Representing Pathology reports in NEHTA Clinical Documents : Date Time Field

Aug 24, 2012

In a previous post, I discussed how to represent a pathology report in a NEHTA clinical document. As part of that post, I wrote that a pathology report has the following data item: |Test Result Date Time|The clinically relevant time of the pathology test|OBR-7

However there’s a problem associated with this data item. The definition of Pathology Test Result > Pathology Test Result DateTime is:

The date and, optionally, time of the Pathology Test Result observation. If the Pathology Test Result Duration is non-zero, it is the time at which the Pathology Test Result observation was completed, i.e. the date (and time) of the trailing edge of the Pathology Test Result Duration.

This explanation is not tremendously useful for helping implementers know what the actual date that goes in here is. And a number of implementers have found this difficult. The resolution for this is documented here (password protected - see previous post - contact me for a password if you don’t have one).

Note: I’ll update this post with a link to a non-password protected version once it is available. This is an important clarification for anyone reading or writing diagnostic investigations in NEHTA Clinical Documents.