OperationOutcome

OperationOutcome is a FHIR resource that contains error, warning and information messages about an attempted system operation. Put simply, an OperationOutcome will not contain any patient data. Instead, the OperationOutcome resource helps developers understand the behavior and state of a FHIR server. The OperationOutcome resource may be used in the following circumstances:

When a RESTful interaction or operation fails

As the response on a validation operation to provide information about the outcome

As part of a message response, usually when the message has not been processed correctly

As the response to a batch/transaction, when requested

As part of a search's Bundle response containing information about the search

More specifically, an OperationOutcome can have any one of the following issue severities.

Code	Display	Definition
fatal	Fatal	The issue caused the action to fail and no further checking could be performed.
error	Error	The issue is sufficiently important to cause the action to fail.
warning	Warning	The issue is not important enough to cause the action to fail but may cause it to be performed suboptimally or in a way that is not as desired.
information	Information	The issue has no relation to the degree of success of the action.
success	Operation Successful	The operation completed successfully.

While you cannot query an OperationOutcome resource directly by its id, performing an operation against a FHIR server via API may yield an OperationOutcome in the response.

#Sample request

This is a sample request using curl that causes an OperationOutcome using Flexpa API in test mode. The OperationOutcome occurs because the patient does not have an Observation resource with an id of 123.

ACCESS_TOKEN=flexpa-link-access-token

curl "https://api.flexpa.com/fhir/Observation/123?patient=$PATIENT_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ACCESS_TOKEN"