"Related Person"

A "Related Person" typically has a personal or non-healthcare-specific professional relationship to the patient. A "Related Person" QDM datatype is primarily used to reference another person involved with the patient"s care or as a source to gain information about the patient. Some individuals may serve as both an activity performer (i.e., referenced as the Care Partner entity), and a "Related Person" (i.e., the individual from whose record clinical information should be retrieved to support care provided to a patient). The QDM datatype, "Related Person", references the latter.

• Example "Related Persons" are a patient"s mother, father, spouse, partner, relatives, friends, a neighbor bringing a patient to the hospital, or a patient"s attorney or guardian.

An example to describe usage of the "Related Person" QDM datatype is to determine clinical information about a newborn infant"s mother. In this hypothetical example, a measure might want to evaluate gestational age at the time of birth. One method is to expect entry on the infant"s record of an observation question about gestational age at the time of birth requesting the estimated due date such that it can be compared with the actual birth date. That method uses the QDM datatype "Assessment, Performed" to request the estimated due date. However, to be able to directly reference the mother"s record for the estimated due date requires the QDM datatype "Related Person". This datatype enables authors to reference information from other data items as appropriate.

Specifically, for a "Related Person", the eCQM should be tested to determine if the index patient"s record can access information from the record of the expected related person. Some feedback suggests that a patient"s record may have a link to another inpatient record (e.g., an infant"s chart might have a link to the mother"s chart), but it is not clear that codified information from the related person can be accessed. In previous versions of QDM, such information had to be referenced as an observation related to the patient that is the subject of the measure "Assessment, Performed" is used to reference such an observation and QDM 5.5 retains that same capability.