Encounter Identification

The encounter is the concept HIEBus uses to encapsulate specific patient interactions with the health system including inpatient visits, outpatient visits, emergency visits, future appointments, and virtual encounters such as phone calls. Generally speaking, the data in a PV1 segment represents a HIEBus encounter. Encounters are used as input to real time alerting as well as population health analytics and quality measures.

By default, HIEBus uses PID-18 (Account Number) as the identifier for encounters, though it can be reconfigured to source it from other fields, such as PV1-19 (Visit Number). HIEBus does not manage a separate record authority or assigning authority for encounter identifiers, but instead the identifier for encounters is only referenced in combination with the patient associated with that encounter. Therefore, the unique encounter identifier in HIEBus is the combination of patient record authority, patient identifier, and encounter identifier.