In OpenMRS, an encounter represents a single point in time interaction. Visit was added to group related encounters when we began having patient visits (e.g., outpatient visit to a clinic or a hospital stay) where multiple encounters were needed and it could occur over a span of time (hours, days, or events weeks or months). We also anticipated having episodes of care, which could define a group of encounters (possible across visits) pertaining to a particular condition or treatment (e.g., TB treatment or a pregnancy). There has been broad adoption of encounters & visits; episodes of care has not yet been implemented. The typical approach is to create a visit for each outpatient clinic visit or inpatient admission and then add one or more encounters to define the individual clinical transactions that occurred within the visit.
In FHIR, an Encounter is used to define all three (our encounter, our visit, and our – not yet implemented – episode of care).
I would expect a teleconsultation – just like visiting a doctor in person – could generate both a visit and encounter within OpenMRS. The visit would define the teleconsultation as a virtual “visit to the doctor” and sit beside other clinic visits. The encounter would sit within that visit and contain any orders, notes, observations, etc. created within a single call. If a patient had multiple interactions with different providers during a single teleconsultation session (e.g., speaking to a doctor, then speaking to a therapist, and then speaking to a nutritionist), it’s possible each of the separate interactions could create its own encounter within the same visit.
In short, think of an OpenMRS encounter as capturing a single point-in-time clinical transaction and an OpenMRS visit as capturing the administrative event (patient seen via telehealth, patient coming to clinic, patient admitted to hospital, etc.), where it’s possible that the patient’s visit may comprise multiple clinical transactions.
Does this help? Or did I make things more confusing? 