Stream: implementers
Topic: Patient's Preferred Pharmacy
Benjamin Flessner (Jun 13 2018 at 21:34):
Has anyone implemented the concept of a patient's preferred pharmacy in FHIR? I imagine it would be an Organization resource, but I'm not sure of the best way to link it to a patient as a preference.
Peter Jordan (Jun 13 2018 at 21:36):
HealthcareService might be a better choice here as a single organisation can own many pharmacies.
Lloyd McKenzie (Jun 13 2018 at 23:15):
At one point PA had pointed to using Patient.generalPractitioner. I believe the intentention is to do it through CarePlan. While one organization might own multiple pharmacies, each pharmacy will itself be an Organization. A single pharmacy would likely have multiple HealthcareServices - they might provide general dispensing, medication councilling, custom compounding, flu vaccination and possibly a few other things. Each would be a separate HealthcareService instance.
Peter Jordan (Jun 14 2018 at 00:49):
In NZ, many pharmacies are branches of the same organisation (legal entity) - these are regarded as Facilities (Locations in FHIR terms), often under common ownership, that provide healthcare services - the most common of which is, of course, general dispensing. It would be informative to see how this maps to use cases in other countries.
Lloyd McKenzie (Jun 14 2018 at 00:50):
Organization isn't limited to legal entities in FHIR. They're "groups of people with shared responsibility". The set of folks working in a pharmacy qualify, even if they're not a distinct legal entity.
Peter Jordan (Jun 14 2018 at 00:53):
Understood - but that's how the NZ Health Provider Index is implemented. Organisation->Facility (Location)->HealthcareService->Provider.
Lloyd McKenzie (Jun 14 2018 at 01:13):
I think you're going to encounter some challenges with that. Neither Locations nor HealthcareService can take on responsibility. And we're not going to add those resources to properties that involve responsibility.
Peter Jordan (Jun 14 2018 at 02:33):
There are always challenges in implementing Service Provider Directories. :) In terms of legal responsibilities - the link from Healthcare Service to Organisation should satisfy our requirements.
Yuval Romm (Mar 17 2022 at 14:17):
We are planning on maintaining a record of the patient's preferred pharmacy as communicated to the enterprise via digital forms and/or directly via our enterprise mobile app.
We maintain a separate Pharmacy DB (non-FHIR) of a national pharmacy directory.
All we would need in our FHIR repository is a reference to the pharmacy's unique identifier in the context of the patient for systems to retrieve the complete pharmacy record from the Pharmacy Directory.
I am looking for some guidance as to a simple, efficient manner to model this need in our FHIR repository. Thank you!
Lloyd McKenzie (Mar 17 2022 at 15:37):
I'm not fully understanding your scenario. Are you asking how to 'wrap' the non FHIR system to have a FHIR interface?
Brendan Keeler (Mar 17 2022 at 15:43):
Relevant: http://community.fhir.org/t/how-can-we-send-patient-preferred-pharmacy/2439
René Spronk (Mar 17 2022 at 16:59):
Years ago the Netherlands used an extension (on Patient) to capture the 'preferred Pharmacy', akin to the GeneralPractitioner. [they have moved away from this approach since then]
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
