How to create encounter in epic?

Question

Following this documentation link https://fhir.epic.com/Documentation?docId=oauth2&section=BackendOAuth2Guide

I could create patient successfully, please guide me on how to create encounter for the patient created, as I couldnt find endpoint to post encounter in epic. Am I missing anything or is not possible to create encounter through POST method?

Thanks

Answer 1

Epic's HL7v2 ADT interface supports encounter creation. The HL7v2 interface allows you to provide information that is usually required for encounter creation, like which insurance to bill for that encounter (or indicate if the encounter should be self-pay), what relevant consents were collected, etc.

A simple REST API to create only an encounter usually won't be sufficient to meet real-world workflow requirements. In order to complete a full "encounter create" workflow, you'd likely need to orchestrate (at least) these APIs:

• Patient.search (or $match) (to find the Patient associated with the encounter)
• Patient.create (if the encounter is for a new patient)
• Account.search (to see if the relevant account already exist)
• Account.create (to create the account if it doesn't already exist)
• Coverage.search (to see if the relevant coverage already exists)
• Coverage.create (to create the coverage if it doesn't exist)
• Account.update (to link the coverage you created to the account)
• Encounter.search (to see if there is a parent encounter to which your new encounter should be linked, like an active admission))
• Consent.search (to see which consents are already on file)
• Consent.create (to create any consents you have collected which are required for the encounter)
• Encounter.create (to finally do the actual encounter create, linking to all the stuff you found above)

Also, if any of these fail, you may need to manage rolling back, which can get complicated (especially if the rollback involves deleting a patient).

Until all of these APIs (and probably more) are available, your best option is to use the HL7v2 interface for creating new encounters.

Answer 2

According to the Epic documentation, you can only read/search Encounter resources. See the overview here: https://fhir.epic.com. There are some resource types for which they have 'Create', so you could maybe try those instead.

From the FAQ:

Epic supports a wide variety of standards-based and Epic-specific interfaces and APIs capable of writing information to Epic software. The Epic on FHIR site hosts FHIR Create APIs that allow data to be written into Epic. If these APIs do not meet your needs, you can find more information about the incoming, outgoing, and bidirectional standards-based interfaces that Epic supports at open.epic.

Writing data to the EHR requires great care on the part of the developer and the provider organization. All applications that write data to the EHR should be carefully tested before deployment to production environments.