Practitioner — Healthcare professional

The healthcare professional in FHIR: physician, nurse, pharmacist, physiotherapist, midwife. Every prescription, observation, or signed document references a Practitioner.

Purpose

Practitioner describes a natural person with a formal role in healthcare delivery or related services (administration, legal). Distinct from PractitionerRole, which describes the role of the Practitioner inside a given Organization.

Practically, Practitioner stores the portable identity of the professional — name, national identifiers (NPI, RPPS, ADELI, GMC…), qualifications — and PractitionerRole stores the assignment within a facility (junior cardiologist of the cardiology service of a given hospital, on a specific shift).

Key fields

Country-specific identifiers

JSON example

Dr James Smith, cardiologist, US NPI + hypothetical French identifier:

{
  "resourceType": "Practitioner",
  "id": "example",
  "identifier": [{
    "use": "official",
    "system": "http://hl7.org/fhir/sid/us-npi",
    "value": "1234567890"
  }, {
    "use": "official",
    "system": "urn:oid:1.2.250.1.71.4.2.1",
    "value": "10003456789"
  }],
  "active": true,
  "name": [{
    "use": "official",
    "family": "Smith",
    "given": ["James", "A."],
    "prefix": ["Dr"]
  }],
  "telecom": [{
    "system": "phone",
    "value": "+1-555-555-1234",
    "use": "work"
  }, {
    "system": "email",
    "value": "james.smith@hospital.example.org",
    "use": "work"
  }],
  "address": [{
    "use": "work",
    "line": ["Cardiology Department", "100 Hospital Drive"],
    "city": "Anytown",
    "state": "CA",
    "postalCode": "90210",
    "country": "USA"
  }],
  "gender": "male",
  "birthDate": "1975-03-15",
  "qualification": [{
    "identifier": [{
      "system": "urn:oid:2.16.840.1.113883.4.642.4.1116",
      "value": "MD"
    }],
    "code": {
      "coding": [{
        "system": "http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/v2-0360",
        "code": "MD",
        "display": "Doctor of Medicine"
      }],
      "text": "Doctor of Medicine"
    },
    "period": { "start": "2002-06-30" },
    "issuer": {
      "display": "Stanford University School of Medicine"
    }
  }, {
    "code": {
      "coding": [{
        "system": "http://snomed.info/sct",
        "code": "394579002",
        "display": "Cardiology"
      }]
    }
  }],
  "communication": [{
    "language": {
      "coding": [{
        "system": "urn:ietf:bcp:47",
        "code": "en-US",
        "display": "English (United States)"
      }]
    },
    "preferred": true
  }]
}

• Two identifiers typed official, one US NPI, the other a French OID.
• qualification[0] = MD (Doctor of Medicine) issued by Stanford in 2002.
• qualification[1] = Cardiology (SNOMED 394579002) — specialty.
• communication = English (en-US) preferred.

REST API

• GET /Practitioner/example — direct fetch.
• GET /Practitioner?identifier=http://hl7.org/fhir/sid/us-npi|1234567890 — lookup by NPI.
• GET /Practitioner?family=Smith&given=James — lookup by name.
• GET /Practitioner?qualification-code=http://snomed.info/sct|394579002 — all cardiologists.
• GET /Practitioner?active=true&communication=fr — active French-speakers.

Profiles

Common pitfalls

• Mixing Practitioner and PractitionerRole: specialty in Practitioner.qualification = general (the physician is a cardiologist, anywhere). PractitionerRole.specialty = contextual (the physician practices as a cardiologist in this Organization).
• Identifier without system: an NPI without system=http://hl7.org/fhir/sid/us-npi is not deduplicable and fails US Core profiles.
• RPPS / ADELI confused: two distinct registries in France, with different OIDs. ADELI is being replaced by RPPS but still coexists.
• Multiple name without use: if a Practitioner has a married name, maiden name, and usual name, mark each explicitly (official, maiden, usual).
• Qualification without period: an expired qualification must be bounded, otherwise the system treats it as perpetual.
• Gender vs gender identity: same as Patient — gender is administrative only. Use an extension for gender identity.

Related resources

• PractitionerRole — assignment of the Practitioner to an Organization, with specialty, location, healthcareService, period, availability.
• Organization — institution.
• Location — physical place (office, room, hospital).
• HealthcareService — service offered by the Organization.
• Patient — care subject (via generalPractitioner).
• Encounter — references Practitioner via participant.
• MedicationRequest — references Practitioner via requester.
• HL7 v2 equivalent — XCN component in EVN-5, PV1-7, PV1-17, OBR-16, ORC-12.