This page is part of the US Quality Core (v0.5.0: Release) based on FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) R4. This is the current published version. For a full list of available versions, see the Directory of published versions
The following table lists the US Quality Core profiles that are part of the IG, which US Core profile they are derived from, if any, and the underlying FHIR resources.
US Quality Core inherits all profiles from QI-Core 6.0.0, but not all profiles included in this guide are required for conformance. Implementations are expected to support profiles with at least one USCDI+ Quality flagged data element, as described in the Summary of Conformance Requirements and the USCDI+ Quality in-scope and out-of-scope profile summaries. Profiles that are not part of the conformance expectations of this guide are marked with an asterisk (*) in the US Quality Core profile column.
There are a number of US Quality Core profiles inherited directly from US Core profiles, if any, or other FHIR resources (i.e. US Core Implantable Device Profile, FHIR Vital Signs, US Core Smoking Status etc.) and the underlying Reference elements can address the US Core or FHIR profiles for the items referenced. For any other references to base FHIR resources or not formally defined in a US Quality Core Profile, the referenced resource SHALL be a US Quality Core Profile if a US Quality Core Profile exists for the resource type. For example, US Core Smoking Status references US Core Patient profile, the reference to Patient SHALL be a valid US Quality Core Patient.
Note to Implementers: US Quality Core profiles have been developed with the principle that if the profiles only need to provide references to US Quality Core Profiles, that is insufficient to require individual US Quality Core profiles for all US Core profiles. There are edge cases using this approach where the FHIR validator would not validate an assumption made by the measure author, such as that an encounter traced through an observation is a US Quality Core Encounter. We think that general validation of all the resources provided to the context of a measure evaluation can address that risk without the need for deriving specific profiles that only constrain reference types. We seek feedback on this point.
This change will strengthen the requirement to use a US Quality Core profile when using a base FHIR or US Core profile not formally defined in US Quality Core and to use US Quality Core profiles as referenced resources if a US Quality Core Profile exists for that resource.