1.2

Examples of requests for healthcare specialty services include:

• referral of a patient from a GP to a hospital clinical specialist;

• referral of a patient for direct entry for an open access procedure;

• referral of a patient for direct entry onto an operation waiting list;

• referral of a patient for emergency hospital admission (acute referral);

• referral of a patient for treatment by a paramedical specialist;

• referrals within a hospital from one specialist to another (tertiary referral);

• referrals between hospitals or GPs and a community health service provider.

1.3

Examples of reports of healthcare specialty services include:

• issue of a report including the planned action and information relating to appointment and patient transport arrangements;

• issue of a preliminary discharge report following a patient’s admission to hospital;

• issue of a final discharge report following a patient’s admission to hospital;

• issue of report arising from a single out-patient attendance by a patient (this may be considered to include attendance at a daycare facility);

• issue of a report summarising a series of out-patient attendances;

• issue of a report giving information about a patient when no immediate patient contact occurred (for example, to communicate the result of investigations that were not available at the time of an earlier report, or to make suggestions about treatment when no direct treatment occurred);

• notification of a referral by one specialist to another specialist (tertiary referral notification);

• notification of the admission of a patient to hospital;

• notification of the death of a patient in hospital.

1.4

The messages are also applicable to modifications or cancellations of previously issued requests or reports.

1.5

While the messages specified in this European Prestandard may convey clinical and administrative information concerning patients, the way in which this information is treated in this European Prestandard does not constrain the development of future standards for the electronic healthcare record or for other clinical and administrative messages.

1.6

The provisions of this European Prestandard have been validated in the for the purposes described above (see 1.2 to 1.4). However since the messages described in this Prestandard are designed for the general cases of referral to specialist service providers and the subsequent reporting by these providers, the user must decide for themselves whether or not these messages meet their particular requirements. It should be noted that a European Prestandard has been produced for laboratory requests and reports and further Prestandards are being produced for other specific domains. The user should identify whether these messages are more appropriate to their requirements.

1.7

This European Prestandard is not applicable to messages related to healthcare specialist services exchanged between healthcare purchasers and providers principally for the purposes of authorising or expediting payment.

1.8

This European Prestandard excludes graphical or image information that forms part of a request for or report of a specialist healthcare service.

1.9

This European Prestandard does not support positive acknowledgement at the application level nor negative acknowledgement or error indication at the application level.

This supporting document contains message implementation guidelines for the implementable Message Specifications (IMSs). They should be considered an essential component of the IMS providing a generic EDIFACT implementation specification for use in Europe.

Specifically these chapters cover:

• A general description of how the mapping from GMDs to EDIFACT is carried out.

• A structure table indicating how the defined IMSs meet the relationships defined in the GMDs.

• Data tables indicating how the defined IMSs support the objects and attributes of the GMDs The supporting document is not a constituent part of this pr-ENV.