- Reception marks the patient Arrived (or starts a walk-in visit).
- The patient appears on the triage waiting board, shown by their visit token, not their name.
- The triage nurse opens the patient and fills the triage form. The score is filed as a clinical observation against the concept from step 1, on an encounter inside this visit.
- The nurse moves the journey to
CONSULT. The triage queue entry closes and a consulting-room entry opens, automatically — you never manage two boards by hand. - Try step 4 before step 3 and the platform refuses, naming the form.
Running two different triages in one facility
Nothing above is exclusive. Configure a second pathway — a different score concept, a different form, different stages, a different queue — and map it to a different visit type:
| Outpatient clinic | Emergency floor | |
|---|---|---|
| Visit type | Outpatient | Emergency |
| Score | five-point acuity | three-point resuscitation score |
| Stages | Triage → Consult → Done | ED triage → Disposition |
| Queues | triage board, then consulting board | one resuscitation board |
Both run side by side. The platform chooses between them by visit type, and no part of this required any change to the software. This is verified on every build by the Milestone 13 gate, which configures both and walks a patient through each.
What triage does not do yet
Acuity does not automatically reorder a single queue. Today the score decides where the patient goes — the triage nurse routes them to the stage, and therefore the board, that matches their acuity. It does not yet raise their position within one board on its own.
If your floor works from one board and wants the sickest at the top, the nurse raises a patient's
priority on the board by hand (Queue → move/prioritise), which at least leaves a record of who
made that judgement. Automatic score-to-priority mapping is a known gap, tracked against the
workflow engine rather than against triage — see core/MILESTONE13.md.
Related
- Workflow engine · Queue & waiting board · Form engine · Concept dictionary
- Clinical workflow orchestration — pathways, check-in, boards and checkout in general.