Patient Search _count parameter bug

[Sam Kim]

I know that my search query has a result greater than 25 and even if I input a _count parameter greater than 25 it still is only showing the 25 results. Is there a way to get the full response at once to avoid latency issues?

X-Request-id : 73d6164086d20976a889b98699f29e70

[Michele Mottini]

Servers can (and do) impose their own limit to the number of results returned in a page, regardless of the value of _count. If you want all results you have to go through all the pages.

  - Michele

  CareEvolution Inc

[Max Philips (Cerner)]

Thanks Michele!

Sam,

Cerner's sandbox server does elect to enforce a restriction on page counts as Michele mentions. Your point about latency is well taken, however consider that by loading all patients on one page, that single request would incur much more processing time than loading a smaller number of patients, so while the network latency would be nearly eliminated, this solution is not necessarily practical.

The _count parameter is not bugged, as its purpose is for consumers to indicate to servers an absolute maximum amount of results desired at a time (and per the FHIR specification servers may always return fewer: https://www.hl7.org/fhir/search.html#count).

Note that Cerner does monitor service performance and may adjust _count throttles up or down without advance notice, so we recommend that consumers request the number of results their applications can handle regardless of the amount of results that the server typically dispenses.

Thanks,

Max (Cerner)