mode

The Location.mode element can be used to indicate whether a Location resource represents a specific (potentially identifiable) Location (instance), or a class of Locations (kind). Especially Resources capturing orders, resource scheduling, plans and definitions may refer to Locations in kind mode. For these domains, it is often not necessary to refer to a specific Location, but rather to a class of Locations. An example of this is found in planning, where we need to allocate an "isolation room" for a patient, or need to dispatch "an ambulance" at a certain time. In these cases it is not important exactly which isolation room or ambulance is allocated, and it is sufficient to just indicate a kind of Location.

Note that kind should not be used to represent Locations where an actual instance of a Location was involved, but identifying information is missing. E.g. when a patient arrived 'by ambulance', but it is not known by which ambulance, this should be represented using a Location in instance mode with a missing identifier, not a Location of kind ambulance.

Some of Location's data elements are only relevant when mode is instance and should not be used when mode is kind: (however this information could still be included if was relevant, such as when it is a generic item, but not globally generic, e.g. a Burgers MU ambulance).