Stream: implementers
Topic: Ethnicity
Chris Lo (Apr 25 2018 at 12:38):
Hello, very new to FHIR. Downloaded the Nuget package HL7.Fhir.STU3 and while poking around with the Patient resource object did not notice an Ethnicity element. Did I miss something or do we have to implement Ethnicity through an Extension.
Grahame Grieve (Apr 25 2018 at 12:42):
ethnicity is an extension - see http://hl7.org/fhir/us/core
Lloyd McKenzie (Apr 25 2018 at 21:32):
Rationale being that it's not commonly captured throughout the world (and illegal to capture many places) and where it is captured, the value sets are typically national
Maria Hu (Oct 04 2018 at 00:13):
Is there any extension for ethnicity? Thanks.
Maria Hu (Oct 04 2018 at 00:15):
I mean Ethnicity for Canadian, not US race. Thanks.
Lloyd McKenzie (Oct 04 2018 at 01:44):
We haven't yet defined an extension for Canadian race. That said, we could. Do you want to raise it on the #canada stream and we can discuss what that might look like and where it would be best to publish it.
Josh Haskins (Apr 05 2019 at 15:49):
Hi @Lloyd McKenzie, you may remember the discussion we had a few weeks ago with regards to ethnicity. I have been checking out the US Core Ethnicity extension. I have noticed that it has a must support for the ombCategory, which categorizes the ethicity into either 'Hispanic or Latino' or 'Non Hispanic or Latino'. We do not capture this in our source system, we only capture the actual ethnicity, which can be free-texted. Now I could try and build some logic to parse the free-text to see if I can determine if it is hispanic or latino, but this really does not matter to us. What would you recommend in this case?
Lloyd McKenzie (Apr 05 2019 at 15:58):
That's a US policy question. My understanding is that the current constraints come from U.S. regulatory requirements. However, as a Canadian, I'm happily ignorant of those. @Eric Haas @Brett Marquard ?
Brett Marquard (Apr 05 2019 at 16:35):
If you are going to play in US Market and meet certification requirements, then you must support -- it's possible your app falls 'outside' certification. I would be interested in how you decided to capture as free text rather then the provided values.
Josh Haskins (Apr 05 2019 at 16:37):
Sorry, I forgot to mention I am in Canada. So I'm not concerned with meeting US requirements.
David Pyke (Apr 05 2019 at 16:38):
Then you don't need to worry about US Core
Lloyd McKenzie (Apr 05 2019 at 16:39):
And you probably don't want to use the US extension which is very much focused on US regulatory requirements. If you're interested in ethnicity from a clinical perspective (e.g. risk assessment), it's better to capture it as an Observation.
Igor Sirkovich (Apr 05 2019 at 18:57):
@Josh Haskins, you are welcome to join the Canadian FHIR Baseline Profile project. The project is in the very beginning, but I believe Aboriginal/First Nations Status, Ethnicity and Gender Identity would likely be some of the first topics once we reach a consensus on the methodology. It would be great if you can bring your business requirements. The group meets every other Friday at 2 pm. The next meeting is on April 12th.
Robert McClure (Apr 07 2019 at 19:26):
BTW, If you do want to determine what OMBCategory the more specific ethnicity is, use the "CDCREC Roll-up codes" here
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
