See Comparison with other national and international IGs for a comparison between AU Core profiles and profiles in other implementation guides.

Usage scenarios

The following are supported usage scenarios for this profile:

• Query for a specific patient encounter
• Query for all patient encounters
• Record or update a patient encounter

Profile specific implementation guidance

• The Encounter resource can represent a clinical indication with Encounter.reasonCode, or a reference with Encounter.reasonReference to a Condition or other resource.
  • Although both are marked as Must Support, responders are not required to support both a code and a reference, but they SHALL support at least one of these elements
  • A requester SHALL support both elements

Changes since version 1.0.0:

Below is an overview of the mandatory and optional search parameters and combined search parameters. See the AU Core CapabilityStatements for a complete list of supported RESTful interactions for this IG.

FHIR search operations are described here and the syntax used to describe AU Core interactions is defined here.

Any search parameter defined in FHIR may be ‘allowed’ by the system unless explicitly marked as “SHALL NOT”. A few items are marked as MAY in this implementation guide to highlight their potential relevance.

Mandatory Search Parameters:

The following search parameters and search parameter combinations SHALL be supported:

1. SHALL support searching using the patient search parameter:
   • SHOULD support chained searching of patient canonical identifier patient.identifier (e.g. patient.identifier=[system|][code])

   GET [base]/Encounter?patient={Type/}[id] or optionally GET [base]/Encounter?patient.identifier=[system|][code]

   Example:

   1. GET [base]/Encounter?patient=5678
   2. GET [base]/Encounter?patient.identifier=http://ns.electronichealth.net.au/id/medicare-number|32788511952
   3. GET [base]/Encounter?patient.identifier=http://ns.electronichealth.net.au/id/hi/ihi/1.0|8003608833357361

   Implementation Notes: Fetches a bundle of all Encounter resources for the specified patient (how to search by reference and how to search by token)

2. SHALL support searching using the combination of the patient and date search parameters:
   • SHOULD support chained searching of patient canonical identifier patient.identifier (e.g. patient.identifier=[system|][code])
   • SHALL support these date comparators: gt,lt,ge,le
   • SHOULD support multipleAnd search on date (e.g.date=[date]&date=[date]]&...), and if multipleAnd is supported, SHALL support the search comparators gt,lt,ge,le

   GET [base]/Encounter?patient={Type/}[id]&date={gt|lt|ge|le}[date]{&date={gt|lt|ge|le}[date]&...}

   Example:

   1. GET [base]/Encounter?patient=5678&date=ge2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

   Implementation Notes: Fetches a bundle of all Encounter resources for the specified patient and date (how to search by reference and how to search by date)

Optional Search Parameters:

The following search parameters and search parameter combinations SHOULD be supported:

1. SHOULD support searching using the combination of the patient and class search parameters:
   • SHOULD support chained searching of patient canonical identifier patient.identifier (e.g. patient.identifier=[system|][code])

   GET [base]/Encounter?patient={Type/}[id]&class={system|}[code]

   Example:

   1. GET [base]/Encounter?patient=5678&class=http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/v3-ActCode|AMB

   Implementation Notes: Fetches a bundle of all Encounter resources for the specified patient and class (how to search by reference and how to search by token)

2. SHOULD support searching using the combination of the patient and location search parameters:
   • SHOULD support chained searching of patient canonical identifier patient.identifier (e.g. patient.identifier=[system|][code])

   GET [base]/Encounter?patient={Type/}[id]&location={Type/}[id]

   Example:

   1. GET [base]/Encounter?patient=5678&location=Location/vic-hospital

   Implementation Notes: Fetches a bundle of all Encounter resources matching the specified patient and location (how to search by reference)

3. SHOULD support searching using the combination of the patient and status search parameters:
   • SHOULD support chained searching of patient canonical identifier patient.identifier (e.g. patient.identifier=[system|][code])
   • SHALL support multipleOr search on status (e.g.status={system|}[code],{system|}[code],...)

   GET [base]/Encounter?patient={Type/}[id]&&status={system|}[code]{,{system|}[code],...}

   Example:

   1. GET [base]/Encounter?patient=5678&status=finished

   Implementation Notes: Fetches a bundle of all Encounter resources matching the specified patient and status (how to search by reference) and how to search by token).