R6 Ballot (1st Draft)

This page is part of the FHIR Specification v6.0.0-ballot1: Release 6 Ballot (1st Draft) (see Ballot Notes). The current version is 5.0.0. For a full list of available versions, see the Directory of published versions

8.1.18.4 Operation $purge on Patient

Patient Administration icon Work Group Maturity Level: 5Trial Use Compartments: N/A

This operation is used to request the removal of all current and historical versions for all resources in a patient compartment or from a Group of patient compartments. The return is an OperationOutcome with results and/or details about execution.

Following are some common issue-type values:

  • success the request has been completed to the server's satisfaction - the patient and associated resources are no longer accessible
  • incomplete the request is partially complete, but additional processing will continue (e.g., the server is continuing to clean out resources)

When supported, it is recommended (though not required) to support an Asynchronous Request Pattern.

Note that the deletion of resources typically involves many policy decisions. Implementers are expected to use this operation in conjunction with their policies for such a request - e.g., soft vs. hard delete, audibility/traceability, evaluation of referential integrity, etc..

The canonical URL for this operation definition is

 http://hl7.org/fhir/OperationDefinition/Patient-purge

Formal Definition (as a OperationDefinition).

URL: [base]/Patient/[id]/$purge

This is an idempotent operation

Out Parameters:
NameScopeCardinalityTypeBindingProfileDocumentation
return1..1OperationOutcome

Status and/or results of the purge request

Note: as this is the only out parameter, it is a resource, and it has the name 'return', the result of this operation is returned directly as a resource

8.1.18.4.1 Examples

Request: Remove all resources linked to a single patient


GET /open/Patient/f001/$purge
[some headers]

Response: Remove everything linked to the nominated patient (in this case, built automatically by the publication tooling)


HTTP/1.1 200 OK
[other headers]

<OperationOutcome xmlns="http://hl7.org/fhir">
  <text>
    <status value="generated"/>
    <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
      <p>All OK</p>
    </div>
  </text>
  <issue> 
    <severity value="success"/>
    <code value="success"/>
    <details>
      <text value="The operation completed successfully."/>
    </details>
 </issue>
</OperationOutcome>

 

For more information about operations, including how they are invoked, see Operations.