Listen for outpatient encounters

You may want to listen for encounter updates to follow up with patients after an outpatient visit.

Use cases

This API action may be a good fit for your organization if you want to be notified about these events in your connection’s EHR system:

A patient arrived for a scheduled outpatient appointment.
A patient arrived for a telehealth appointment and is waiting for a provider.
A patient arrived for a walk-in outpatient appointment.

After getting these notifications, you can query for more information or kick off your post-visit or general population health workflow, like these types of use cases:

Send a customer survey.
Provide post-appointment information.
Offer patient services after an appointment.

Ultimately, this API action is useful if your organization cares that a patient showed up for a visit or that there’s updated clinical information after a patient visit.

Supported systems

You can receive notifications like this with the Redox FHIR® API.

Your connection's system can push notifications with a polling or subscription type of system.

Lightweight or detailed notification

Depending on your connection’s capabilities, you can opt in for lightweight or detailed notifications.

A lightweight notification is typically a bare bones message with the relevant identifier (e.g., patient, visit #) and an indication of “something's new” or “something has changed.” Lightweight notifications generally trigger you to do something within your own workflow or to query for more information.

On the other hand, a detailed notification means that you receive all the data about what’s new or what's changed. This might be useful if you need to persist all that data in your system to complete your own unique workflow.

Things you need to know

Not real-time updates

Encounter versus scheduling

Visit arrival instead of visit completion

Inpatient and outpatient visits

Encounter ID versus visit ID

What's next?

Does this API action seem like a good fit for your unique workflow? If so, let your Redox account manager know! You can start development by downloading the relevant resource schema (noted in the related action step below) and deciding which data elements you need. Then, use our Redox Nexus Quickstart guide to dive right in.

If you're not engaged with our sales team yet, talk to a Redoxer to get started.

Action steps

1
Listen for outpatient arrival notifications
required
2
Listen for patient registration updates
optional

Listen for outpatient arrival notifications

The EHR system sends a notification for each patient that checks in for a hospital or outpatient visit. To review technical specifications for this notification, refer to the Patient Arrived schema.

This step is required if you're listening for outpatient encounters.

How to respond to FHIR notifications

Upon receiving this type of message, you only need to respond with the relevant HTTP status code. After that, you decide what your system should do with the notification.

Patient Arrived

{
  "id": "PatientAdminEventPatientArrivedBundleExample",
  "type": "message",
  "entry": [
    {
      "resource": {
        "id": "RedoxMessageHeaderExample",
        "source": {
          "name": "Good Health Clinics",
          "endpoint": "05107c08-fe2f-4740-8c1d-c7107d18ebe5"
        },
        "eventCoding": {
          "code": "PatientAdmin-event-patient-arrived",
          "system": "urn:redox:event-type"
        },
        "resourceType": "MessageHeader"
      }
    },
    {
      "fullUrl": "https://api.redoxengine.com/fhir/R4/redox-fhir-sandbox/Development/Patient?identifier=urn:redox:redox-fhir-sandbox:MR|kyHGADnvX3xbkU4V9ayaqh",
      "resource": {
        "resourceType": "Patient"
      }
    },
    {
      "fullUrl": "https://api.redoxengine.com/fhir/R4/redox-fhir-sandbox/Development/Encounter?identifier=urn:redox:encounterId|zzz123Encounter",
      "resource": {
        "class": {
          "code": "AMB",
          "system": "http://terminology.hl7.org/ValueSet/v3-ActEncounterCode"
        },
        "status": "arrived",
        "resourceType": "Encounter"
      }
    }
  ],
  "timestamp": "2021-06-17T20:33:22.422Z",
  "resourceType": "Bundle"
}

Listen for patient registration updates

For patient registration, the EHR system sends a notification when a patient's demographics are updated during an inpatient or outpatient visit.

To review technical specifications for this notification, refer to the Patient Registered schema.

How to respond to FHIR notifications

Upon receiving this type of message, you only need to respond with the relevant HTTP status code. After that, you decide what your system should do with the notification.

Patient Registered

{
  "id": "PatientAdminEventPatientRegisteredBundleExample",
  "type": "message",
  "entry": [
    {
      "resource": {
        "id": "RedoxMessageHeaderExample",
        "source": {
          "name": "Good Health Clinics",
          "endpoint": "05107c08-fe2f-4740-8c1d-c7107d18ebe5"
        },
        "eventCoding": {
          "code": "PatientAdmin-event-patient-registered",
          "system": "urn:redox:event-type"
        },
        "resourceType": "MessageHeader"
      }
    },
    {
      "fullUrl": "https://api.redoxengine.com/fhir/R4/redox-fhir-sandbox/Development/Patient?identifier=urn:redox:redox-fhir-sandbox:MR|kyHGADnvX3xbkU4V9ayaqh",
      "resource": {
        "resourceType": "Patient"
      }
    },
    {
      "fullUrl": "https://api.redoxengine.com/fhir/R4/redox-fhir-sandbox/Development/Encounter?identifier=urn:redox:encounterId|zzz123Encounter",
      "resource": {
        "class": {
          "code": "AMB",
          "system": "http://terminology.hl7.org/ValueSet/v3-ActEncounterCode"
        },
        "status": "planned",
        "resourceType": "Encounter"
      }
    }
  ],
  "timestamp": "2021-06-17T20:33:22.422Z",
  "resourceType": "Bundle"
}

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