Stream: implementers
Topic: EMPIs using Patient or Person
Jean Duteau (Jul 25 2021 at 23:10):
I have a client that is looking at building a Client Registry specification and they are waffling between using Patient vs Person. I've provided my arguments for why it should be Patient. There is a line in the Patient resource that I think is muddying the waters: "The primary use case for the Person resource is to be able to support person registries that do not necessarily have a healthcare context". Even though the main purpose of this registry is for persons receiving health care, they will be sharing the person details with other industries. I've been asked to see which resource other EMPI systems have been using - Person or Patient?
@Brian Postlethwaite if you can help my argument (or tell me that I'm wrong), that would be great as well.
Lloyd McKenzie (Jul 26 2021 at 14:40):
You're not allowed to reference Person ever from another resource. Person's sole purpose is to link other resources and share common demographics across resources.
Jean Duteau (Jul 26 2021 at 15:23):
Not sure why you mentionned "not allowed to reference Person" as I get that.
I told them what Person's purpose is, except that the quoted line in the Patient resource is making them lean towards a registry of Person resources. They are arguing that they have no clinical context for their various interactions. And that an EMPI's composite view is identifying that all these Patients are the same Person.
Lloyd McKenzie (Jul 26 2021 at 17:13):
If the system is a registry and it's storing demographics for individuals irrespective of whether they're Patient, Practitioner or RelatedPerson, then Person is appropriate. Is that what's going on?
Jean Duteau (Jul 27 2021 at 22:13):
well, they say that is what is going on. But all of the source data is really patient data. (It's BC's Client Registry)
Lloyd McKenzie (Jul 27 2021 at 22:26):
If they don't share the demographics with Practitioners or RelatedPerson information in the registry, then it should be Patient.
Grey Faulkenberry (Aug 21 2021 at 15:26):
I have a folllow-up question about RelatedPerson and Person usage. We're working on a system that cares for children, including teenagers. For smaller children, their parents will be handling their accounts, but for teens, they will be able to login as themselves, although their parents may still have access to some of their data. Some parents may also have more than one child. My thought was to use the Person resource to link to an account in our system. It would go something like this:
- Child/Teen represented as a Patient resource
- Parent of child/teen - RelatedPerson resource (information would be duplicated as part of contact in Patient resource). If the Parent had more than one child, we would create a RelatedPerson resource for each child.
Person Resources
If a Person was the child/teen, it would link ONLY to the Patient resource.
If the Person was a parent, it would link to all of the RelatedPerson resources that represented the parent, to allow us to show that this Person is the RelatedPerson for a number of Patients.
Would this be the proper usage?
Lloyd McKenzie (Aug 21 2021 at 15:52):
Yes. Tying all RelatedPersons for the same parent for different children together would be an appropriate use of Person. You could also tie it to the Patient resource for that parent too, if you wanted to maintain a shared set of demographics.
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
