FHIR : Appointment reasons as a resource?

Question

I'm implementing FHIR at the moment and I'm having trouble dealing with appointment reasons.

I know I can use the value set available here : https://www.hl7.org/fhir/valueset-encounter-reason.html

or implement my own value set for it but it's still problematic because reasons are a resource in my app and practitioners can add, modify and delete them. Reasons also have various fields such as a color, ...

A value set won't be enough for my app.

Do you have any hints / ideas on how could I implement such thing ?

Answer 1

So you want to point to Condition or Observation as a reason? Or perhaps point to a ReferralRequest or ProcedureRequest the appointment is based on? If so, submit a change request - having these things would also be in alignment with the Request pattern which Appointment should be trying to align with. In the meantime, you're free to define an extension to convey the same meaning.

Answer 2

For us, the "reason" basically indicates what type of service the appointment is going to provide, so we actually map reasons to services, which we represent reason as a HealthcareService resource.

Basically, from the patient's perspective, they care about the "reason" they are going to the doctor. But from the healthcare provider's perspective, they care about the type of service they will provide to treat the reason.