Variant and sub-field access

[Sarah Brennan Thies]

Where can we get information on field definitions in the variant?  We see an incoming field called “disease alert code” defined as a coded element (CE) with length 1. However, the data shows MRSA, VRE etc.

Our goal is to send all 6 sub-fields if values are there; otherwise send “”.  However, we can’t seem to access the sub fields.  Also, the vendor would like us to take the 6 incoming fields evaluate the data, use a look-up table to map to a single character and put the single character in a designated output field of which there are 18 available fields.

The incoming values can be MRSA, ESBL, ESBL – ECOL, ESBL – KLOX, VRE, ROG:Other, R-BURCEP, and R – ECOL just to name a few.

Any help is greatly apprecited.  Thanks, Sarah

Topic

[Vince Angulo]

I just searched 2.3 and 2.5 for Disease Alert Code and didn’t find anything – if this is HL7, in which segment is it being used?

As for being CE (1), you’ll still see the whole value, e.g., “MRSA”, on the inbound side.  Cloverleaf only enforces the length on the outbound side.  If your outbound variant is the same then the output will be truncated.  You may want to change the existing outbound variant or create a new one that uses XCN type instead.

Also, you can sometimes address sub-fields in the translate even if they aren’t defined in the variant by just using the usual .[n] notation in the field path where n would be 0 thru 5 for your six fields.

Hope this helps – and I’m sure we’ll see another post with a better answer if there is one!!

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