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type: resourceresource: Condition

Condition

Introduction

Scope and Usage

This resource is used to record detailed information about a condition, problem, diagnosis, or other event, situation, issue, or clinical concept that has risen to a level of concern. The condition could be a point in time diagnosis in context of an encounter, it could be an item on the practitioner’s Problem List, or it could be a concern that doesn’t exist on the practitioner’s Problem List. Oftentimes, a condition is about a clinician's assessment and assertion of a particular aspect of a patient's state of health. It can be used to record information about a disease/illness identified from application of clinical reasoning over the pathologic and pathophysiologic findings (diagnosis), or identification of health issues/situations that a practitioner considers harmful, potentially harmful and may be investigated and managed (problem), or other health issue/situation that may require ongoing monitoring and/or management (health issue/concern).

The condition resource may be used to record a certain health state of a patient which does not normally present a negative outcome, e.g. pregnancy. The condition resource may be used to record a condition following a procedure, such as the condition of Amputee-BKA following an amputation procedure.

While conditions are frequently a result of a clinician's assessment and assertion of a particular aspect of a patient's state of health, conditions can also be expressed by the patient, related person, or any care team member. A clinician may have a concern about a patient condition (e.g. anorexia) that the patient is not concerned about. Likewise, the patient may have a condition (e.g. hair loss) that does not rise to the level of importance such that it belongs on a practitioner’s Problem List.

For example, each of the following conditions could rise to the level of importance such that it belongs on a problem or concern list due to its direct or indirect impact on the patient’s health:

These examples may also be represented using other resources, such as FamilyMemberHistory, Observation, RiskAssessment, or Procedure.

Boundaries and Relationships

The condition resource may be referenced by other resources as "reasons" for an action (e.g. MedicationRequest, Procedure, ServiceRequest, etc.)

This resource is not typically used to record information about subjective and objective information that might lead to the recording of a Condition resource. Such signs and symptoms are typically captured using the Observation resource; although in some cases a persistent symptom, e.g. fever, headache may be captured as a condition before a definitive diagnosis can be discerned by a clinician. In an inpatient scenario, a nursing problem list may document symptoms (such as respiratory alteration) as conditions if they are the focus of care provision. It became a problem because the nurse (clinician) wants to manage it. By contrast, headache may be captured as an Observation when it contributes to the establishment of a meningitis Condition.

Use the Observation resource when a symptom is resolved without long term management, tracking, or when a symptom contributes to the establishment of a condition.

Use Condition when a symptom requires long term management, tracking, or is used as a proxy for a diagnosis or problem that is not yet determined.

Note that a Condition represents an instance of a condition, not the categorical patient state. This can be a subtle distinction for systemic conditions, but it is easier to see with conditions that can happen more than once, e.g. refuting one record of a wound does not mean that the patient does not have any other wounds, and resolving one case of otitis media does not rule out recurrence. An observation that the patient doesn't have any wounds means the patient doesn't have any wounds at that point in time.

When the diagnosis is related to an allergy or intolerance, the Condition and AllergyIntolerance resources can both be used. However, to be actionable for decision support, using Condition alone is not sufficient as the allergy or intolerance condition needs to be represented as an AllergyIntolerance.

Notes

Use of Condition.code

Many of the code systems used for coding conditions will provide codes that define not only the condition itself, but may also specify a particular stage, location, or causality as part of the code. This is particularly true if SNOMED CT is used for the condition, and especially if expressions are allowed.

The Condition.code may also include such concepts as "history of X" and "good health", where it is useful or appropriate to make such assertions. It can also be used to capture "risk of" and "fear of", in addition to physical conditions, as well as "no known problems" or "negated" conditions (e.g., "no X" or "no history of X" - see the following section for "No Known Problems" and Negated Conditions).

When the Condition.code specifies additional properties of the condition, the other properties are not given a value - instead, the value must be understood from the Condition.code.

"No Known Problems" and Negated Conditions

Conditions/Problems Not Reviewed, Not Asked

When a sending system does not have any information about conditions/problems being reviewed or the statement is about conditions/problems not yet being asked, then the List resource should be used to indicate the List.emptyReason.code="notasked".

Conditions/Problems Reviewed, None Identified

Systems may use the List.emptyReason when a statement is about the full scope of the list (i.e. the patient has no conditions/problems of any type). However, it may be preferred to use a code for "no known problems" (e.g., SNOMED CT: 160245001 |No current problems or disability (situation)|), so that all condition/problem data will be available and queryable from Condition resource instances.

Also note that care should be used when adding new Condition resources to a list to ensure that any negation statements that are voided by the addition of a new record are removed from the list. E.g. If the list contains a "no known problems" record and you add a "diabetes" condition record, then be sure that you remove the "no known problems" record.

Note to Implementers: There are two primary ways of reporting "no known problems" in the current specification: using the CodeableConcept, as described above, or using the List resource with emptyReason. During the STU period, feedback is sought regarding the preferred approach.

Provide feedback here.

Patient Denies Condition

When the patient denies a condition, that can be annotated in the Condition.note element.

Assertions of Condition Absence

Generally, electronic records do not contain assertions of conditions that a patient does not have. There are however two exceptions:

Use of Condition.evidence

The Condition.evidence provides the basis for whatever is present in Condition.code.

Use of Condition.abatementRange

A range is used to communicate an imprecise age of the subject at the time of abatement.

Use of Condition.asserter

If the data enterer is different from the asserter and needs to be known, this could be captured using a Provenance instance pointing to the Condition. For example, it is possible that a nurse records the condition on behalf of a physician. The physician is taking responsibility, despite the nurse entering it into the medical record.

Use of Condition.clinicalStatus

The Condition.stage and Condition.clinicalStatus may have interdependencies. For example, some "stages" of cancer, etc. will be different for a remission than for the initial occurrence.

Diagnosis Role and Rank within an Encounter

To represent the role of the diagnosis within an encounter, such as admission diagnosis or discharge diagnosis, use Encounter.diagnosis.role.

To represent the numeric ranking of the diagnosis within an encounter, such as primary, secondary, or tertiary, use Encounter.diagnosis.rank.

Known Issue

StructureDefinition

Elements (Simplified)

Mappings

Implementation Guide

implementationguide-Condition-core.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<ImplementationGuide xmlns="http://hl7.org/fhir">
  <id value="Condition-core"/>
  <version value="0.1"/>
  <name value="ConditionHL7Extensions"/>
  <title value="Condition  H L7  Extensions"/>
  <status value="draft"/>
  <date value="2015-02-21T00:00:00.000"/>
  <publisher value="Health Level Seven, Inc. - FHIR WG"/>
  <description value="Defines common extensions used with or related to the Condition resource"/>
</ImplementationGuide>

Resource Packs

list-Condition-packs.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<List xmlns="http://hl7.org/fhir">
  <id value="Condition-packs"/>
  <status value="current"/>
  <mode value="working"/>
  <entry>
    <item>
      <reference value="ImplementationGuide/Condition-core"/>
    </item>
  </entry>
</List>

Search Parameters

Full Search Parameters

Examples

Full Examples

Mapping Exceptions

condition-fivews-mapping-exceptions.xml

Unmapped Elements