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Type:
Change Request
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Resolution: Not Persuasive with Modification
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Priority:
Medium
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FHIR Core (FHIR)
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R4
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Orders & Observations
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DiagnosticReport
DocumentReference -
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John Moehrke / Rob Hausam: 8-0-5
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Clarification
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Non-substantive
As already been pointed out in FHIR-19250 and FHIR-19249, the boundaries between DocumentReference and DiagnosticReport are somewhat unsharp. In fact, both resources match with their definition to a large set of possible documents. For implementers it is hard to distinguish the right resource, ending up in recommendations as given in theĀ US Core Clinical Notes Guidance:
In order to enable consistent access to scanned narrative-only clinical reports the Argonaut Clinical Note Server SHALL expose these reports through both DiagnosticReport and DocumentReference [...]
Following this recommendation, duplicate resources link to the very same content, to make sure everyone finds all relevant documents in a server. Then at least those two resources should refer to each other. In the current build of DiagnosticReport (as of 2019-11-22) the DiagnosticReport.media.link has been made a DocumentReference (unlike R4 release).
In the resource DocumentReference on the other hand, only DocumentReference.context.related could be used to link a DiagnosticReport.
This is not self-explanatory at all and a compatible implementation won't be assured among all implementers.
Please clarify these specific use cases of having both resources for one single document and describe a designated way of linking both to each other.
- relates to
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FHIR-19249 Boundary clarification for DiagnosticReport (vs DocumentReference)
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- Triaged
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FHIR-19250 Boundary clarification for DocumentReference (vs DiagnosticReport)
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- Triaged
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- links to