Understanding how to update patient records

[aa and]

Hi,

I'm finishing up an implementation for updating patient details for phone, cell phone and email. I'm trying to get a better understanding of the workflow.

if a patient updates their home phone i would be passing the following according to the r4 docs:

{
"path": "/telecom/{index}/value",
"op": "replace",
"value": "1234567890"
}

questions:

- How is the index determined in the path?

- If the patient has a home phone, cell phone and email will there be 3 indexes in that case?

- Can multiple values be replaced? Can i replace the home phone and cell phone values in one call or must they be done separately?

Thank you for any assistance you can provide. 

[Aaron McGinn (Cerner)]

You will have to retrieve the Patient prior to updating it. If you are replacing, the index would be the index of the telecom you are replacing. They could have multiple phones, so you can replace/remove any of them all in the same API transaction.

-Aaron (Cerner)

[aa and]

Okay, so i need to make a GET request for the patient prior to updating? what is the reason for this? I'm guessing that by retrieving the patient first, I will have access to their current details for telecom and can figure out which index to reference in my PATCH request?

[Aaron McGinn (Cerner)]

Precisely! Then you also know you have the most up-to-date version of the resource (preventing a version conflict on your update).

-Aaron (Cerner)

[aa and]

Sounds good. Thanks so much!