Retrieving Alerts

After you enroll patients and configure a delivery method, Patient360 Clinical Alerts deliver notifications when external document activity matches an enrolled patient.

You retrieve the alert and its associated clinical data using the Encounter reference provided in the alert payload. If the source document is available, you can also retrieve the associated DocumentReference resource.

Alert Payload Structure

Clinical Alerts delivered by FHIR webhook or FHIR Subscription include a FHIR Parameters resource. This resource contains an eventType parameter and an encounter parameter with an embedded Encounter resource.

Example payload:

{
  "resourceType": "Parameters",
  "parameter": [
    { "name": "eventType", "valueString": "clinical-alert" },
    {
      "name": "encounter",
      "resource": {
        "resourceType": "Encounter",
        "id": "1234567",
        "status": "in-progress",
        "class": { "code": "IMP" },
        "type": [{
          "coding": [{
            "system": "http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/encounter-type",
            "code": "inpatient",
            "display": "Inpatient encounter"
          }]
        }],
        "subject": { "reference": "Patient/98765" },
        "period": { "start": "2024-12-10T08:00:00Z" },
        "location": [{ "location": { "display": "St. Mary Hospital" } }]
      }
    }
  ]
}

Retrieving the Encounter

When you receive an alert, you should retrieve the full Encounter resource using the encounter reference in the payload.

Perform a FHIR read request using the Encounter ID:

GET /fhir/R4/Encounter/1234567
Authorization: Bearer {access_token}
Accept: application/fhir+json

The Encounter resource provides key metadata about the detected event, including encounter type, period, location, and patient reference.

Retrieving the Source Document

If a source clinical document is available, the Encounter resource will contain a partOf or basedOn reference to an associated DocumentReference resource.

Perform a FHIR read request to retrieve the DocumentReference.

GET /fhir/R4/DocumentReference/{document_id}
Authorization: Bearer {access_token}
Accept: application/fhir+json

The DocumentReference provides details about the source document and includes a content.attachment element that enables you to retrieve the original document, if required.

HL7 v2 A08 Alerts

If you use the HL7 v2 A08 delivery method, Clinical Alerts are delivered as synthetic A08 messages. The Encounter ID is provided in PV1-19.

You can use the Encounter ID to perform a FHIR read request for the Encounter resource as shown above.

Next Steps

After you retrieve the Encounter and any associated DocumentReference:

Process the alert according to your clinical workflows.
Apply your organization’s deduplication or reconciliation logic if required.
Go to Clinical Alerts > Best Practices for Clinical Alerts for recommendations on handling duplicate alerts and optimizing alert processing.