Viewing medications

MedicationRequest is a FHIR Resource that describes an order or request for both supply of the medication and the instructions for administration of the medication to a patient.

Accessing a patient's medications can aid in workflows such as:

Working with the patient to ensure adherence to the medication protocol
Understanding a patient’s current medications to prevent drug-to-drug interactions
Advising the patient switch to generic medications to reduce overall out-of-pocket cost

Requirements

Medications are represented in patient access APIs as a FHIR Resource of type MedicationRequest. You can make HTTP requests to Flexpa API to search for and find medications prescribed to a particular patient. Patients authorize your app to access their medications via Flexpa Link. At the end of that flow you'll have:

An access token that is required for all requests to Flexpa API
A patient ID that is required to query FHIR resources directly related to the patient

Searching for a patient's medications

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 out for the real patient ID before we send the request to the right FHIR API.

You can retrieve the patient ID by either:

Using the $PATIENT_ID wildcard parameter and inspecting the response
- Example: GET /MedicationRequest?patient=$PATIENT_ID
Introspecting the access token

ACCESS_TOKEN=... # replace with the access token you obtained at the end of the Flexpa Link flow

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

Response type

The return type of querying the medication request endpoint is a searchset bundle. Technically, a searchset bundle may contain different types of resources (e.g., Coverage, Patient) 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 MedicationRequest response contains many fields. You can get an exhaustive list and explanation of each field here. Some notable fields:

entry - A collection of MedicationRequests (see response type on best practice of checking resourceType)
meta.lastUpdated - An ISO8601 string representing the last time the bundle was modified
entry[i].resource.status - A string representing the status of the MedicationRequest, including: active, on-hold, stopped, and completed. Medications currently prescribed have status: 'active'.
entry[i].resource.medicationCodeableConcept - A coded representation of the medication that the patient was prescribed. Typically this is an NDC and textual name for the medication.
entry[i].resource.authoredOn - The date when the medication was prescribed to the patient
entry[i].resource.dosageInstruction - Information about how the medication should be taken

Next steps

Flexpa Link

Flexpa Link is a client-side component to help your users link health plan data sources

Build with Flexpa Link →

API Reference

Use Flexpa API as a unified API to access Explanation of Benefits and more

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