Stream: implementers
Topic: Organization.type
Noemi Deppenwiese (Apr 28 2020 at 12:39):
Hi, my team is currently discussing the appropriate use of the Organization.type field. Is it ok to store a hospital department specialisation (e.g. "neurology") there or is it only for wider types like "hospital department"?
We do not want to identify the departments using the type, but make it possible to ask something like "all patients that have been to some neurology department in the past year".
Patrick Werner (Apr 28 2020 at 13:24):
I would go with Location and/or HealthcareService to capture the specialisation of a department. Organization would be the whole hospital, the wards locations of this organization.
Vassil Peytchev (Apr 28 2020 at 13:37):
A "hospital department" is not always expressible by location, at least not in the US. FHIR Location is a physical place, and a "neurology department," for example, may span multiple locations.
John Moehrke (Apr 28 2020 at 13:43):
Organization can be used to describe parts of an organization. Organization is not just for top-level organization. As Vassil outlines some physical locations host many sub components of many organizations. This is why there is the Organization.partOf element, so that these parts of the a larger organization can declare their relationship to a higher organization.
Noemi Deppenwiese (Apr 28 2020 at 13:52):
I tend to agree with @Vassil Peytchev and @John Moehrke , since hospital departments are often also organizational units with eg. their own director.
Robert McClure (Apr 28 2020 at 15:36):
I can tell you that as part of the PlanNet/PDex work, the payor community is planning on using OrganizationAffiliation to represent this sort of information. I understand that on face, it seems that resource might only be for linking two organization entities, but I believe they are using it to capture information about things like Neurology department. In particular this is because OrganizationAffiliation.specialty for things like a speciality, and OrganizationAffiliation.code. You would then use that to connect to referenced Organization playing varying roles.
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
