A formally or informally recognized grouping of people or organizations formed for the purpose of achieving some form of collective action. Includes companies, institutions, corporations, departments, community groups, healthcare practice groups, payer/insurer, etc.

The logical id of the resource, as used in the URL for the resource. Once assigned, this value never changes.

The only time that a resource does not have an id is when it is being submitted to the server using a create operation.

The metadata about the resource. This is content that is maintained by the infrastructure. Changes to the content might not always be associated with version changes to the resource.

A reference to a set of rules that were followed when the resource was constructed, and which must be understood when processing the content. Often, this is a reference to an implementation guide that defines the special rules along with other profiles etc.

Asserting this rule set restricts the content to be only understood by a limited set of trading partners. This inherently limits the usefulness of the data in the long term. However, the existing health eco-system is highly fractured, and not yet ready to define, collect, and exchange data in a generally computable sense. Wherever possible, implementers and/or specification writers should avoid using this element. Often, when used, the URL is a reference to an implementation guide that defines these special rules as part of it's narrative along with other profiles, value sets, etc.

The base language in which the resource is written.

Language is provided to support indexing and accessibility (typically, services such as text to speech use the language tag). The html language tag in the narrative applies to the narrative. The language tag on the resource may be used to specify the language of other presentations generated from the data in the resource. Not all the content has to be in the base language. The Resource.language should not be assumed to apply to the narrative automatically. If a language is specified, it should it also be specified on the div element in the html (see rules in HTML5 for information about the relationship between xml:lang and the html lang attribute).

A human-readable narrative that contains a summary of the resource and can be used to represent the content of the resource to a human. The narrative need not encode all the structured data, but is required to contain sufficient detail to make it "clinically safe" for a human to just read the narrative. Resource definitions may define what content should be represented in the narrative to ensure clinical safety.

Contained resources do not have narrative. Resources that are not contained SHOULD have a narrative. In some cases, a resource may only have text with little or no additional discrete data (as long as all minOccurs=1 elements are satisfied). This may be necessary for data from legacy systems where information is captured as a "text blob" or where text is additionally entered raw or narrated and encoded information is added later.

These resources do not have an independent existence apart from the resource that contains them - they cannot be identified independently, and nor can they have their own independent transaction scope.

This should never be done when the content can be identified properly, as once identification is lost, it is extremely difficult (and context dependent) to restore it again. Contained resources may have profiles and tags In their meta elements, but SHALL NOT have security labels.

May be used to represent additional information that is not part of the basic definition of the resource. To make the use of extensions safe and manageable, there is a strict set of governance applied to the definition and use of extensions. Though any implementer can define an extension, there is a set of requirements that SHALL be met as part of the definition of the extension.

There can be no stigma associated with the use of extensions by any application, project, or standard - regardless of the institution or jurisdiction that uses or defines the extensions. The use of extensions is what allows the FHIR specification to retain a core level of simplicity for everyone.

May be used to represent additional information that is not part of the basic definition of the resource and that modifies the understanding of the element that contains it and/or the understanding of the containing element's descendants. Usually modifier elements provide negation or qualification. To make the use of extensions safe and manageable, there is a strict set of governance applied to the definition and use of extensions. Though any implementer is allowed to define an extension, there is a set of requirements that SHALL be met as part of the definition of the extension. Applications processing a resource are required to check for modifier extensions.

Modifier extensions SHALL NOT change the meaning of any elements on Resource or DomainResource (including cannot change the meaning of modifierExtension itself).

Modifier extensions allow for extensions that cannot be safely ignored to be clearly distinguished from the vast majority of extensions which can be safely ignored. This promotes interoperability by eliminating the need for implementers to prohibit the presence of extensions. For further information, see the definition of modifier extensions.

There can be no stigma associated with the use of extensions by any application, project, or standard - regardless of the institution or jurisdiction that uses or defines the extensions. The use of extensions is what allows the FHIR specification to retain a core level of simplicity for everyone.

Identifier for the organization that is used to identify the organization across multiple disparate systems.

Organizations are known by a variety of ids. Some institutions maintain several, and most collect identifiers for exchange with other organizations concerning the organization.

Whether the organization's record is still in active use.

Need a flag to indicate a record is no longer to be used and should generally be hidden for the user in the UI.

