ER intake

Check in walk-ins, triage them, and start the visit when the team is ready.

ER intake is the front desk queue for emergency walk-ins. It lets you check an animal in, set a triage level and record quick vitals before a visit exists, then start the visit when the team is ready. Open ER Intake under Front Desk in the sidebar. It is part of the clinical layer, so it is available on Intelligence and Practice, and it needs emergency.intake.write.

Checking in a walk-in

1. Find or add the patient

   Search for an existing patient, or add a new client and animal in the same step. If nobody is known, use Stray / found animal, no owner on file and enter a name or description and species.

2. Enter the complaint

   Type the presenting complaint. You can also paste or dictate what the caller said and let the AI fill the fields.

3. Choose the triage level

   Pick one of five levels: Critical, Emergent, Urgent, Less urgent or Non-urgent. These follow the Veterinary Triage Scale.

4. Add quick vitals

   Optional: weight, temperature in °C, heart rate and respiratory rate. Enter weight in the unit your clinic uses; Chartling stores it in kilograms.

5. Check in

   Click Check in. The patient joins the Waiting list, ordered by triage level.

Working the queue

Each waiting patient shows their triage level, name, complaint and arrival time. Checking in, marking a patient as left, and starting a visit all need emergency.intake.write. From the list you can:

• Start visit to open a new visit for the patient and mark the intake as converted. The visit opens as an ER visit ready to record. This also needs visit.start.
• Mark the patient as left if they leave before being seen.

Once a visit is started, it follows the normal path: consent, SOAP, then sign and finalize. See Visits & SOAP.