In EHR data ordered drugs may have two dates, the date the order/prescription was written and the date the Person is to start taking the Drug. ETLs normally use a COALESCE (“date the Person is to start taking the Drug”, “date the order was written”) since “date the Person is to start taking the Drug” is not always provided and users want to preserve all the data, and it’s allowed in specs.
The time interval between 2 dates may be delayed in time. And the worse scenario is when a treatment plan for >2-6 months will be recorded on 1 single day ahead of time. Types are already used in cohort building and I see, there is a plan to consider them in DRUG_ERA / DOSE_ERA constructor.
In light of this, don’t we want to have 2 separate Type concepts:
- one to represent an intent to treat the patient on the specified date (e.g. ‘Prescription derived’ exposures);
- another one to represent an intent to treat the patient sometime in the future (e.g. Prescription written’ exposures).
The same might be applied to Procedure orders.