Book or defer appointment (A016, FHIR STU3)

Overview

Use this endpoint to book an appointment to a directly bookable service if an appointment slot is available, defer the booking responsibility to a directly bookable service if no appointment slot is available, or refer a patient into a triage service.

It is not possible to book into an indirectly bookable service using this endpoint. The patient will need to contact the service provider on the telephone number provided on [[HYPERLINK_A019]].

Supported security patterns

• Healthcare worker, user-restricted access

Pre-requisites

In order to use this endpoint you must be an authenticated e-RS user and use one of the following e-RS roles:

• REFERRING_CLINICIAN
• REFERRING_CLINICIAN_ADMIN

You need to check if the service is directly bookable, indirectly bookable, or triage by either using [[HYPERLINK_A033]] or [[HYPERLINK_A035]]. You can then offer appropriate actions to authenticated users, i.e. the ability to book an appointment into a directly bookable service if an appointment slot is available, defer the booking responsibility to a directly bookable service if no appointment slot is available, refer a patient into a triage service.

If the service is directly bookable, you need to retrieve available appointment slots for the service using [[HYPERLINK_A015]].

You need to use the Unique Booking Reference Number (UBRN) of a referral request in order to use this endpoint.

Important note when deferring to provider

You should only defer booking to a directly bookable service in the following circumstances:

• when the service has no available slots or
• when trying to book an appointment into a service, the slot advertised is no longer available or
• when trying to book an appointment into a service, no response is received within the message timeout period (currently 2 minutes)

Important note when booking slots

When appointment slots are booked using this endpoint, it may be necessary to provide the named clinician details. This is because slots can be setup with or without a named clinician. Your integrated application must support both scenarios.

When booking a slot using [[HYPERLINK_A016]], the named clinician details must be added to the "Appointment.partcipant" list. As shown in the "Booking with named clinician" example.

Use case

As an authenticated user

I need to be able to

• Book an appointment into an available appointment slot for a directly bookable service or
• Defer the booking responsibility to a directly bookable service if no appointment slot is available or
• Refer the patient into a triage service

So I can progress my patient's care at that service.

Related endpoints

You can generate a letter for the patient, summarising the current state of their referral and any steps the patient may need to follow using [[HYPERLINK_A019]].

Where deferring the booking responsibility to a directly bookable service, or referring the patient into a triage service, you can calculate the date when the patient can expect to be contacted (by the receiving service) using reference data from [[HYPERLINK_A004]].

Known Issues

1. The Participant.type attribute is being mapped as a single type for this endpoint. As per the Appointment FHIR profile, this attribute should be an array. See our problems and fixes section for more information.
2. The participant of an Appointment references a value set. As per the Appointment FHIR profile, this attribute should be a coding system. See our problems and fixes section for more information.