How to do patient search by identifier?

[Steve Clark]

I have seen various posts on this, but I would like to get the most up-to-date information. We need the ability to retrieve patients by (1) MRN, (2) FIN, (3) Encounter ID, and (4) Person ID. How do we do this?

Here are my assumptions and questions:

(1) MRN - I assume that we would search the Patient resource using identifier. Something like: urn:oid:1.1.1.1.1.1|1022228. If this is correct, then I simply need to know what the correct identifier prefix (like, "urn:oid:1.1.1.1.1.1") is.

(2) FIN - I think this is the same as MRN, so I need to know what the correct prefix is.

(3) Encounter ID - is this possible? If so, how?

(4) Person ID - are Patient ID ("_id") and Person ID (the one in the Person table in the Cerner Oracle DB) identical? Will they always be identical? In any case, what is the best way to search by Person ID?

Thanks!

[Jenni Syed (Cerner)]

Hi Steve. Answers below!

(1) MRN - I assume that we would search the Patient resource using identifier. Something like: urn:oid:1.1.1.1.1.1|1022228. If this is correct, then I simply need to know what the correct identifier prefix (like, "urn:oid:1.1.1.1.1.1") is.

Correct, and the oid is something that each site registers and assigns per organization. The application will need to configure these for the facilities it's intended to access. This is the same oid that would typically be sent out in a V2 message with the patient MRN.

 

(2) FIN - I think this is the same as MRN, so I need to know what the correct prefix is.

We don't currently support searching by FIN, which is tied to the encounter: http://fhir.cerner.com/millennium/dstu2/encounters/encounter/#parameters (FIN is an Encounter.identifier). You would need to search by patient id and then post-filter by identifiers. This means that you would at least require the app to know an MRN or patient to start with, since there is no way to search directly by FIN.

 

(3) Encounter ID - is this possible? If so, how?

You would read the encounter by id: http://fhir.cerner.com/millennium/dstu2/encounters/encounter/#retrieve-by-id 

Then you would use the Encounter.patient value to read the patient by id (if you need to retrieve more than just the patient id). 

(4) Person ID - are Patient ID ("_id") and Person ID (the one in the Person table in the Cerner Oracle DB) identical? Will they always be identical? In any case, what is the best way to search by Person ID?

They are currently identical but you should not assume that they will be identical going forward (Note: any breaking change would only happen in future versions of FHIR, any existing version we've published would maintain the same ids). This is just a read patient by id: http://fhir.cerner.com/millennium/dstu2/individuals/patient/#retrieve-by-id

~ Jenni

 

[Steve Clark]

Thanks, Jenni!