We are doing some testing as part of our next accreditation for eRS. We’ve come across a problem with our previously accredited downloader where we get the Named Clinician from the A005 call.
The problem is that we are getting a clinician SSID in the Appointment resource that we don’t recognise. When I created the referral, I did not name or allocate a clinician, and the SSID is not know to us, i.e. it’s not one of the users we have set up against the service.
Looking at the referral in eRS, it looks like there is an “Allocated Clinician”
(I tried to upload a screen shot of the referral in eRS but I’m only allowed to embed one image. It shows a name I don’t recognise in the “Allocated Clinician” field)
A few questions:
Allocated clinician
Is this the SSID we are receiving in the A005 response?
Where is this setup?
Who allocates a clinician?
When is this done?
We don’t recognise the SSID for the allocated clinician so where has this come from in our referral?
Named clinician
How does the referring clinician specify the Named Clinician?
Where is the Named Clinician in the A005 response?
We’ve been using the Allocated Clinician as the Named Clinician in our application which is wrong we think!
Please wait for @zubeir.tai’s response, but this is my understanding.
There are there are two concepts of allocated clinicians in the e-RS:
A clinician is allocated to a slot
A clinician is allocated to a service
As I understand it the clinicians allocated to a service will generally align with those allocated to a slot. However, slot allocations are done by the remote PAS system so in theory they can return any value for the allocated clinician.
RE 1. A clinician is allocated to a slot
I believe this is the case affecting you.
The SDS User ID you are seeing in the Appointment resource contained within the ReferralRequest returned from A005 relates to the clinician allocated to the Slot in the PAS.
A slot can optionally have an allocated clinician, but the test PAS offered in the INT environment always returns an allocated clinician (probably always the same one).
2. A clinician is allocated to a service
A clinician can also be allocated to a service. This is done when maintaining a service as a Service Definer, under the Service Personnel shrub.
If a clinician is allocated to a service then their name can be used as a filter for various worklists.
An allocated clnician can optionally also be made a named clinician. Designated Named Clinicains can be searched-for in a Service Search.
Hopefully that answers your questions.
@zubeir.tai may be able to provide more information (next week).
You mentioned An allocated clinician can optionally also be made a named clinician. Designated Named Clinicians can be searched-for in a Service Search.
If a clinician is made a Named Clinician, how do I know that? Where is that specified in the A005 response?
When a clinician is marked as a Named Clinician for a service (in the service definition) this simply provides an alternative means of discovering a service using service search. Essentially the service advertises that that clinician works at the service. This isn’t a guarantee you will see this clinician, just that they are involved in or lead the related clinic.
Slots advertised by the service can optionally have an allocated clinician, this could be a clinician that is “named” on the service, or one defined as allocated by the service, or any other clinician value provided by the PAS (which I think is the case with the test PAS).
The Appointment within the A005 response only includes details about the clinician allocated to the Slot.
If you still have questions it is probably worth setting up a call to discuss further.
A “named” clinician is one who is associated with the service. Their name can be used by a referrer to search for specific slots assigned to them.
An “allocated” clinician will still be associated with the service but will not be searchable using the named clinician functionality.
A clinician can be:
allocated only
both allocated and named (a clinician cannot be named without being allocated)
To allow bookings to named clinicians, specific appointment slots for named clinicians have to be allocated within the hospital patient administration systems (PAS).
In your specific example, since you didn’t name a clinician as part of your service search, the only explanation is that the appointment slot is “allocated” to a clinician. If you are using the NHSE test PAS then all the slots are set up this way.