This active flag is not intended to be used to mark an organization as temporarily closed or under construction. Instead the Location(s) within the Organization should have the suspended status. If further details of the reason for the suspension are required, then an extension on this element should be used.

This element is labeled as a modifier because it may be used to mark that the resource was created in error.

The kind(s) of organization that this is.

Need to be able to track the kind of organization that this is - different organization types have different uses.

Organizations can be corporations, wards, sections, clinical teams, government departments, etc. Note that code is generally a classifier of the type of organization; in many applications, codes are used to identity a particular organization (say, ward) as opposed to another of the same type - these are identifiers, not codes

When considering if multiple types are appropriate, you should evaluate if child organizations would be a more appropriate use of the concept, as different types likely are in different sub-areas of the organization. This is most likely to be used where type values have orthogonal values, such as a religious, academic and medical center.

We expect that some jurisdictions will profile this optionality to be a single cardinality.

A name associated with the organization.

Need to use the name as the label of the organization.

If the name of an organization changes, consider putting the old name in the alias column so that it can still be located through searches.

A list of alternate names that the organization is known as, or was known as in the past.

Over time locations and organizations go through many changes and can be known by different names.

For searching knowing previous names that the organization was known by can be very useful.

There are no dates associated with the alias/historic names, as this is not intended to track when names were used, but to assist in searching so that older names can still result in identifying the organization.

A contact detail for the organization.

Human contact for the organization.

The use code 'home' is not to be used. Note that these contacts are not the contact details of people who are employed by or represent the organization, but official contacts for the organization itself.

An address expressed using postal conventions (as opposed to GPS or other location definition formats). This data type may be used to convey addresses for use in delivering mail as well as for visiting locations which might not be valid for mail delivery. There are a variety of postal address formats defined around the world.

May need to keep track of the organization's addresses for contacting, billing or reporting requirements.

The address is intended to describe postal addresses for administrative purposes, not to describe absolute geographical coordinates. Postal addresses are often used as proxies for physical locations (also see the Location resource).

The organization of which this organization forms a part.

Need to be able to track the hierarchy of organizations within an organization.

Contact for the organization for a certain purpose.

Need to keep track of assigned contact points within bigger organization.

Where multiple contacts for the same purpose are provided there is a standard extension that can be used to determine which one is the preferred contact to use.

Unique id for the element within a resource (for internal references). This may be any string value that does not contain spaces.

May be used to represent additional information that is not part of the basic definition of the element. To make the use of extensions safe and manageable, there is a strict set of governance applied to the definition and use of extensions. Though any implementer can define an extension, there is a set of requirements that SHALL be met as part of the definition of the extension.

There can be no stigma associated with the use of extensions by any application, project, or standard - regardless of the institution or jurisdiction that uses or defines the extensions. The use of extensions is what allows the FHIR specification to retain a core level of simplicity for everyone.

May be used to represent additional information that is not part of the basic definition of the element and that modifies the understanding of the element in which it is contained and/or the understanding of the containing element's descendants. Usually modifier elements provide negation or qualification. To make the use of extensions safe and manageable, there is a strict set of governance applied to the definition and use of extensions. Though any implementer can define an extension, there is a set of requirements that SHALL be met as part of the definition of the extension. Applications processing a resource are required to check for modifier extensions.

Modifier extensions SHALL NOT change the meaning of any elements on Resource or DomainResource (including cannot change the meaning of modifierExtension itself).

Modifier extensions allow for extensions that cannot be safely ignored to be clearly distinguished from the vast majority of extensions which can be safely ignored. This promotes interoperability by eliminating the need for implementers to prohibit the presence of extensions. For further information, see the definition of modifier extensions.

There can be no stigma associated with the use of extensions by any application, project, or standard - regardless of the institution or jurisdiction that uses or defines the extensions. The use of extensions is what allows the FHIR specification to retain a core level of simplicity for everyone.

Indicates a purpose for which the contact can be reached.

Need to distinguish between multiple contact persons.

A name associated with the contact.

Need to be able to track the person by name.

A contact detail (e.g. a telephone number or an email address) by which the party may be contacted.

People have (primary) ways to contact them in some way such as phone, email.

Visiting or postal addresses for the contact.

May need to keep track of a contact party's address for contacting, billing or reporting requirements.

Technical endpoints providing access to services operated for the organization.

Organizations have multiple systems that provide various services and need to be able to define the technical connection details for how to connect to them, and for what purpose.