New Encounter Alerts

What is a New Encounter Alert?

A New Encounter Alert signals that a new clinical encounter document (such as a progress note, visit summary, consultation note, or other encounter-specific clinical documentation) has been identified and is available for a patient you've subscribed to Particle Signal. These alerts are triggered when Particle detects new documents across national Health Information Networks (HINs) like Carequality, Commonwell, and state Health Information Exchanges (HIEs).

This alert provides a direct link to the newly available document, allowing your systems to immediately retrieve the latest clinical context for the patient.

Why New Encounter Alerts Matter (Use Cases)

New Encounter Alerts are vital for maintaining an up-to-date patient record and ensuring comprehensive care coordination by providing timely access to fresh clinical information.

Clinical Reconciliation: Automatically update patient charts with the latest encounter details, diagnoses, medications, and other clinical observations from outside providers.
Care Plan Adjustments: Quickly identify changes in a patient's condition or treatment plan based on new provider visits, enabling your care team to adjust interventions accordingly.
Billing and Follow-Up: Inform billing departments of new services or trigger follow-up actions based on recent patient interactions.
Population Health Insights: Gain real-time understanding of patient activity and care utilization across diverse healthcare settings.
Reduced Manual Effort: Automate the discovery and retrieval of new encounter documents, significantly reducing manual chart review and data entry.

Signal Workflow: Using Encounter Alerts

New Encounter Alerts are generated when Particle Health's systems detect the presence of a new clinical encounter document for a subscribed patient within the continuously monitored national health information networks.

Step 1: Register the Patient

Before you can receive any Signal alerts, each patient must be registered with Particle Health. This establishes a unique particle_patient_id for the individual, which is essential for all subsequent actions.

For detailed instructions on patient registration, including API endpoints and example payloads, please refer to the Patient Registration section in Setting Up Signal.

Step 2: Subscribe to Monitoring

Once the patient is registered, you need to subscribe them to Signal's monitoring service. This setup only needs to be done once per patient or project.

Example Subscription Payload:
```
{
  "particle_patient_id": "c361d528eab1f611967ff6c62351cb1c",
  "type": ["MONITORING"]
}
```
For full details on patient subscription methods and API calls, refer to the Patient Subscription section in Setting Up Signal.

Step 3: Receive Webhook Notifications

When a New Encounter Alert is triggered, Particle will send a POST request to your registered callback endpoint. This notification uses a CloudEvents structure and is PHI-free, serving as a signal that a new document is available.

For information on how to develop, host, and register your general webhook endpoint, please see the Configure Your Callback Endpoint section in Setting Up Signal.

Webhook Type: com.particlehealth.api.v2.encounter

Example Webhook Payload:

{
  "specversion": "1.0",
  "type": "com.particlehealth.api.v2.encounter",
  "subject": "New Encounter",
  "source": "api/notifications",
  "id": "ea77d12d-bb97-438e-82eb-1b0d10a7e3ee",
  "time": "2024-07-22T10:10:10Z",
  "datacontenttype": "application/json",
    "data": {
    "network_organization": {
      "name": "Rochester Hospital",
      "oid": "2.16.840.1.113883.3.8391.5.710576"
    },
    "particle_patient_id": "d939196d-0c80-4e82-b0e1-19f9ee271085",
    "query_id" : "e040207e-1d91-5f93-b0e1-19f9ee271085",
    "resources": [
      {
          "file_id": "d6a96f73-eb18-4faa-b021-143e7777fe8b",
        "resource_ids": [
          "Encounter/b10fe2ef-47f9-4507-97c8-1a8c2215478e"
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Key Fields in data payload:
- network_organization: Information about the organization where the encounter occurred (name and OID).
- particle_patient_id: The unique identifier for the patient.
- query_id: The ID of the underlying query that identified this encounter.
- network_alert_ids: A list of IDs of related Network Alerts that may have preceded this Encounter Alert.
- resources: Contains file_id (for file-based retrieval) and resource_ids (which now specifically reference the Encounter/{id} for data retrieval via the Particle API).

Step 4: Retrieve Data

To retrieve the full clinical data of the new encounter, you will use the file_id or resource_ids provided in the webhook payload with the Particle API. The data will be available as FLAT datasets and will contain PHI.

Option A: Retrieve All Datasets Related to a Specific Encounter (by `encounter_id`)

This method returns all relevant records across datasets (e.g., encounters, medications, problems, etc.) associated with the encounter_id referenced in the webhook's resources array (encounters/{encounter_id}).

Request:

GET /patients/{particle_patient_id}/flat?encounter_id={encounter_id}

Example:

GET /patients/{particle_patient_id}/flat?resource_ids=Encounter/b10fe2ef-47f9-4507-97c8-1a8c2215478e

Option B: Retrieve Only the Encounter Dataset for that event (by `resource_type` and `encounter_id`)

To retrieve only the core encounter record(s) for a specific visit, use the resource_type=ENCOUNTERS parameter along with the encounter_id.

Request:

GET /patients/{particle_patient_id}/flat?resource_type=ENCOUNTERS&encounter_id={encounter_id}

Example:

GET /patients/9c6d9cf3-15c2-4b65-b8e3-836ef6cf2f13/flat?resource_type=ENCOUNTERS&encounter_id=c4e9b1f0-0c2f-4a3e-a3a7-1139fd254d29

Option C: File-Based Retrieval (by `file_id`)

If the webhook payload includes a file_id in the resources array, you can use it for direct file-based retrieval.

Request:GET /patients/{particle_patient_id}/ccda/{file_id}

GET /patients/{particle_patient_id}/ccda/d6a96f73-eb18-4faa-b021-143e7777fe8b

Triggering Criteria

New Encounter Alerts are triggered when Particle's monitoring systems detect new clinical information for a patient subscribed to your Signal service, indicating a recent encounter with a healthcare provider or facility. This includes newly surfaced data, such as visit notes, or other relevant documentation from the encounter.