A record of a medication that is being consumed by a patient. A MedicationStatement may indicate that the patient may be taking the medication now or has taken the medication in the past or will be taking the medication in the future. The source of this information can be the patient, significant other (such as a family member or spouse), or a clinician. A common scenario where this information is captured is during the history taking process during a patient visit or stay. The medication information may come from sources such as the patient's memory, from a prescription bottle, or from a list of medications the patient, clinician or other party maintains.

The primary difference between a medicationstatement and a medicationadministration is that the medication administration has complete administration information and is based on actual administration information from the person who administered the medication. A medicationstatement is often, if not always, less specific. There is no required date/time when the medication was administered, in fact we only know that a source has reported the patient is taking this medication, where details such as time, quantity, or rate or even medication product may be incomplete or missing or less precise. As stated earlier, the Medication Statement information may come from the patient's memory, from a prescription bottle or from a list of medications the patient, clinician or other party maintains. Medication administration is more formal and is not missing detailed information.

Identifiers associated with this Medication Statement that are defined by business processes and/or used to refer to it when a direct URL reference to the resource itself is not appropriate. They are business identifiers assigned to this resource by the performer or other systems and remain constant as the resource is updated and propagates from server to server.

This is a business identifier, not a resource identifier.

A larger event of which this particular MedicationStatement is a component or step.

A code representing the status of recording the medication statement.

This status concerns just the recording of the medication statement. MedicationStatement.adherence should be used for indicating a patient's adherence to the information in this resource. Note, the statuses are different than in previous releases for MedicationStatement or MedicationStatement.

This element is labeled as a modifier because the status contains codes that mark the resource as not currently valid.

Type of medication statement (for example, drug classification like ATC, where meds would be administered, legal category of the medication.).

Identifies the medication being administered. This is either a link to a resource representing the details of the medication or a simple attribute carrying a code that identifies the medication from a known list of medications.

If only a code is specified, then it needs to be a code for a specific product. If more information is required, then the use of the medication resource is recommended. For example, if you require form or lot number, then you must reference the Medication resource.

The person, animal or group who is/was taking the medication.

The encounter that establishes the context for this MedicationStatement.

The interval of time during which it is being asserted that the patient is/was/will be taking the medication (or was not taking, when the MedicationStatement.adherence element is Not Taking).

This attribute reflects the period over which the patient consumed the medication and is expected to be populated on the majority of Medication Statements. If the medication is still being taken and is expected to continue indefinitely at the time the usage is recorded, the "end" date will be omitted. If the end date is known, then it is included as the "end date". The date/time attribute supports a variety of dates - year, year/month and exact date. If something more than this is required, this should be conveyed as text.

The date when the Medication Statement was asserted by the information source.

The person or organization that provided the information about the taking of this medication. Note: Use derivedFrom when a MedicationStatement is derived from other resources, e.g. Claim or MedicationRequest.

Allows linking the MedicationStatement to the underlying MedicationRequest, or to other information that supports or is used to derive the MedicationStatement.

Likely references would be to MedicationRequest, MedicationDispense, Claim, Observation or QuestionnaireAnswers. The most common use cases for deriving a MedicationStatement comes from creating a MedicationStatement from a MedicationRequest or from a lab observation or a claim. it should be noted that the amount of information that is available varies from the type resource that you derive the MedicationStatement from.

A concept, Condition or observation that supports why the medication is being/was taken.

This could be a diagnosis code. If a full condition record exists or additional detail is needed, use reasonForUseReference.

Provides extra information about the Medication Statement that is not conveyed by the other attributes.

Link to information that is relevant to a medication statement, for example, illicit drug use, gestational age, etc.

The full representation of the dose of the medication included in all dosage instructions. To be used when multiple dosage instructions are included to represent complex dosing such as increasing or tapering doses.

The content of the renderedDosageInstructions must not be different than the dose represented in the dosageInstruction content.

Indicates how the medication is/was or should be taken by the patient.

The dates included in the dosage on a Medication Statement reflect the dates for a given dose. For example, "from November 1, 2016 to November 3, 2016, take one tablet daily and from November 4, 2016 to November 7, 2016, take two tablets daily." It is expected that this specificity may only be populated where the patient brings in their labeled container or where the Medication Statement is derived from a MedicationRequest.

Indicates whether the medication is or is not being consumed or administered.

This element can be used to indicate whether a patient is following a course of treatment as instructed/prescribed or whether they are taking medications of their own volition. It can also be used to indicate that a patient is not taking a medication, either because they were told not to or because they decided on their own.

Type of the adherence for the medication.

Captures the reason for the current use or adherence of a medication.

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