PFS Appointments

This guidance is under active development by NHS Digital and content may be added or updated on a regular basis.
Note: This is a draft version of the GP Connect PFS Appointments capability. The current version can be found using this link.

Known Issues

Organization resource in Search for free slots returned Bundle

A business requirement to include Organization was listed in a previous version of Search for free slots, without the corresponding FHIR request parameter to allow the resource to be returned in the Bundle (according to the FHIR rules for inclusion).

At the current time consumer systems are using this Organization resource in their appointment booking products and so this resource cannot immediately be removed from the Bundle.

In order to ensure the known issue does not cause problems for providers or consumers, and to support a transition to fixing the issue, the following requirements apply for the current time:

  • Provider systems SHALL continue to return the Organization resource in the Search for free slots Bundle, except where no matching Slot resources were found.

  • Provider systems SHALL accept the _include:recurse=Location:managingOrganization parameter in the Search for free slots request without returning an error, however SHALL continue to return the Organization resource regardless of whether this parameter is present.

  • Consumer systems SHALL send the _include:recurse=Location:managingOrganization parameter, IF they require corresponding Organization resources to be returned in the Bundle.

{% include important.html content="In a future version of GP Connect API, Organization resources will only be returned where the _include:recurse=Location:managingOrganization parameter is passed by consumers, therefore consumers shall pass this parameter if they require the Organisation resource to continue to be returned as part of their Search for free slots response." %}

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