Computer software for use in recording, tracking, and reporting patient status, medical staff tasks, medical staff patient assignments, medical equipment status, and beds status, and for use in ordering laboratory and other types of tests, entering nursing assessment information, generating physician charts, and generating patient discharge instructions, all in the field of health care; computer software for use in tracking and managing patient medical procedures, patient laboratory orders, patient medications, patient medical history, visitor coding information, and hospital billing information, and for maintaining complete patient records, for recording the administration of clinical patient care tasks, for patient service scheduling, for patient and insurance billing, and for exchange of information over a local area network and private secure wide area network; computer software for use in hospital rooms at bed-side to record the administration of clinical care, to place orders, and to report patient status, for use with hand-held personal computers, with voice, touch-screen, text and pen input, and with phones and pagers, all in the field of the healthcare industry