ADT — Admission, Discharge, and Transfer in Hospital Systems

What Is ADT?

ADT (Admission, Discharge, and Transfer) is the fundamental hospital workflow that tracks patient movement through three key events: admission (entry into the facility), discharge (exit from the facility), and transfer (movement between units or beds within the hospital). The ADT module is considered the operational heart of any hospital information system (HIS).

Each ADT event generates standardized messages, commonly in HL7 format, that notify all hospital systems and departments about the patient's status and location. When a patient is admitted, the system activates processes in nursing, pharmacy, laboratory, and billing. When transferred, it updates bed assignments and allocated resources. Upon discharge, it closes clinical processes and triggers final billing.

Efficient ADT management directly impacts key hospital operational metrics: bed occupancy rate, average length of stay, bed turnaround time, and real-time hospital census. Without a robust ADT system, hospitals face bottlenecks in admissions, blocked beds, and lack of visibility into available capacity.

Why It Matters in Healthcare

• Patient flow visibility: Provides real-time information about where each patient is in the hospital, their clinical-administrative status, and assigned resources.
• Optimized bed management: Enables real-time awareness of which beds are available, occupied, being cleaned, or under maintenance, maximizing infrastructure utilization.
• Feeds downstream systems: ADT events trigger processes in pharmacy (dispensing), nursing (care plans), laboratory (pending orders), and billing (account opening).
• Interoperability via HL7: ADT messages in HL7 format are the global standard for communicating patient movement events between clinical and administrative information systems.
• Key hospital metrics: Generates data for indicators such as occupancy rate, average length of stay, bed turnover index, and daily census — all fundamental to hospital management.
• Capacity planning: Historical ADT data enables demand pattern prediction and proactive hospital capacity planning.

How Davix Relates to ADT

• Comprehensive ADT module: Davix HIS manages the complete admission, discharge, and transfer cycle with configurable workflows by service type (inpatient, emergency, outpatient, surgical).
• Real-time bed status: The system displays a visual bed map with real-time updated status (available, occupied, being cleaned, under maintenance), enabling immediate assignment.
• Integrated HL7 messaging: Davix generates ADT messages in HL7 format, enabling integration with external systems and medical devices that require patient status information.
• Multi-site management: In hospital networks, Davix enables ADT management across multiple sites from a centralized platform with consolidated visibility of network-wide capacity.
• Billing integration: Each ADT event automatically triggers commercial management processes, from patient account opening to final settlement upon discharge.

ADT is the backbone of hospital operations. With Davix HIS, every patient movement is recorded, communicated, and managed in an integrated, real-time manner.