This page is part of the Documentation Templates and Rules (v0.2.0: STU 1 Ballot 2) based on FHIR R4. The current version which supercedes this version is 1.0.0. For a full list of available versions, see the Directory of published versions

Task Creation

Through interactions with the Documentation Templates and Rules (DTR) application, a user may be prompted with a question that leads to the discovery of a needed action for the desired treatment to proceed. For example, a healthcare provider may be preparing an order for a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) device. In this example, the payer requires that the provider conduct a sleep study that shows a diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea. While using the DTR application, it prompts the provider that the CQL execution was unable to find a sleep study in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) system for the patient. The provider can confirm that the sleep study has not yet been conducted and generate a task for office staff to schedule a sleep study directly in the questionnaire interface.

To facilitate this, the DTR application should allow users to create tasks. The details of the task should be represented by a FHIR Task resource. The DTR application should communicate the task information to the EHR system using the FHIR create interaction. The task resource is meant to act as a “todo” item for the clinician or their staff, not substitute an actual order.

The DTR application should attempt to prepopulate as much of the Task resource as it can based on the context of the application. Task.description may draw from the text available in the currently active Questionnaire.item.text.

The questionnaire should be able to suspend completion until all tasks are completed. How the application is suspended is left to the implementer, but the state of the questionnaire should be preserved. The DTR application launches with a unique state id, which could be used to preserve state until the questionnaire resumes.

Note to ballot commenters

This area of the project is explicitly seeking comments. Thoughts on the ability of EHR systems to accept Task resources as well as feedback on the constraints that should be placed on the task resource are welcome.

The ability for a clinician to delegate work is absolutely critical – not just for the type of appointment scheduling mentioned on this page, but also for the actual form/questionnaire completion itself. If this feature of the IG is actually used to move work from clinicians to other users, it should be fleshed out and mandated. (Note: It may not be possible to mandate in this version of the IG. So consider using SHOULD not SHALL. Pursue further testing at Connectathons and in practice before mandating.)