FHIR R4 Administration API

The Administration API specification provides resources for the following FHIR R4 Profiles.

Patient

The Patient resource covers data about patients and animals involved in a wide range of health-related activities, including:

• Curative activities
• Psychiatric care
• Social services
• Pregnancy care
• Nursing and assisted living
• Dietary services
• Tracking of personal health and exercise data

Practitioner

The Practitioner resource covers all individuals who are engaged in the healthcare process and healthcare-related services as part of their formal responsibilities and this Resource is used for attribution of activities and responsibilities to these individuals. Practitioners include (but are not limited to):

• physicians, dentists, pharmacists
• physician assistants, nurses, scribes
• midwives, dietitians, therapists, optometrists, paramedics
• medical technicians, laboratory scientists, prosthetic technicians, radiographers
• social workers, professional homecare providers, official volunteers
• receptionists handling patient registration
• IT personnel merging or unmerging patient records
• service animal (e.g., ward assigned dog capable of detecting cancer in patients)

PractitionerRole

The PractitionerRole resource covers the recording of the location and types of services that Practitioners are able to provide for an organization.

Encounter

A patient Encounter is further characterized by the setting in which it takes place. Amongst them are ambulatory, emergency, home health, inpatient and virtual encounters. An Encounter encompasses the lifecycle from pre-admission, the actual encounter (for ambulatory encounters), and admission, stay and discharge (for inpatient encounters). During the encounter the patient may move from practitioner to practitioner and location to location.

Location

A Location includes both incidental locations (a place which is used for healthcare without prior designation or authorization) and dedicated, formally appointed locations. Locations may be private, public, mobile, or fixed and scale from small freezers to full hospital buildings or parking garages. Examples of Locations are:

• Building, ward, corridor, room, or bed
• Mobile Clinic
• Freezer, incubator
• Vehicle or lift
• Home, shed, or a garage
• Road, parking place, a park
• Ambulance (generic)
• Ambulance (specific)
• Patient's Home (generic)
• Jurisdiction

Organization

The Organization resource may be used in a shared registry of contact and other information for various organizations or it can be used merely as a support for other resources that need to reference organizations, perhaps as a document, message, or as a contained resource. If using a registry approach, it's entirely possible for multiple registries to exist, each dealing with different types or levels of organization.

RelatedPerson

RelatedPersons typically have a personal or non-healthcare-specific professional relationship to the patient. A RelatedPerson resource is primarily used for attribution of information, since RelatedPersons are often a source of information about the patient. For keeping information about people for contact purposes for a patient, use a Patient's Contact element. Some individuals may serve as both a Patient's Contact and a Related Person.

Example RelatedPersons are:

• A patient's wife or husband
• A patient's relatives or friends
• A neighbor bringing a patient to the hospital
• The owner or trainer of a horse
• A patient's attorney or guardian
• A Guide Dog