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Finance Doctor Payment Overview
HMIS tracks what the hospital owes to each doctor, consultant, and clinical staff member based on services rendered. These doctor (professional) payments are managed separately from patient billing: a patient pays the hospital, and the hospital later pays the doctor. This separation means the finance team controls timing, method, and Withholding Tax (WHT) deduction before each disbursement.
HMIS handles three distinct categories of professional fee payment.
When a patient attends an outpatient consultation or investigation, a fee is charged on the patient's bill. A portion of that fee is owed to the consulting doctor. The hospital accumulates these amounts and pays them out periodically (daily, weekly, or monthly depending on the hospital's policy).
See Finance - OPD Doctor Payments for the full workflow.
When a doctor visits an admitted patient, orders investigations, or performs a procedure, a professional fee bill is created separately from the main inward bill. Multiple doctors (attending physician, surgeon, anaesthetist, physiotherapist) may each have their own professional fee bill for the same admission. These are settled after discharge or on a scheduled basis.
See Finance - Inpatient Professional Fees for the full workflow.
Surgery professional fees are a specific sub-type of inward professional fees. Each surgery settlement creates one BillType.InwardProfessional bill linked back to the surgery bill. Fee lines are stored as EncounterComponent records, each carrying the staff member's role, name, and fee amount. Print format (A4, 5x5, POS) is configurable.
These are also covered in Finance - Inpatient Professional Fees.
Sri Lanka's Inland Revenue Act requires hospitals to withhold a percentage of professional fee payments made to individuals above a statutory threshold. HMIS automatically calculates the WHT amount at the point of payment, deducts it from the gross fee, and records both the gross and net figures. The finance team uses the WHT report to prepare monthly tax submissions.
See Finance - WHT Report for the reporting workflow.
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | Patient pays bill at cashier |
| 2 | Hospital accumulates professional fee liability per doctor |
| 3 | Finance team searches outstanding amounts |
| 4 | WHT is calculated and deducted |
| 5 | Net amount paid to doctor (Cash, Cheque, or Bank Transfer) |
| 6 | Payment record created; WHT recorded for tax authority |
| Article | Description |
|---|---|
| Finance - OPD Doctor Payments | Pay OPD professional fees, view history |
| Finance - Inpatient Professional Fees | Create, pay, cancel, and reprint inward and surgery professional fee bills |
| Finance - Professional Payment Searches | Search outstanding and completed professional payments |
| Finance - WHT Report | Generate and print the Withholding Tax report |
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| OPD controller area | OPD billing controller, CashierReportController |
| Inward controllers | InwardProfessionalBillController, InwardStaffPaymentBillController, InwardSurgeryPaymentBillController |
| Bill type | BillType.InwardProfessional |
| Fee storage | EncounterComponent (inward/surgery); BillFee (OPD) |
| Surgery bill link | bill.forwardReferenceBill points to the originating surgery bill |
| WHT report page | reports/financialReports/wht.xhtml |