A clinical or business level record of information being transmitted or shared; e.g. an alert that was sent to a responsible provider, a public health agency communication to a provider/reporter in response to a case report for a reportable condition.

Business identifiers assigned to this communication by the performer or other systems which remain constant as the resource is updated and propagates from server to server.

Allows identification of the communication as it is known by various participating systems and in a way that remains consistent across servers.

This is a business identifier, not a resource identifier (see discussion). It is best practice for the identifier to only appear on a single resource instance, however business practices may occasionally dictate that multiple resource instances with the same identifier can exist - possibly even with different resource types. For example, multiple Patient and a Person resource instance might share the same social insurance number.

The URL pointing to a FHIR-defined protocol, guideline, orderset or other definition that is adhered to in whole or in part by this Communication.

The URL pointing to an externally maintained protocol, guideline, orderset or other definition that is adhered to in whole or in part by this Communication.

This might be an HTML page, PDF, etc. or could just be a non-resolvable URI identifier.

An order, proposal or plan fulfilled in whole or in part by this Communication.

A larger event (e.g. Communication, Procedure) of which this particular communication is a component or step.

The event the communication was part of - e.g. if you disclosed as "part" of counselling, it would be partOf that Procedure.

Prior communication that this communication is in response to.

The status of the transmission.

This element is labeled as a modifier because the status contains the codes aborted and entered-in-error that mark the communication as not currently valid.

Captures the reason for the current state of the Communication.

This is generally only used for "exception" statuses such as "not-done", "suspended" or "aborted". The reason for performing the event at all is captured in reasonCode, not here.

The type of message conveyed such as alert, notification, reminder, instruction, etc.

There may be multiple axes of categorization and one communication may serve multiple purposes.

Characterizes how quickly the planned or in progress communication must be addressed. Includes concepts such as stat, urgent, routine.

Used to prioritize workflow (such as which communication to read first) when the communication is planned or in progress.

A channel that was used for this communication (e.g. email, fax).

The patient or group that was the focus of this communication.

Description of the purpose/content, similar to a subject line in an email.

Communication.topic.text can be used without any codings.

Other resources that pertain to this communication and to which this communication should be associated.

Don't use Communication.about element when a more specific element exists, such as basedOn or reasonReference.

The Encounter during which this Communication was created or to which the creation of this record is tightly associated.

This will typically be the encounter the event occurred within, but some activities may be initiated prior to or after the official completion of an encounter but still be tied to the context of the encounter.

The time when this communication was sent.

The time when this communication arrived at the destination.

The entity (e.g. person, organization, clinical information system, care team or device) which is the target of the communication.

If receipts need to be tracked by an individual, a separate resource instance will need to be created for each recipient. Multiple recipient communications are intended where either receipts are not tracked (e.g. a mass mail-out) or a receipt is captured in aggregate (all emails confirmed received by a particular time).

The entity (e.g. person, organization, clinical information system, or device) which is the source of the communication.

The reason or justification for the communication.

Textual reasons can be captured using reason.concept.text.

Text, attachment(s), or resource(s) that was communicated to the recipient.

A communicated content (or for multi-part communications, one portion of the communication).

The content can be codified or textual. As an example of codified content, when working with machine generated communications, the payload may be drawn from a finite, terminology defined set of communications, especially for short, status update kinds of communications where more of a natural language approach isn't appropriate.

If the content isn't codified, contentCodeableConcept.text can be used.

When using contentCodeableConcept, the CodeableConcept is what is being communicated and is not a categorization of the content.

Additional notes or commentary about the communication by the sender, receiver or other interested parties.