type: resourceresource: Schedule

Schedule

Schedule resources provide a container for time-slots that can be booked using an appointment. It provides the window of time (period) that slots are defined for and what type of appointments can be booked.
The schedule does not provide any information about actual appointments. This separation greatly assists where access to the appointments would not be permitted for security or privacy reasons, while still being able to determine if an appointment might be available.

Note: A schedule is not used for the delivery of medication, the Timing data type should be used for that purpose.

Context

A schedule controls the dates and times available for the performance of a service and/or the use of a resource. One schedule applies to one service or resource, since each service or resource can be reserved independently of the others.
If two or more services, people, locations, or things cannot be reserved independently of one another, they are considered to be one activity or resource.

A schedule consists of slots of time during which the controlled service or resource is potentially available for provision or use. Slots are categorized as open, booked, or blocked. An open slot on a schedule indicates that the service or resource is available for provision or use during that period of time. A booked slot indicates that the service or resource is not available during the time period, because an appointment has been scheduled. A blocked slot indicates that a service or resource is unavailable for reasons other than a scheduled appointment.

The real-world, non-automated analogue of the schedule described above is a standard appointment book. These books are generally organized with rows of time slots, during which a service or resource is available.

A slot is one unit on a schedule. A slot represents the smallest unit of time or quantity that a service or resource may be booked. Depending on the nature of the service or resource, there may be more than one defined slot at a given instant of time. For example, if a service is an open group therapy session with twelve available seats, then there are twelve slots for the given block of time.

Actor - What the schedule applies to

The schedule belongs to a single instance of a service or resource. This is normally a HealthcareService, Practitioner, Location or Device. In the case where a single resource can provide different services, potentially at different location, then the schedulable resource is considered the composite of the actors.
For example, if a practitioner can provide services at multiple locations, they might have one schedule per location, where each schedule includes both the practitioner and location actors. When booking an appointment with multiple schedulable resources, multiple schedules may need to be checked depending on the configuration of the system.

If an appointment has two practitioners, a specific medical device and a room then there could be a schedule for each of these resources that may need to be consulted to ensure that no collisions occur.
If the schedule needed to be consulted, then there would be one created covering the planning horizon for the time of the appointment.

Checking availability - Searching

When checking availability for an appointment, the creator of the appointment should determine which schedules are applicable, then check for available slots within each schedule.

Determining which schedules should be consulted often will involve searching via the properties of the referenced actors, such as the ServiceCategory on the HealthcareService, or the Address on a Location.

The type parameter can be used to filter the type of services that can be booked within the associated slots.

If all slots are busy, the caller may attempt to book an appointment into an already-booked slot, but the server business rules will dictate whether overbooking is allowed, or whether the appointment may be given a higher precedence and allocated the overbooked slot.

Boundaries and Relationships

Slot: Provides the granular, bookable units within the Schedule.

Schedule: Defines the broader availability and context for an individual or service.

Appointment: Is the outcome of a scheduling process. That scheduling process may involve consulting Slot and Schedule resources, or it may be the result of other processes.

Notes

Notes:

Interaction with other Standards

There is a strong desire that implementers of this resource should consider providing the resource in the iCalendar format as an alternative representation. Many 3rd party applications and component providers have parsers and user interface controls to display this information. This may lower the entry point to integrate outside the health-care specific applications, and into the consumer space. This would permit the easier creation of a mobile application that creates appointments in the devices native calendar.
The iCalendar specification can be found at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt.

Slots - not a contained resource

Due to the dynamic nature of slots they are not included as a part of this resource.

It is anticipated that this resource is likely to be updated intermittently when the scope of slots is changed, i.e. to change the period of slots in the planning horizon. This could be performed each night to move the start and end date forward to keep the planning horizon as exactly 4 weeks.

The slot resource however is anticipated to be updated very regularly as the appointments that reference them are created/updated/cancelled.

StructureDefinition

Elements (Simplified)

Schedule [0..*]: - A container for slots of time that may be available for booking appointments
Schedule.identifier [0..*]: Identifier External Ids for this item
Schedule.active [0..1]: boolean Whether this schedule is in active use
Schedule.serviceCategory [0..*]: CodeableConcept example:service-category High-level category
Schedule.serviceType [0..*]: CodeableReference example:service-type Specific service
Schedule.specialty [0..*]: CodeableConcept example:c80-practice-codes Type of specialty needed
Schedule.name [0..1]: string Human-readable label
Schedule.actor [1..*]: [Reference(Patient](/Reference(Patient), Practitioner, PractitionerRole, CareTeam, RelatedPerson, Device, HealthcareService, Location)) Resource(s) that availability information is being provided for
Schedule.planningHorizon [0..1]: Period Period of time covered by schedule
Schedule.comment [0..1]: markdown Comments on availability

Mappings

Schedule Mappings — 15 mapping entries

Resource Packs

list-Schedule-packs.xml

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

<List xmlns="http://hl7.org/fhir">
  <id value="Schedule-packs"/>
  <status value="current"/>
  <mode value="working"/>
</List>

Search Parameters

active — token — Is the schedule in active use — Schedule.active
actor — reference — The individual(HealthcareService, Practitioner, Location, ...) to find a Schedule for — Schedule.actor
date — date — Search for Schedule resources that have a period that contains this date specified — Schedule.planningHorizon
identifier — token — A Schedule Identifier — Schedule.identifier
service-category — token — High-level category — Schedule.serviceCategory
service-type — token — The type (by coding) of appointments that can be booked into associated slot(s) — Schedule.serviceType.concept
service-type-reference — reference — The type (by HealthcareService) of appointments that can be booked into associated slot(s) — Schedule.serviceType.reference
specialty — token — Type of specialty needed — Schedule.specialty
name — string — A portion of the Schedule name — Schedule.name

Full Search Parameters

Examples

example — schedule-example — Example of an Schedule resource
example-hcs — schedule-example-hcs — Example a Schedule resource for a service type defined with a reference to a HealthcareService
exampleloc1 — schedule-provider-location1-example — Example 1 of a Schedule resource with a composite schedulable resource
exampleloc2 — schedule-provider-location2-example — Example 2 of a Schedule resource with a composite schedulable resource
schedule-example — schedule-example
schedule-example-hcs — schedule-example-hcs
schedule-examples-header — schedule-examples-header

Full Examples

FiveWs.what — Unknown
FiveWs.recorded — Unknown
FiveWs.author — Unknown
FiveWs.actor — Unknown
FiveWs.cause — Unknown
FiveWs.version — Unknown
FiveWs.witness — Unknown
FiveWs.where — Unknown
FiveWs.context — Unknown
FiveWs.init — Unknown
FiveWs.why — Unknown
FiveWs.source — Unknown
FiveWs.who — Unknown
FiveWs.grade — Unknown
FiveWs.done — Unknown