Who can see what, and why a screen might be missing
What you can do is your role, and what this machine is for, and what your hospital's plan includes — all three, not any one.
3 min read
If a colleague can see something you cannot, or the same screen looks different in the consulting room than at reception, this is why.
What you are allowed to do is the overlap of three things:
1. Your role. Receptionist, Cashier, Medical Officer, Facility Manager and so on. Your role says what kind of work you do.
2. What this machine is for. Every machine is set up for certain kinds of work — Reception, Consulting, Laboratory, Pharmacy, Finance, Administration. The machine at the front desk is not a pharmacy terminal, whoever signs in to it.
3. Your hospital's plan. Which modules your hospital subscribes to.
You need all three. A pharmacist signed in to the reception machine cannot dispense from it — not because the hospital does not trust them, but because that machine is not a pharmacy terminal.
Why it is done this way
Because a machine is a physical thing in a room. If a laptop is taken from the office, what matters is what that laptop could do, not only who could sign in to it. Narrowing each machine to the work of the room it sits in limits what a lost machine is worth having.
It also means a machine only holds the records it needs. A reception machine does not carry the laboratory's data at all, so there is nothing on it to take.
When something is refused
Fikacare tries to say which of the three refused, because the answer decides who you go to:
- Your role — see whoever manages staff in the portal.
- This machine — an administrator can change what the machine is for, but consider whether the right answer is to use a different machine.
- Your plan — a commercial question for the hospital's owner.
A module your hospital does not have is simply not in the sidebar. A module that exists but is not for this machine is refused with a reason.
Gating never hides data from the person treating the patient. Plans and capabilities decide which modules a machine runs, never whether a clinician can see something about the patient in front of them.
A note on privacy
Reading a clinical record is recorded. Not to catch anybody out — looking at records is the job — but because a record that nobody could ever check has no protection at all.