Stream: implementers
Topic: Patient -- Interpreter required
Daniel Tam (Jan 27 2022 at 04:53):
My organization is going to begin requiring whether a patient prefers to have an interpreter present. Was curious how others are approaching this? We see this extension, and are planning to use this -- is this the best approach?
https://www.hl7.org/fhir/extension-patient-interpreterrequired.html
How do people feel about incorporating this into the official Patient data model, especially for US Core? This seems like a very beneficial data element to track.
Richard Townley-O'Neill (Jan 27 2022 at 05:31):
HL7 AU Patient includes the extension as guidance.
Lloyd McKenzie (Jan 27 2022 at 21:33):
It might make sense as a standard extension. Feel free to submit a change request
Daniel Venton (Jan 27 2022 at 21:50):
I hope you make the US Core extension a little more robust. For instance, if the Dr. speaks English I don't need/want an interpreter. If they speak French then I do. Perhaps it's an extension on languageCommunication instead of Patient.
Lloyd McKenzie (Jan 27 2022 at 23:43):
This seems like an extension that would ideally be international, rather than U.S.
Daniel Tam (Jan 31 2022 at 18:49):
@Daniel Venton I agree on your point of view -- I would want something similar. But I'm also thinking that perhaps this is something that is handled by each EHR. For example, at my company, I am thinking we could use this extension, but when writing to FHIR our code would check if the patient's primary language was English -- if so we could default the interpreter_required element to the value indicating 'no interpreter required'
Also, I think this may vary from one hospital to another -- some patients may have English as a language and yet still want an interpreter -- so I'm thinking that we would want this the extension to stay as-is, and then EHR's can programmatically fill it in based on the preferences at the hospital.
Thoughts? I am guessing we are already seeing stuff like this elsewhere.
Daniel Venton (Jan 31 2022 at 19:20):
Daniel Tam said:
...but when writing to FHIR our code would check if the patient's primary language was English -- if so we could default the interpreter_required element to the value indicating 'no interpreter required'
What if the Patient primary language was French and the Provider was Fluent French? Would you still mark it as interpreter required?
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
