Previous Page TOC Index Next Page

4.1 OVERVIEW

The Order Entry transaction set provides for the transmission of orders or information about orders between applications that capture the order, by those that fulfill the order, and other applications as needed. An order is a request for material or services, usually for a specific patient. These services include medications from the pharmacy, clinical observations (e.g., vitals, I&Os) from the nursing service, tests in the laboratory, food from dietary, films from radiology, linens from housekeeping, supplies from central supply, an order to give a medication (as opposed to delivering it to the ward), etc.

Most orders are associated with a particular patient. However, the Standard also allows a department to order from another ancillary department without regard to a patient (e.g., floor stock), as well as orders originating in an ancillary department (i.e., any application may be the placer of an order or the filler of an order).

We refer to the person or entity who places the order as the placer. We refer to the person or entity that carries out the order as the filler (producer in ASTM terminology). In the case where the person or entity that carries out the order also requests the order, this person or entity is referred to as the filler and placer of the order. The filler may also request another application to assign a filler or placer order number.

This chapter defines the transactions at the seventh level, i.e., the abstract messages. Various schemes may be used to generate the actual characters that make up the messages according to the communications environment. The HL7 Encoding Rules will be used where there is not a complete Presentation Layer. This is described in Chapter 2, Section 2.10, "Message construction rules." The examples included in this chapter were constructed according to the HL7 Encoding Rules.

Previous Page TOC Index Next Page