HL7 and blanking fields

This topic has 5 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 15 years, 5 months ago by Jim Kosloskey.

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July 1, 2009 at 3:59 pm #51025
Jason Melton
Participant
Hi,

I am not sure of this is the correct place to ask but here goes. An HL7 question rather than a Cloverleaf question.

If on our Patient Admin system someone enters he address of the patient and it comes out in the PID as 1 The Street^^Some Town^

And the later amends it so that it comes out as 1 The Street ^Some Town

Should the receiving system realise that field 2 has not been sent and blank out what was sent previously?

How would I make the output from Cloverleaf so that it always send the all the address subfields. I tried making them mandatory in a variant and padding on error in the XLT

Kind Regards,

Jason
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- July 1, 2009 at 8:33 pm #68483
  Jim Kosloskey
  Participant
  Jason,
  
  What Event Types are we talking about here?
  
  email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.
- July 2, 2009 at 8:47 am #68484
  Jason Melton
  Participant
  Hi Jim,
  
  Its an A08.
  
  Cheers,
  
  Jason
- July 2, 2009 at 11:11 am #68485
  Jim Kosloskey
  Participant
  Jason,
  
  If the sending system wants a component or field or sub-component to be deleted by the Receiving system it is supposed to send an ‘Active’ null.
  
  That is two double quotes (“”).
  
  In your example, the second instance of the A08 with the following:
  
  |1 The Street ^Some Town | (I added the vertical bars to delineate the field).
  
  should be:
  
  |1 The Street ^Some Town ^””| (Note the double quotes).
  
  Now the receiving system needs to understand what the ‘Active’ null means and delete the appropriate element. There are a LOT of receiving systems that do not handle an ‘Active’ null.
  
  There are a lot of sending systems that do not use the ‘Active’ null in the A08 – your seems to be one of those.
  
  By the way assuming the entire field was to be deleted here is what should be sent:
  
  |””^””^|.
  
  The ‘Active’ null only has meaning in Change Event Types (such as the A08) for other Event Types, it is just two double quotes.
  
  This is all pretty well covered in the HL/7 Standard documentation. If your organization is not a member of HL/7 it should get a membership so you can get the various Version HL/7 documentation. Then when dealing with a vendor you can at least point to the standard and also you can know just what should transpire.
  
  email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.
- July 2, 2009 at 2:28 pm #68486
  Jason Melton
  Participant
  Hi Jim,
  
  Thanks for the info. Very useful, I must get some time to take a closer look at the HL7 specs.
  
  Is there a simple way to do use the active null within Cloverleaf other than an if else in the XLT. A default of @activenull would be nice.
  
  Kind Regards,
  
  Jason
- July 2, 2009 at 4:05 pm #68487
  Jim Kosloskey
  Participant
  Jason,
  
  If by ‘use the active null’ you mean test for it then actually the IF ELSE Action in the Xlate will not do the trick.
  
  You need to use Tcl to actually test the element’s data type for null.
  
  I have such a proc that we use here.
  
  If you want a copy, email me and I will send it along with its documentation.
  
  If you want to insert an Active null then I think just COPYing =”” (might need to be =”” to a field/component/sub-component will do the trick. However, any Active nulls should come from the sending system.
  
  email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.
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