FHIR Chat · Locations and Organizations · Argo Patient Lists

Stream: Argo Patient Lists

Topic: Locations and Organizations

Carl Anderson (Sep 23 2020 at 16:50):

While looking at the sample Synthea data I generated for the connectathon, I realized that all the Locations and Organizations generated were totally flat, even though the resources allow for a nested structure to be built up.

For example, it's possible to have something like this:

# Organizations
UnityPoint Health

# Locations
UnityPoint Health
  managingOrganization: UnityPoint Health (org)

UnityPoint Health - Meriter
  managingOrganization: UnityPoint Health (org)

Meriter Hospital ED
  managingOrganization: UnityPoint Health (org)
  partOf: UnityPoint Health - Meriter (loc)

Floor 1
  partOf: UnityPoint Health - Meriter (loc)

Bed 1
  partOf: Floor 1 (loc)

My first question is - for those who know what real data in real systems looks like - to what degree are Locations and Organizations nested / structured?

My follow-up thought is - supposing someone wants a list of 'all the UnityPoint Health - Meriter patients', but that Location actually consists of 448 'bed' Locations that are within 200 'rooms' among 4 'floors'. Given this, each patient potentially has a hierarchy of both location and organization. If a lists' characteristics includes a Location or Organization (or both) - then that characteristic reference must appear somewhere within the relevant hierarchy attached to each patient member. Am I thinking about that right?

Josh Mandel (Sep 23 2020 at 17:04):

On the follow-up question: when searching for lists by location, the specific location (not a sub- or super-location) mentioned in the search needs to appear in the list characteristics.

(More advanced behavior might be possible with chained searches and Location.partOf, but I wouldn't try to get ahead of ourselves here; even flat characteristics seem like a bit of a reach, and hierarchical characteristics are a bridge too far.)

Eric Haas (Sep 28 2020 at 14:16):

In an unrelated vein, I am also trying to make some more test data based on pre-existing Alerts data I had already created from Synthea and loaded on the test server. I still can't get my head around organization as a characteristic vs organization as a managingEntity. The difference to me is not clear.

Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC