Encounter - Interaction with coaches - guidance

1

Hi,

We are receiving data from our vendor partners who capture interaction between coaches and patients. These coaches have a master’s degree in social sciences. The coaches are providing coaching in the cognitive behavioral therapy arena for example - depression, insomnia. anxiety etc.
The attributes that are captured are Date Coaching started and Date Coaching ended and the status along with patient identifier. The interaction itself seems like an encounter, but since the coach does not fall under a health care provider for example a doctor, nurse or pharmacist, we wanted to confirm if these interactions can be captured as an Encounter. Any guidance is much appreciated!

Thank you very much

2

Practitioner is anyone acting in their professional capacity. A taxi driver hired to transport a patient or a receptionist are both ‘Practitioners’ from FHIR’s perspective. The issue with Encounter is that an Encounter is intended to be contiguous engagement. From what you’re describing, you’re capturing “start of therapy” and “end of therapy” where the actual coaching is intermittent between those two dates. As such, I’d probably use Procedure, which can be used to represent either a single intervention or a summary of a series of interventions. Counselling/educating/advising all fall under the banner of Procedure in FHIR.