Guidance on associating “tagging” non-GP practitioners at patient level

1

I was asked a seemingly simple question: how can practitioners (non-GPs, e.g., secondary care practitioners) be associated at patient level? To almost “tag” practitioners as being generally associated or related to a patient like a related person or probably more like a GP (but not a GP) This was related to a mental health care setting solution we are working with at a UK hospital.

I was expecting UK Care Connect to have had an answer to this seemingly reasonable request and I was expecting an extension to support this. But also, no!
This got me thinking, perhaps it is not the best practice to do this at patient level.

Can you point me to the best practice to do this? As I just do not want to add another extension to the patient resource if someone else has the best practice for this.

Thanks

P.S., my first post from Dedalus on FHIR (previously DXC Technology - same job new company :slight_smile: )

2

There are two ways to tie Practitioners to Patient - link them from Patient.generalPractitioner or use CareTeam.

3

I thought GeneralPractitioner as it’s 0…* but hessitated as it was a specifically a general practitioner. If the standard practice is to use this or CareTeam that’s great! Thank you, Lloyd!

4

Both are used. If you’re wanting to capture details about how each Practitioner is involved in the patient’s care, CareTeam works better. I know at one time, there was an expectation that Patient.generalPractitioner would also indicate things like the patient’s primary pharmacy, but agree that the current documentation certainly doesn’t reflect that.