Searching Coverage
Coverage is a FHIR Resource that describes the financial terms of a specific health insurance plan for a specific person.
We will use Flexpa Link and Flexpa API to search for Coverage belonging to a specific patient. Accessing a patient's
coverage can aid in workflows such as:
- Recommending services based on costs, co-pays, or features of a specific health plan
- Validating that a patient has an active health plan
- Retrieving information commonly found on an health insurance card such as Member ID and Group ID
Getting started
Coverage is directly represented in patient access APIs as a FHIR Resource. We can make HTTP
requests to Flexpa API to search for and find coverage belonging to a particular patient. Patients authorize your
app to access their Coverage via Flexpa Link. At the end of the Flexpa Link flow you'll have:
- An access token that is required for all requests to Flexpa API
Searching for a patient's Coverage
Flexpa API can be used to search for Coverage after a patient has authorized access via Flexpa Link. Searches on Flexpa API
follow the RESTful style of the FHIR specification by submitting a GET HTTP request to the base URL of the resource.
To search for coverage belonging to a particular patient, you can use an API wildcard parameter: $PATIENT_ID. Flexpa swaps this for a context-based value before we route it to the destination.
You can retrieve the patient id by either:
ACCESS_TOKEN=...
curl "https://api.flexpa.com/fhir/Coverage?patient=$PATIENT_ID" \
-H "Authorization: $ACCESS_TOKEN"
Response type
The return type of querying the coverage endpoint is a searchset
bundle. Technically, a searchset bundle may contain different types of resources
(e.g., Coverage, Patient, etc) in the entry field. When iterating through entry it is best practice to inspect each resourceType field
to ensure you are dealing with the expected resource.
Sample response
Notable fields
A coverage response contains many fields. You can get an exhaustive list and explanation of each field here.
Some notable fields:
entry - A collection of coverages (see response type on best practice of checking resourceType)entry[i].status - A string representing the status of the coverage, can have a value of "active", "cancelled", "draft", "entered-in-error"entry[i].type - An object describing the coverage category (e.g., drug policy, dental policy, automobile injury policy, etc)entry[i].period - A period datatype describing the coverage's start and end dateentry[i].identifier - (optional) The primary identifier of the insured and the coverage. May contain the insured's member id, group id, etc.
Next steps